Image via Complex Original
The drug dealer hustle is very real. Once upon a time, dealers only worried about tapped calls or being pulled over. Now, they also need to worry about third and private parties reading through their text messages and emails, and the NSA remotely activating the cameras in their phones or computers. Granted, every human being connected to the Internet is subject to this, but drug dealers have something specific to worry about. Some dealers manage to stay one step ahead of police and federal agents by keeping their digital footprint at a minimum. Through multiple technological inventions, they're able to play it cool in a world where privacy is becoming more problematic each day.
If you're a beginner in the entrepreneurial field known as "street pharmaceuticals"—and even if you're not—you may find these devices, applications, and software useful in keeping you from going behind bars. But, even if you don't sell drugs, you can still use most of the stuff on here. Unless you enjoy having most, if not all, of your information available online. Here are the 10 Technologies Every Drug Dealer Needs To Stay Out of the Slammer.
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Prepaid Cell Phone
In this day and age, when our smartphones can pinpoint our location, record our Internet searches, and track our conversations, it's hard becoming a powerful drug kingpin if you're stuck using a regular smartphone for all of your drug-related deeds. If you're trying to take your small time dormitory sales to the big leagues, you should invest in a prepaid cell phone. Why? Since there's no contract or anything tying your name to the phone, it's difficult to prove who is using it. Plus, since you'll constantly be changing your number to evade the police (it may come to a point where you're using 35 disposable phones per day—like Walter White.
Alternative Social Network
You're probably aware of this, but Facebook doesn't really care about your privacy. It wants to know everything about you so it can sell you more shit you don't need. But there's an alternative to the ad-riddled website that Facebook has become: Social network buddycloud not only has strong privacy controls, but allows users to own and control personal data. In other words, your chances of being discovered by police and federal agents are much lower on these social networks than on Facebook.
Drug Dealing Website
The world almost lost Silk Road, the "Amazon for drugs" back in October of this year. But the online black market made a return in November as "Silk Road 2.0," once again giving the world a site that puts any number of drugs at customers' fingertips. Drug dealing websites are great for business because most of them operate as a Tor hidden service (more on this soon). Silk Road also uses Bitcoins (more on this soon, too), which is why it's able to keep such a tight lock on most interactions. In-person deliveries are so 1999: take your business to the Internet.
Anti-Bugging Protection
You've heard or seen it before: a big time drug dealer returns to their house from a week long vacation after being advised they should "lay low." Unaware that their house is bugged, they pull out their prepaid cell phone and call one of their closest partners. "Drugs," "selling drugs" and "laying low because of selling drugs," are all used during the conversation. Before you know it, you're in an interrogation room with a guy who's ready to beat the crap out of you like Batman did the Joker in The Dark Knight. With trying to be the Tony Montana of the social media age, you'll have to recognize that paranoia and drug dealing work hand-in-hand with each other. So, you should invest in some anti-bugging equipment. There's even some anti-bugging gadgets that can detect hidden cameras, as well as GPS trackers and wire telephone tapping. Ah, technology.
Encrypted Video Message Software
Encrypted video and audio calls made through your computer are important—especially knowing that the NSA can monitor both (although with the former, it only seems to be Skype video calls), and even remotely activate your microphone and camera to spy on you. This applies to smartphone microphones and cameras, too. Although there's not much you can do about the latter problem other than covering your webcam with black electrical tape, you can keep the NSA off your back by: not using Skype, and instead using Jitsi.
It's a free multiplatform voice, videoconferencing, and instant messaging application. It not only supports multiple popular protocols (XMPP/Jingle, which are associated with Facebook Chat and Google Talk, for example) but it encrypts chat and voice/video streaming and conferencing. So, whether you're discussing your next drug-related business proposal or you really want to talk about what happened on the latest episode of Scandal, Jitsi helps keep your conversations from falling into the wrong hands.
Alternative Email
A similar method to having multiple prepaid phones, a true tech savvy and cautious drug dealer will use disposable email accounts or anonymous email providers to communicate with customers. GuerrillaMail allows its users to send emails with temporary email addresses, while CounterMail keeps your account encrypted and anonymous (unfortunately, it's not free). It should also go without saying that you shouldn't use one of your many aliases in your email address. Maybe "DrugLorde90210" since you love the singer Lorde, and the TV show, Beverly Hills, 90210. (These are also the reasons the people that work for you take you less seriously than they should. Just in case you were wondering.)
Self Destructing RAM
Yes, this actually exists. For those whose computer might hold any evidence of illegal activity, this item is for you. RunCore seems to be the only company on top of a product like this, offering a solid-state drive (SSDs) that not only has lower power consumption and fast read and write times, but also the ability to get rid of any incriminating digital evidence. "How," you ask? Easy: the SSD comes with a green button and red one.
The former overwrites the entire disk with random, meaningless code, leaving your files unrecoverable. (However you can still use the disk.) The latter is the more extreme of the two: it physically destroys the drive in a puff of smoke. Although there doesn't seem to be any price or availability information for the item on RunCore's website, there is a section dedicated to it. The drug game requires some sacrifices—at least if it ever comes down to it, your computer could go out with a bang.
Bitcoins
Bitcoins, the digital currency used by the Internet-savvy (a nice way of saying "people that probably devote their lives to the Illuminati conspiracy," while doing way too many drugs) to purchase everything from drugs to coffee, is great for maintaining anonymity. A Bitcoin address doesn't directly identify its owner, and although one could track the flow of Bitcoins used through a certain address, it's still very difficult to associate Bitcoin transactions with real-life identities. Sure, you'll probably have customers like Jon Stewart's character in Half Baked telling you how the universe really is a hologram, but at least they're entertaining.
Mobile Privacy Application
As we mentioned before, smartphones aren't a drug dealer's best friend. Phone conversations can be tapped, your searches can be checked—a smartphone can be worse than a double-crossing assistant. If you do happen to have an iPhone along with your prepaid cell phone, it would be smart to have some type of mobile privacy application for the former. One app in particular, Wickr, not only encrypts messages (meaning that third party eavesdroppers will have a hard time accessing your messages) but self-destructs them, too. That's right—video, text, audio, and picture messages, will delete themselves immediately after being sent. If only Anthony Weiner had known about this.
Learn from his misfortune and use a mobile privacy app to your advantage. There are also applications for blocking online tracking (DNTMe), mobile anonymity (Orbot) and mobile browser privacy (Onion Browser, Orweb).
Internet Anonymity System
Ever hear of a form of Internet surveillance called "traffic analysis?" Of course not.
Basically, traffic analysis can be used to find out who is talking to who over a public network. The two components of traffic analysis focuses on the data payload of what's being sent (i.e., an audio file) and the header, which discloses the source, destination, size, and timing of it. So, say you're one of the most technologically savvy drug dealers in the world, but you happen to slip up when you send your bae the new Beyonce album. Well, Beyonce could cost you. This is why Internet anonymity systems such as Tor exist. It's the Internet equivalent of taking multiple left and right turns to escape the cops in a car chase: it sends your transactions to several places on the Internet so no single point can link to your destination. Since Tor only focuses on protecting the transportation of data, it's limited in its capabilities. But after establishing a successful drug empire, the last thing you want to get you caught up is an email to your second in command describing how you have to go to this year's BronyCon.