I know this is only the second book I've finished this year but this one is spectacular. It is the backstory of the creation of the Silk Road by Russ Ulbricht, known on the dark web as Dread Pirate Roberts.
Unlike the author who intruded herself onto every page in the rare book thief, Bilton himself seems "dark" with the ability to move the story along quickly yet with much detail, with confidence and without question. DPR's motives started out from a strong libertarian base wherein he opposed the government's intrusion into what a person could ingest. He grew some "magic" mushrooms, posted them for sale and the site itself mushroomed into a multi-billion dollar e-store where not only were all kinds of illegal drugs sold, but guns and eventually body parts. Worse yet, DPR himself began acting like a Mafia boss, killing or at least contracting to kill, anyone who threatened the operation.
While Bilton acknowledges that eventually there were conflicts among the several federal agencies that composed the task force to track down and arrest DPR, we lauds the individual talents of a low level postal inspector and other men who thought outside of standard operating procedures to identify Russ.
Several "it's bound to happen" things occur in the story: investigators tap into the Bitcoin site to steal; others leak the status of the hunt to DPR; girlfriends and family are completely blind and stunned by Russ' corruption.
The Silk Road site is gone. Computer crime investigation has grown up. Yet one cannot help but wonder what new sites have replaced it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment