It is also a story of divided governments, whistleblowers and liberty. At a time when we assume that everything can and should be known, the story of Tor, how it came to be and how it continues, contains more than dread pirates, drugs and child porn. The controversy over the deep web and the corner of it known as the “dark web” – a hidden, encrypted layer of the internet where Silk Road and others operate – shines a light on the ongoing battle for privacy at the dawn of the internet age. Silk Road 2 and its fellow hydras exist on the “deep web” – communications and sites not indexed by search engines and run using anonymising browsers and software, the most well known of which is The Onion Router, or Tor. The data coming through a Tor exit node could be from a persecuted Iranian dissident or a Texan running a drug empire. But even before that newer, “better” Silk Roads were appearing – Atlantis opened with all the trappings of a normal internet start-up, right down to a twee, clean-cut YouTube video featuring a dude named Charlie who just needed a blunt. Within days of Ulbricht’s arrest, Silk Road 2 had popped up. “It’s a privileged argument and it’s an argument made by one of the privileged.” “No drug dealer from the Bronx has ever made this argument to the court,” she told Ulbricht.

The judge handed down five sentences: five years, 15 years, 20 years, and two for life, with no chance of parole. I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path.”

What it turned into was, in part, a convenient way for people to satisfy their drug addictions.”Īt his sentencing, he told the court: “I never wanted that to happen. In his pre-sentencing letter, Ulbricht wrote that “Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit. More than 100,000 users traded more than $200 million in drugs and contraband on Silk Road until the FBI arrested Ulbricht in October 2013. Ulbricht is a Silicon Valley start-up kid who loves his mum and plays the djembe, but he’s also the Dread Pirate Roberts, founder of the anonymous online market Silk Road, an enterprise that began in libertarian idealism and ended in a mess of six contracted murders but no actual deaths, Mormon drug runners, crooked cops and doublecrosses. Three months ago, a clean-cut former Boy Scout by the name of Ross Ulbricht pleaded for clemency in front of a Manhattan Federal Court.

Deep web onion tor