That seems like it wouldn't be cost effective for them if there is even a small amount of anonymity between the buyers and cultivators.

I mean, cartels have been pumped up to pretty ridiculous heights by the war on drugs but it's not at the point where it would be realistic to have them say "here is a list of a few hundred usernames from SilkRoad spread out all over North America. Find them and murder them all."

Even considering that their MO is more along the lines of picking out the ones they can find and making a gruesome spectacle to scare the rest it still seems unrealistic, although so do a lot of things happening with drugs cartels these days to be fair.

>> it's not at the point where it would be realistic to have them say "here is a list of a few hundred usernames from SilkRoad spread out all over North America. Find them and murder them all."

This is not exact, unfortunately, because it depends also on some other factors. If the drug lords decide that they want to impose the fact that they don't accept opposition, they are actually going to do exactly that. They've done it already for several bloggers, it would make little difference if they decided to do it for the little indipendent dealers.

Keep in mind that in order to take out a few hundred independent dealears, they only need to torture and kill a few, and have the word spread.

"They've done it already for several bloggers" as in people that blog about drugs? Could you elaborate?

Another example was when Anonymous decided to start outing Cartel members. They kidnapped one of the people involved and Anonymous declared a truce to get that person released.

source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/member-anonymous-relea...

Here's one example. Googling for something like "cartel kills social media activist" will probably yield more.

http://techland.time.com/2011/11/10/fourth-blogger-reportedl...

But the Mom and Pop shop can now be anonymous and the evil druglord will have a hard time finding them since they can't go torture the street dealers that peddle Mom&Popshop & Co drugs.

There is no certainty of anonymity, especially in Mexico, for two reasons.

First, drug cartels have very easily control of the IT infrastructures, and second, they now employ hackers exactly to keep the internet information under control.

They've killed several bloggers already, and you can be sure they thought they were anonymous.

The cartels can employ all the hackers and torture all the bloggers they want but it will still be very hard to find sellers on SilkRoad. You will need to break Tor, trace BitCoins, trace deliveries, or trick sellers. This takes national or even international resources (NSA, FBI, Interpol, etc.). And they will have to do this in the US and Europe not Mexico.

>You will need to break Tor, trace BitCoins, trace deliveries, or trick sellers.

These aren't all of equivalent difficulty...

>it will still be very hard to find sellers on SilkRoad.

Apparently not hard enough. It is being done in Europe already.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Six-More-Silk-Road-Drug-Deale...

They would be fighting a losing war (ironically, like the drug wars itself). Tracking down random silk road sellers is not really that easy.

Why would mom and pop want to base out of Mexico?