Was the mastermind behind Silk Road really this easy to find online?

Warning: Highly hypothetical post to come.

Last week, we learned that the Dread Pirate Roberts — the shadowy figure behind the online drug bazaar Silk Road — was a 29-year-old dude living in San Francisco. People were shocked both that Ross William Ulbricht would choose to run his virtual drug empire from the States (rather than, say, Eastern Europe; somewhere warm and sunny in South America; or a country with a more lax attitude toward drugs) and that the man who had worked so hard to hide his identity through anonymity technology had such a voluminous social media presence, from LinkedIn to Facebook to multiple accounts on online forums. The evidence in the criminal complaint filed by the FBI in the Southern District of New York makes it seem as if tearing the mask off Ulbricht was easy. Too easy. So easy, that you wonder how the site stayed up for over two years.

But what if it only looks easy through reverse engineering of more sophisticated investigative tactics?

MORE @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/08/did-the-nsa-help...