A long time ago (well past the statue of limitations.../nsa) Ispent 7 months working on a project with some individuals in Anonymous about starting a courier system. We wanted to make a service where people could post jobs and/or routes and have anything delivered anywhere in the country.

Couriers would be able to browse a list of jobs, threat (legal) levels, routes, and even work out networking by passing(selling the route information) items/data from one Anon to another to further obscure a transit route. If they found a route they wanted, they could purchase the route details with bitcoins, and then be directed to the submitter for further instructions/discovery, aliases, pass phrases and all that other James Bond level spy stuff. It was basically a Uber meets Silk Road mash-up.

Aside from all of the obvious felony-level smuggling legal hurdles, we couldn't find a way to ensure the system wouldn't fail due to theft abuse. We didn't care so much about illegal contraband, that was kind of the point and risk.. but we couldn't come up with enough capital to fund an insurance policy to reimburse stolen/undelivered/intercepted cargo. Sending Cousin Vinny to break knee caps wasn't part of the equation. The best solution we could come up with required couriers to pay huge deposits, or purchase a 'license', or some other type of buy-in. Each of those options made remaining Anonymous more and more difficult, so we scrapped the whole project.

Sometimes I look back to the old apple tree I buried the thumbdrive under, and wonder if we should have kept up with the project.

"Let's be clear — this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison, the FBI said in a statement. "Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars," the statement continued.

Maybe it's best left buried.