disclaimer: thanks to /u/partyhouse1980 who brought that report to the attention of the mods. but since he did not answer yet when we asked him to post about it I will go ahead and make this post.
europol published another report called iocta [internet organised crime threat assessment] which also deals with dnms.
you can find it either on the official website https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/europol_iocta_web_2016.pdf or you can download it from archive.org by going to https://archive.org/web/ [simply enter the url and click on the 'browse history' button]. however these are both pdf files.
you can find more europol reports on https://www.europol.europa.eu/activities-services/main-reports
regarding that specific report, here some dnm relevant parts that I briefly skimmed:
page 42 to 44 some talk about bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, exchanges and even criminals who created their own 'in-house currencies'
page 45 to 46 a bit about communication, not really worth reading
page 47 to 48 this is the juicy part which deals with dnms. they really seem to lurk on here and know the users 'Today, message board chat relating to these services is often seeded with paranoia, not that law enforcement has taken further action, but that a market has performed an exit scam with their funds or simply closed down.'. not really long but it is nice to see how law enforcement view the dnm scene.
I just skimmed the relevant parts but if I find some more interesting sections I will edit this post.
edit
'Disruption [referring to the exit scams and closures of markets] is a core tactic for law enforcement, therefore the self-disrupting effect of the market volatility is something of a boon to law enforcement.' sometimes we are already doing law enforcement's work by allowing greed and bad opsec to take over, so let us show them that we are not a random accumulation of drug addicts by making their job as hard as possible [i.e. using tails, multisig, . . .]
'One of the main challenges for law enforcement in this area [regarding hidden services] is the ability to operate lawful-ly in these environments' just do it the FBI style: hack first and do not ask questions about legal boundaries later.
generally is this report much better to read since it was not written by a fed that has to make sure that he spreads enough panic about the dnm topics to secure his future salary [although that europol report is not that detailed as one could hope].
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