Controlling the uncontrollable

This last week, the FBI triumphantly announced the arrest of Ross Ulbrict (aka Dread Pirate Roberts) in connection with selling illicit drugs through his online marketplace known as The Silk Road. The website, which generated over $1 billion of sales in 3 years of operation, was an anonymous storefront that operated on the Tor network and used Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. These two technologies, Tor and Bitcoin, are incredibly effective and easy in their ability to allow individuals to engage in anonymous communication and exchange, and Ulbricht, who only had moderate technical ability, was able to use them with great success. Stories like this will become more common in years to come as the desire to have a truly free internet is not waning. It will be interesting to see how society reacts. Personally, I support the development of technologies that allow for truly anonymous communication. While it might mean it is harder for the FBI to control the flow of drug-money, it also means it is harder for dictatorships to control their citizens or for organizations to squash whistleblowers.