Internet experts will be surprised to learn that so-called dark web is not without police surveillance. The NSA is there. Interpol is there. As are the British authorities. To wit this story via theregister.co.uk: “A “Walter Mitty” IT manager from Milton Keynes who bought a gun on the dark web has pleaded guilty to firearms offences. Darren Hillyer, 38, posed as a woman supposedly wanting revenge on a paedophile ex-lover. He bought a Ruger LC9 9mm pistol and 50 rounds of ammunition from a dark web “gun trader”. In reality . . .
the seller account was under the control of officers from the National Crime Agency who forwarded a plastic replica gun hidden inside a DAB radio.
Hillyer had arranged to receive the “gun” through a middleman, a 47 year old he had come to know through an online chat forum but had never met in person. Ian MacPhee, from Newton Abbot, Devon, was arrested when he picked up the parcel from a local post office in late July. MacPhee had agreed to forward the package to Hillyer.
After tracing the forwarding address, police arrested Hillyer later that afternoon at an insolvency company in Euston, London, where he worked as an IT manager.
Hillyer, who “purchased” a Ruger LC9, is going away now. Just like gun rights have in The Land of Hope and Glory. Meanwhile,”real” UK gun crime continues.
[h/t DT]