Deep Web

It's no longer the era of industry.

We're in a technological era, fundamentally.

The fascists, they have the resources.

But we have imagination.

We are making the tools to take back our sovereignty.

When we make a giant "fuck you" to the system, it's breaking that stranglehold

on the tools of power that's used against us.

The fascists always use the narrative of,

"We are the white knights in shining armor protecting against the threats.

We come here and we move out the dark with pure whiteness."

That's a false narrative,

because there is corruption in those castles.

The real base of power lies with us.

We are the darkness.

A trial, which potentially, could have very far-reaching implications

has just started in New York City.

A jury will decide a case that could impact the future of Internet privacy.

Thousands of drugs came through the black website called "Silk Road."

The government overstepped their boundaries to acquire the info they claim they have.

This is not going away.

This is gonna be the biggest takedown of what is currently in existence.

On January 13, 2015,

a criminal trial began for the accused leader of the Silk Road,

a black market in an area of the Internet known as "the deep web."

The deep web is vast,

thousands of times larger than the visible Internet,

what's called the "surface web."

But the deep web is not a place.

It simply accounts for all of the unindexed content online...

banking data, administrative code for governments,

corporations and universities.

It's like looking under the hood of the Internet.

Over time, the deep web became inhabited by people of all types

who wanted to use this terrain for privacy.

This hidden area of the deep web is called the "dark net"

and it's accessible with a software service called "Tor,"

originally developed by the US military and now open source and publicly funded.

And while law enforcement and the media have painted a picture that Tor and the dark net

are nefarious tools for criminals,

it's important to understand that they are largely used for good

by government agencies, journalists and dissidents around the world.

In the summer of 2011,

an ad for the Silk Road appeared on the dark net.

The Silk Road was an underground exchange for any type of goods,

but mostly it was used for drugs.

There have always been drug markets online,

but none with the scale, sophistication and ease of use as the Silk Road.

It would not remain underground for long.

Hundreds of thousands of users use the impossible-to-trace website

which sells drugs, forged documents and even hit men.

It's called the Silk Road.

Just look at some of the 13,000 items offered through that underground site.

Ultra clean cocaine, clean and real LSD,

high grade MDMA, also known as "Molly"...

all with fast and free shipping.

It generated roughly $1.2 billion in sales

with nearly 960,000 users, both buyers and sellers,

in the US and more than a dozen other countries worldwide.

YouTube videos like this one with 15,000 views

tell anyone how to download an untraceable technology known as Tor

that pulls data from thousands of computers worldwide

to create this wide open marketplace.

This hidden Internet is underpinned by a virtual currency called "Bitcoin."

Bitcoins offer anonymized transactions,

which can be almost impossible for the police to trace.

Heroin, opium, cannabis, ecstasy, psychedelics, stimulants...

opioids. And here they are.

So, oxycodone, all of those.

Codeine, black tar heroin. You name it, they have it.

They're all listed in the light of day. It's unbelievable.

The Silk Road's success was largely due to an innovative combination

of Tor and Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a technology that uses cryptographic code to create digital currency.

The sender transmits their Bitcoin code through a ledger called the "block chain"

to arrive at the recipient.

Bitcoin is not perfectly anonymous.

But if used carefully, it facilitates online purchases without revealing identity.

Bitcoin was an ideal currency for the Silk Road,

because it allows for anonymity

and is outside the control of banks and governments.

I really became aware of the Silk Road when Adrian Chen at Gawker,

did his profile.

I think in a way, that story, as much as it documented the Silk Road,

it created the Silk Road, too. I mean... it drove so many people to the site.

I think it probably was an order of magnitude increase in users on the Silk Road.

So from that point on, I felt like I had missed the story

and I wanted the next big story on the Silk Road.

But I was also just fascinated with the community that was...

you know, being created there.

eBay doesn't have that kind of user community.

This was like a really tight-knit movement of people.

It was a fascinating thing just to lurk around in.

It's a certifiable, one-stop shop for illegal drugs

that represents the most brazen attempt

to peddle drugs online that we have ever seen.

It's more brazen than anything else by light-years.

I mean, they had a really big, you know, target on their back.

And they even had been taunting, to some extent, law enforcement

and, you know, the powers that be by doing this in the open.

And that's actually part of what this marketplace is all about.

It's not so much about selling drugs as much as it is to say...

to make a political statement of sorts, right?

"This shouldn't be prohibited. We're free to do what we want

and we have the technology to do it. So there."

The news around the Silk Road came almost entirely

from law enforcement and government officials

with little insight from those who were behind the market itself.

So the core architects and vendors of the Silk Road were sought out

using encryption keys to verify their identities and preserving their anonymity.

This is the first time they have spoken publicly.

[The Silk Road forums were a better community than I've ever seen in real life.]

[There were many threads that had great political and philosophical discussions.]

[but this was a real community of like minded people.]

The Silk Road didn't appear to have a single leader.

There were the regular posts from the systems administrator,

but otherwise the service appeared to be primarily community-run.

Then on February 5, 2012,

after a highly successful first year of business,

the Silk Road administrator made an announcement...

[I need an identity separate from the site,]

[and the enterprise of which I am only a part.]

- You're the Dread Pirate Roberts, admit it. - With pride.

The Dread Pirate Roberts was cribbed from the mythical character

from the novel and film "The Princess Bride," and the choice was no accident.

In the original story by William Goldman, the Dread Pirate Roberts

was a nom de guerre handed down from user to user and passed along eternally.

The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either.

The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and I have been Roberts ever since.

I shall retire and hand the name over to someone else.

This Dread Pirate Roberts, or DPR,

would come to spearhead the Silk Road forums

and was generally assumed to be the creator and owner of the site.

The Dread Pirate Roberts to me seemed to be

kind of the most interesting figure in that whole world.

On the Silk Road forums, he was constantly posting these manifestos

and love letters to his users and libertarian philosophical treaties.

And he even had like this... Dread Pirate Roberts book club

where he hosted discussions of Austrian economics

and free market philosophy.

At the same time, nobody knew who he was.

He had never spoken to the press before.

I approached him on the Silk Road forum mid-2012 and...

started kind of just like trying to persuade him to talk,

chipping away at him and just bugging him constantly.

The actual trigger, I think that made him decide to talk

was this competing dark website called "Atlantis."

They were really much more aggressive in their marketing than the Silk Road.

They put out this YouTube video

advertising Atlantis as the new, better dark web drug site.

So when I went back to the Dread Pirate Roberts

and said, "You know, I'm going to do this story.

It can either be about Atlantis or it can be about you,"

I think he realized that, you know, that...

he was a savvy business guy who realized he had to talk at that point.

He did have a kind of political message that he wanted to get out,

and I could see that in what he was posting on the forums.

So I kind of played up to that and I told him like,

"I can be the vessel for you to talk about what the Silk Road really represents,"

and I think that that appealed to him.

So it took eight months, but finally he did agree to an interview.

Of course, he didn't tell me anything about himself...

where he lives, you know, his age, identity,

anything that could be remotely identifying.

"I didn't start the Silk Road. My predecessor did.

"From what I understand it was an original idea to combine Bitcoin and Tor

"to create an anonymous market. Everything was in place.

He just put the pieces together.

"The most I'm willing to reveal is that I am not the first administrator of Silk Road."

He was incredibly secretive, of course,

about the inner workings of the Silk Road and...

you know, his own identity, of course.

I mean he was hunted by every law enforcement agency that you can imagine.

"The management of Silk Road is a collaborative effort.

"It's not just me making sure Silk Road runs smoothly.

"More often than not, the best ideas come from the community itself."

But he did tell me some interesting things about how he viewed himself and...

and the way that the Silk Road works.

"We don't allow the sale of anything that's main purpose is to harm innocent people

"or that it was necessary to harm innocent people to bring to market.

"For example, anything stolen is forbidden.

"Counterfeit money and coupons which are used to defraud people.

"Hit men aren't allowed and neither is child pornography.

No substance on Silk Road falls under those guidelines."

This went beyond just, you know, like legalizing marijuana or even heroin.

He wanted to see a new relationship between individuals and the government,

where the government was... you know, basically hamstrung

and couldn't control what people bought and sold.

"At its core, Silk Road is a way to get around regulation from the state.

"The state tries to control nearly every aspect of our lives. Not just drug use.

"Anywhere they do that, there's an opportunity to live your life as you see fit,

despite their efforts."

I shouldn't generally say this kind of thing, but I really liked the Dread Pirate Roberts

that I interviewed. I thought he was, you know...

a really super-interesting guy with a really coherent philosophy.

He came across to me as this kind of middle-aged, wise man figure, you know?

But not everyone on Silk Road believed in libertarian philosophy.

Bringing an end to the drug war was the agenda that truly united the community.

[A huge reason why DPR put the website up,]

[and allowed the market to begin with, and took the risk]

[was because... needed to be a violence reduction]