FBIAs Jerry Brito
mentions in his column about the closure of the Tor-based
black-market site, Silk Road, supporters of the underground
economic operation have identified the address where the FBI is
storing the 26,000 Bitcoins seized from Ross Ulbricht, the site’s
alleged proprietor. Now they’re sending tiny, tiny Bitcoin tips to
that address so they can include nastygrams and peanut gallery
taunts in the “public note” portion of their payments that are then
visible on Blockchain.

At the
FBI Bitcoin address on Blockchain, you can read gems
including:

• Yo F.B.I im hapy for you and all buuut
• God damn it Mulder.
• All your Bitcoins are belong to us. http://www.fbi.gov/ …good
  thing too cuz we is short on funds.
• “One star is born as another fades away. Which one will come
  next? is my favorite riddle.” Said a girl puffing rings in a dot,
  dot, dash haze. “No worry, No hurry. They can’t stop the
  signal.”
• Take the drugs, take the domain, but don’t take the people’s
  bitcoins. This seizure was only legal because bitcoin is not
  recognized as a currency.
• You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I
  really do. And if you don’t believe drugs have done good things for
  us, do me a favor. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your
  tapes and all your CDs and burn them.
• ‘Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great
  music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrreal
  fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high they let
  Ringo sing a few tunes.
• I think it’s interesting the two drugs that are legal, alcohol
  and cigarettes, two drugs that do absolutely nothing for you at
  all; and the drugs that might open your mind up to realize how
  badly you’re being fucked every day of your life?
• I loved when Bush came out and said, “We are losing the war
  against drugs.” You know what that implies? There’s a war being
  fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
• The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his
  rule begins.
• The fight against drug trafficking is a wildfire that threatens
  to consume those fundamental rights of the individual deliberately
  enshrined in our Constitution.
• DOWN WITH THE FEDERAL RESERVE! “…The issuing power should be
  taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it
  properly belongs.” -Thomas Jefferson

As Brito points out, Bitcoins aren’t as untraceable as some
people think, at least not without special care. But Ulbricht, who
is said to be the Dread Pirate Roberts who managed Silk Road, was
apparently more than a bit sloppy in covering his
tracks—specifically, he was connected to Silk Road because he
once used
his Gmail address to promote it.

Tor, it turns out, isn’t necessarily as completely
anonymous as people think, either, though it’s pretty damned close.
The NSA
actively works to crack the network and identify its users,
even using advertising networks to plant and trace cookies. So far,
though, the spooks have has limited success. In one document
supplied to The Guardian by Edward Snowden, NSA officials
complain, “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all
the time. With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small
fraction of Tor users.”

Ulbricht’s fatal sloppiness (assuming the feds have the right
guy) and the NSA’s frustration may well serve to encourage black
marketeers and privacy aficionados to keep trying. They now also
know to tighten their personal security and to close some technical
loopholes.

And they know how to find the feds and aren’t shy about taunting
them.

(H/T SweatingGin, among others)