Underneath what we see in our daily browsing – our emails, Facebook, people’s banal commentary on Twitter – is something called the dark web. It’s like looking under the hood of a car – a mind bogglingly immense and completely unseen part of the Internet that is mostly made up of lines of HTML code. Within these lines of code is a space called the dark net, inhabited by various users who wish to exist on the Internet anonymously. It’s only able to be accessed using specific software, such as Tor, which also serves to defend the user from having their web traffic analysed. In short, when you are on the dark net, nobody knows that you’re there.
The dark net was also the home of Silk Road, the notorious online drug marketplace that was used by an estimated 960,000 people. Users could simply buy goods, such as heroin or MDMA, or anything else, using the digital currency bitcoin, and have the drugs mailed to them. It was a community based website, unofficially administered by the user Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR). In 2013, Silk Road ground to a halt when Ross William Ulbricht, a then 29-year-old entrepreneur, was arrested and accused of being DPR. It’s this vast tangled web of secrecy, and Ulbricht’s subsequent trial and conviction that is examined in Alex Winter’s documentary Deep Web.
Narrated by Keanu Reeves, a friend of Winter’s, Deep Web is unexpectedly chilling. Winter fastidiously combs through the facts, from the creation of Silk Road, the identity of user DPR (specifically, the idea that there were more than one DPR), to the way the trial was conducted. It’s the trial, and the actions of the prosecution, that is particularly disturbing. For one, and this is explored at length in Deep Web, the explanation that was given as to how the government agents accessed the Silk Road servers was highly questionable. It’s of great importance to the case, because if the servers were accessed illegally (i.e. through hacking), it would violate Ulbricht’s fourth amendment rights – which prohibits unlawful seizures and searches, and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned. How they got ahold of the servers – which gave them the information they needed to pursue and arrest Ulbricht – was worryingly suspect. They claimed to have accessed them through a Captcha code on the Tor software – which is renowned for being unbreakable. An expert interviewed by Winter claimed that this was obviously “playing fast and loose with the truth.”
It’s this, coupled with the defense team being hamstrung in their efforts (they weren’t allowed to produce their own expert witnesses, they couldn’t use the line of questioning that they wanted, evidence was suppressed and then given only 7 days out from the start of trial) that highlights the potentially devastating implications of this case becoming the legal precedent.
Winter is a rusted on documentarian, given ample opportunity for both sides to speak about the case, notably including Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn – who has since turned into an online privacy activist – and members of the prosecution. It’s a good balance, and even when the apparent injustice is laid bare, Deep Web doesn’t feels like propaganda. The narrative is compelling enough without Winter laying anything on, and by the end, Deep Web feels like a gut punch.
Review Score: FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Running Time: 86 minutes
Ross Ulbricht is due to be sentenced at the end of May. Deep Web screened as part of the 2015 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, on Sunday. There will be an additional screening on Wednesday at the Stateside Theatre at 11:00am. Head to sxsw.com/film for more details.
———-
