Deep Web Page #2

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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, uh,

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, uh,

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... 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... 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...

he didn't tell me anything

about himself... where he lives,

you know, his age, identity,

uh, 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 like

some interesting things

about how he viewed

himself and his... 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... 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 guess 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, uh,

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.

I could see that the Silk Road wasn't

just another cyber-criminal scheme.

This was a guy who saw himself

as the leader of a movement.

"One thing I've learned playing Dread

Pirate Roberts is that your actions

"are sure to please some

and infuriate others.

"But we can't stay silent forever.

"We have an important message.

"And the time is ripe for

the world to hear it.

"What we're doing isn't about scoring

drugs or sticking it to the man.

"It's about standing up for

our rights as human beings

"and refusing to submit when

we've done no wrong.

"Silk Road is a vehicle for that message.

All else is secondary. "

The Silk Road functioned because

the Dread Pirate Roberts was trusted.

At any point, he could have

shut down the Silk Road

and run away with

everyone's Bitcoins.

We've seen that happen with a

bunch of other dark web businesses.

And I think people believed that

he wouldn't because they felt

that he was a true believer

in this kind of radically

Libertarian, crypto-anarchic

philosophy that, you know,

goes back to the cypherpunks

of the 1990s.

Twenty-five years ago,

in the Bay Area,

a burgeoning group of mathematicians,

crypto-anarchists and hackers

began to meet in

each other's homes.

This tight-knit group came to be casually

known as the "cypherpunks. "

These original members were

not socially motivated,

but more concerned with the hard

math of cryptographic technology

and the broader philosophy

of anonymity,

- individual liberty and privacy.

- The government has this clear policy of

access to all plain text, meaning whatever

you're saying, they want access to.

If it's stored on your hard disk,

they want access to it.

If it so goes over the wire,

they want access to it.

If you are proxying speech for someone else,

they wanna know who it is.

The cypherpunks

were instrumental

in the growing movement towards

privacy and anonymity online.

And they would pioneer the way into

the hidden corners of the internet.

Maybe the big turning point

for the cypherpunks,

I think, was WikiLeaks

and Julian Assange

and Jacob Appelbaum's idea of

what it means to be a cypherpunk.

You cannot trust a government

to implement the policies

that it says that

it's implementing.

And so we must provide

the underlying tools,

secret cryptographic codes that

the government couldn't spy on

to everyone as a sort

of use of force.

And a government no matter how hard

it tries, if the cyphers are good,

uh, cannot break into your

communications directly.

Force of authority is

derived from violence.

One must acknowledge

with cryptography,

- no amount of violence will ever

solve a math problem. - Exactly.

And this is the important key.

It doesn't mean you can't be tortured.

It doesn't mean that they can't try to bug

your house or subvert it in some way,

but it means if they find

an encrypted message

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