China has launched a quietly aggressive global trade, development and infrastructure initiative based on the ancient Silk Road model. But is Africa welcome on the journey to renewed prosperity?
China’s President Xi Jinping at the podium at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
AP Photo/Michel Euler
Leaders are worried US leadership on global issues like climate change will be diminished under President Trump. Experts explain why China is ready to lead, and how that could be a good thing.
Ross William Ulbricht, the tech-savvy Texan who created the Silk Road, was sentenced to life in prison without parole on charges that equated him with a mafia boss.
The technology behind Silk Road is still sound, but with the potential for a life sentence it would take faith to deploy them.
The Silk Road was once a river of commerce across continents. It lives again on the ‘dark net’, that part of the internet that operates on the encrypted TOR network.
Wikimedia Commons
Recent media reports have once again put the public spotlight on cryptomarkets, the eBay-style websites operating on the encrypted dark net. They facilitate a vast and anonymous global trade in black market…
In a stark contrast to the conventional drug trade, some users in online marketplaces offer full or partial refunds for drugs that are intercepted by customs.
AAP/Customs
In October 2013, US authorities shut down Silk Road, the world’s largest cryptomarket. At the time, prosecutors claimed that the closure of the so-called “eBay of illicit drugs” represented the beginning…
You’re going to have to try a bit harder if you want to be really anonymous.
moirabot
The US National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ have upped the stakes in the battle for internet privacy by targeting users of Tor. Not only have the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden up until this…
War on Drugs proponents have argued the closure of Silk Road is going to make the public safer from the harms caused by illicit drugs, but does the evidence back up this view?
AAP/AFP
The recent closure of illicit drugs website Silk Road by the FBI has been hailed as a decisive blow in the fight against organised crime and another victory in the global War on Drugs. Although a minor…
It may be closed, but Silk Road was not the only online avenue to illegal goods and services.
lens-flare.de
You’ll have seen the owner of notorious online marketplace Silk Road, Ross William Ulbricht, was arrested in a San Francisco public library on Wednesday, California time. But how does the administrator…
Despite the shutdown of anonymous illegal goods market Silk Road, its currency - the Bitcoin - recovered its losses.
Flickr/Zach Copley
In a blow for the burgeoning economy of black markets on the Internet’s so-called “Deep Web”, trading site the [Silk Road](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace) has been shut down by US…
Only a small proportion of Australian drug users buy their drugs online.
Shutterstock
Fears that online drug marketplaces are flooding communities with illicit drugs may be unfounded, according to the first Australian survey of such websites. While the survey found the number of online…
