Deep Web Page #9

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you know, and children,

and, uh, careers.

And so to say that, you know,

we need to step back and liberalize,

well, but you... that's one

approach you can take,

but then you've got to look

at a cause and effect.

If we do this, what are the

second and third order effects?

The FBI,

our federal government,

they're gonna go in and they're

shutting these places down.

But you know what?

New ones just open up.

'Cause there's so much money to be made.

They'll continue to open up,

and it's just a dog

chasing its tail.

We're a team, and we've been working on

this thing together right from the start.

The way it's affected me

is in some ways

very much the same

as it affects Lyn,

but I don't have to go out

there and talk to reporters.

And we've... we've kind

of set it up that way.

It's hard enough having your...

your loved one in prison,

but then the whole media thing is,

it definitely adds pressure.

I've known for a long time that the

media wasn't reporting the whole story,

that it was skewed.

I see what Lyn and I are doing

as a, um, as a pushback to that.

Ross has been in there a year and he's...

he's avoided all violence,

even though it's

been around him.

That has matured him for sure.

The fact that he's come out of this

unscathed so far, uh, speaks volumes.

He seems serious.

You know, there's a lot at stake.

He's, uh, feeling good

that we got the extension.

He had this mountain

of stuff to go through

and I felt like he was

running out the clock.

And now they have that

extra two months has made...

has been "essential"

is the word he used.

And so I think

he feels that, you know,

he's... he's much more

prepared and... and ready.

Yeah, he says he's ready for trial.

He's ready to go in there and win.

I have also matured

in this last year.

Matured in my thinking

about ethics, politics.

When I became more

and more aware of

what the drug war

was doing, the tragedy.

So many people have been

victimized by the drug war.

It's a giant mess and it's

a story that needs telling.

And we... we've got a pulpit,

in a way, to tell it from.

It's so weird to be doing

all this and it's...

it's distracting and it's...

it's challenging

and you wanna do the right thing,

and then it's all about Ross.

And then we go and we see him

and hug him and talk to him

and hold his hand and it's

just like Ross, you know?

It's such a disconnect, and, uh,

it's just so hard to see him in there.

Being in the prison, visiting...

it's a very emotional experience,

because there are all

these families there

and they get to see their

loved one one hour a week.

And so they're soaking

each other up.

And you're in a room

of 150 people,

sitting side-by-side,

tight-packed.

And, uh, there's just all this emotion...

saturating the atmosphere.

The prisoners have

segregated themselves.

But as loved ones coming to

visit, there's no sense of,

uh, segregation, um,

race at all.

We're just 150 people whose

hearts are breaking.

Of all the Snowden disclosures

that have come out to date,

the one that will have

the greatest long-term impact

is the revelation that the NSA

has been subverting

cryptographic standards and

making the internet less secure.

That disclosure, those articles,

have radicalized

a new generation

of cryptographers,

a new generation

of computer scientists

who are now intent upon

building tools and services

that can withstand pervasive

government surveillance.

Did you see our wireless

from Barclay's Bank?

They like Bitcoin, so they're

supporting our work.

They're providing us with

free Wi-Fi from the bank.

In the fall of 2014, as Ross

was preparing for his trial,

a group of hackers,

programmers and activists

met in a squat in

the center of London.

This gathering represented

the next wave of the dark net,

developing new and evolved

cryptographic tools

that would not be

so easily shut down.

Open source is

incredibly powerful.

Open source is responsible for

WikiLeaks, Wikipedia, Linux,

which runs all of our...

our infrastructure, for Firefox,

for Bit Torrent, for Bitcoin,

for all of these,

for encryption, for all of

these real uses of tech,

not the yuppie, uh,

Angry Birds or silly apps that,

that these people,

make, you know?

Open source is also an example

of how we can organize

economically, an example for the future,

to... to build the products we need

without needing proprietary industry,

without needing the points of control,

without needing masters

and slaves and babysitters.

It's not enough to build

privacy-preserving tools.

It's not enough to write

revolutionary research papers

and design amazing

cryptographic primitives.

You have to get them into

the hands of the users.

And I think in the future

what you'll find is that

tools like Tor, tools like OTR,

like PGP, like Bitcoin

will be built into the services

and applications that you use

and you won't know

they're there.

We want to empower the individual,

protect the small guy.

We have a mistrust

of central authority.

We believe in freedom

of information.

First of all, we have the centralized

drug marketplace, Silk Road.

Governments went in

and shut that down.

And then up sprouted dozens of different,

centralized drug markets.

And in a game of whack a mole,

they shut down one and now there's dozens.

And now we're entering the realm

of decentralized drug markets,

with no central operator,

no central point of control.

What are they gonna do?

They're gonna continue to

do these kinds of things,

and even if it's a

distributed network,

peer-to-peer is worked

continuously by the, uh,

state and local law

enforcement agencies.

And they arrest

people every week.

On November 6, 2014, law enforcement

agencies around the world

launched a coordinated effort

called "Operation Onymous,"

seizing hundreds of dark net sites,

including the re-launch of the Silk Road.

Bruce Schneier, the cryptographer,

once said to me,

"You know, in this

cat and mouse game,

the mice will win in the end,

but the cats will be well fed. "

I think that that's

the way to see it.

That, uh, this game is going

to continue forever.

There's a reason the Silk Road was

so powerful. And I... and I know

the cryptos now are writing

the kind of automatic Silk Road,

and Amir helped do this. This is now

the peer-to-peer model where there's

no one individual administrator.

And seeing that as the weak point,

technically speaking, this is all correct.

But there...

there's something kind of...

I don't want to make him

a hero, like a...

I don't want to say

that he's a hero.

But you know, DPR recognized

what was at stake

and he was willing to do

the things that most of

the Libertarians

weren't willing to do,

because he was serious about,

I think what the Silk Road meant.

Three weeks before the trial,

the issue of the Murders-

For-Hire suddenly resurfaced.

The prosecution announced that

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