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Comment by bahjoite | Hacker News Reader

I visited Hansa a few days ago and the first thing I noticed was a banner that read something like:-

"New registrations are disabled because of high demand caused by the exodus from AlphaBay"

>This involved taking covert control of Hansa under Dutch judicial authority a month ago, which allowed Dutch police to monitor the activity of users without their knowledge, and then shutting down AlphaBay during the same period. It meant the Dutch police could identify and disrupt the regular criminal activity on Hansa but then also sweep up all those new users displaced from AlphaBay who were looking for a new trading platform. In fact they flocked to Hansa in their droves, with an eight-fold increase in the number of new members of Hansa recorded immediately following the shutdown of AlphaBay.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/massive-blow-to-...

So the banner must have been placed there after the server was seized. Keeping the server running long enough to gather evidence of the actions of their high-value targets was probably a higher priority than sweeping-up as many customers as possible.

Possibly there are laws related to entrapment? Allowing new user signups on a police controlled website might cross the line, where allowing existing users to finish their deals might not?

That's not how entrapment works.

Entrapment requires the cops to push someone into doing something they wouldn't otherwise have done.

Cops buying drugs from a dealer isn't entrapment, but repeatedly begging someone to sell you some drugs after they initially say no would be.

If the police operates the server, I'm pretty sure they would be reluctant to accept new users as it might be illegal. The law in Europe is not as in US and although I'm not certain here, it's generally much more strict in regards to entrapment in most countries.

I'd imagine sting operations are permitted in Europe, and that's all this would've been.

Simply being a registered user does not necessarily make you a criminal.

An interesting situation where they probably were close to hitting some sort of load capacity, but didn't want to spin up new servers/instances and run the risk of making a mistake and tipping off people using the site.

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