Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: SimpleSky on September 28, 2013, 08:39 am

Title: Why isn't there an anonymous delivery service ... a sort of Tor IRL?
Post by: SimpleSky on September 28, 2013, 08:39 am
What are the problems with opening an anon delivery service?
I'm guessing there are rules and regulations that delivery services have to follow, such as UPS, FedEx, and others - but wouldn't there be ways to get around and through the loops? I'd think somebody would have set something up by now.
Could it be done? Or is it just that the percieved demand isn't high enough, or are the rules and regs just that tight that it just wouldn't be worth it?
Title: Re: Why isn't there an anonymous delivery service ... a sort of Tor IRL?
Post by: significat on September 28, 2013, 09:28 am
How would it work, exactly? Think about it... You'd need at the bare minimum for door-to-door deliveries, at least starting the business, 1 person per state (this is assuming this is domestic US only). You still need to use an address though, which is nevertheless going to be associated with a name somewhere.

There's an incredible amount of overhead for this dream service of yours, and IDK if SR could supply all the demand to pay for that overhead ;)
Title: Re: Why isn't there an anonymous delivery service ... a sort of Tor IRL?
Post by: kmfkewm on September 28, 2013, 09:34 am
We don't have envelopes that have 2^256 possible keys with only one that opens them. We cannot protect from dogs hitting on packages, I suppose this would be a fingerprinting attack. We cannot protect from tracking devices being placed in packages. We cannot get around customs if it is legit. Pretty much nothing we could do would come close to as effective as USPS, and anything we did would be just as vulnerable anyway.

However, It would be possible to do this with dead drops in a city wide area for small orders, with bigger traffickers driving bulk product from place to place. The primary thing that prevents this from happening is that we have not reached critical mass yet. If there were maybr 50X as many people involved it would be more feasible. Then vendors would start to supply only the people in their city, and product transfer would be done via dead drop and similar. If they ever get a lock on the mail system we will have to resort to this, but right now it just isn't worth it for vendors. Vendors can use mail to reach customers around the world, giving them a much larger customer base. With the exception of major cities, a lot of vendors here probably don't live in geographic proximity to more than a few dozen SR customers, and those customers may not be interested in the products the vendor sells.  If every city on earth had 50X as many SR members, it would be a lot more feasible for vendors to stop doing international and national vending and start to focus on city wide vending, and in such a case we would no longer need to use third party delivery systems at all.
Title: Re: Why isn't there an anonymous delivery service ... a sort of Tor IRL?
Post by: Candy on September 28, 2013, 10:45 am
What are the problems with opening an anon delivery service?
I'm guessing there are rules and regulations that delivery services have to follow, such as UPS, FedEx, and others - but wouldn't there be ways to get around and through the loops? I'd think somebody would have set something up by now.
Could it be done? Or is it just that the percieved demand isn't high enough, or are the rules and regs just that tight that it just wouldn't be worth it?

I am not quite sure I understand how uou would want to accomplish to make an anonymous delivering service. The post-man still needs to know where the letter goes, and therefore is really cant be anonymous! As it is now, the vendors are completely anonymous to the post-service, and as I see it Making the costumers anonymous would take a great deal of infrastructure (Something with anonymous PO boxes, in every major city).

I dont see this as feasible, and I dont really think it is necessary seeing as we already have plausible deniability, etc.