ANTHONY HOUSE: Hi, everyone.
Thanks for coming.
For those of you who don't know
me, my name is Anthony House,
and I'm from your friendly
Public Policy and Government
Relations team.
We sit right over there
on the ninth floor.
I think we all have
heard of the Dark Net,
whether that's
technologies like Tor that
are used by activists or
for less savory purposes.
Whether that's the Silk
Road or other online
marketplaces where
you can buy or sell
illegal goods or services.
Whether that's the
Fappening, which
is what I'm told
that the large scale
publication of naked celebrity
photos is now being called.
I think it's important
for us to remember
that this can affect
Google and our users.
Just today out of
Russia, there was news
that several million email
accounts and passwords were
published online,
and our security team
is hard at work
understanding how
that affects the people
who use our services.
It is therefore
a pleasure for me
to introduce Jamie
Bartlett from Demos who's
just written a book
on the Dark Net which
was published last month.
He's going to give us
some of his thoughts,
and he's promised to
leave plenty of time
at the end for questions.
Please use the
microphone there so
that the video gets
your audio feed.
And so without further
ado, please join me
in welcoming Jamie.
[APPLAUSE]
JAMIE BARTLETT:
Well, thanks so much.
Thanks so much for
having me, everybody.
So this was the plan.
I'm going to tell
you roughly why
I wrote the book and
roughly how I did the book.
I went about doing the research.
And then I'm just going
to say four things.
Four themes that came out
for me that aren't really
stated in the book
itself, but things
that I learned as I
went on this journey.
And I will leave enough
time for questions.
I reckon I'll only be speaking
for about 25 minutes or so,
so there should be plenty.
So the book itself.
Over the last five
years, but especially
over the last
couple of years, it
will be no surprise
to any of you
that we keeping little
glimpses of people
doing bad stuff online.
More than a glimpse, actually.
Increasingly it seems
like an avalanche.
Whether that's child abuse
images, people buying drugs
from the Silk Road, everyone
seems to be a troll nowadays.
By the way-- is
this being filmed?
Is this going to be made public?
I'll say it anyway.
We were trolled by Mary
Beard recently at Demos
because we'd incorrectly
used a poor Latin translation
of our Demos pamphlet.
Vox digitas.
It should've been Vox digitalis
or some derivation on that.
And so she started sending
us angry Twitter messages
about it.
So everyone suddenly a troll.
2% of British adults say
that they have actually
insulted a complete
stranger online, which
means at least one of you in
here has probably done that.
And would make two million
people in the UK as a whole.
So we keep getting these
little flashes of communities
and cultures somewhere
underneath the surface of what
we think to be the internet
we all know and love.
But the thing that always
frustrated me about this
was that you never got
more than just a glimpse.
And you never really
learned about the people
that were in these
communities and cultures.
You'd just see a tabloid
scare story about it.
And you'd never really
understand where it came from
and why people were doing it
and what was really happening.
So I set myself the
following challenge.
That I would spend a year
in some of the internet's
darkest, most shocking--
seemingly shocking--
subcultures.
And I would try to meet the
people that inhabited them.
And the result was
"The Dark Net."
Now for me, "The Dark
Net"-- when I came up
with this title over
year ago, the Dark Net
wasn't the thing that everybody
was talking about, meaning
Tor hidden services and this
encrypted part of the net
that you can only
access using Tor.
For me, I called it the
Dark Net because I thought
it was this obscure set of
cultures and communities
that hadn't really
been explored and where
the darker shades of human
nature were on display.
That, for me, was the Dark Net.
Now part of the book is
indeed about what we now
call the Dark Net, these
Tor hidden services.
And I'll talk about
those in a second.
But just as much
of it was password
protected Facebook
groups, Twitter accounts,
pro-anorexia sites and forums.
Any part of the
internet, really,
where people use their
perceived or real anonymity
or pseudonymity to
stretch, I suppose,
the limits of human
freedom and expression
to some of those darker places.
And so over the
course of a year,
I became a moderator
of a trolling group.
I can't tell you where it was.
And I met a handful of
pretty extreme trolls.
I spent loads of time with
neo-Nazis in pubs up and down
the country who use Twitter
and Facebook in particular
to spread their propaganda
and their message.
I was off to a squat in
Barcelona with Amir Takki,
if any of you know him,
creator of the Darkwallet,
an application for bitcoin
that makes it a little bit more
anonymous.
A little bit harder
to trace and track.
A little bit more of
a frustrating thing
for governments to
have to deal with.
Favorite bit, I went to a
live cam show of three women
performing sexually
explicit acts together
on the screen for thousands
of paying customers.
I actually ended up getting
pulled into the show myself.
Don't try and find that.
You might if you
look hard enough.
And I bought drugs off the
Silk Road, naturally enough.
Went into pro-anorexia and
pro-suicide forums and sites.
And in each case,
tried to look at it
as objectively as
I possibly could.
To stand back and not judge.
This is not a
polemical book at all.
It's a series of portraits to
hopefully get people thinking
and to get people a little
bit more au fait with what's
going on in these places.
And overall, what I find--
in fact, what you always
find when you look at
something more closely--
it's never quite as black
and white as you imagine.
I went in there expecting
to be shocked and appalled,
and I came out very confused.
Moral ambiguity is
probably the single line
I use most in this book.
So that's what the book was.
That's how I went
about doing it.
And I'll leave
time for questions
if you want any of the
more specific details.
And I want to talk
about four things.
Innovation and how creative and
innovative these places are.
This moral ambiguity point.
The empathy that I felt
meeting people that I thought
I would detest, and then
meeting them in real life
and finding actually
I didn't detest them
quite as much as I expected.
And normalization
and how certain
behaviors come to be and
feel to be extraordinarily
normal and ordinary if
you surround yourself
with them for long enough.
So there are the four themes.
Let me have a swig of
water before I get going.
OK.
So let's start with the
creativity of these sites.
Has anyone ever been
on the Silk Road?
No one ever puts their
hands up to that question.
But I know some of
you probably have.
So-- there's a hand.
So the Silk Road, as I'm
sure you're aware-- well,
it's actually now Silk Road
2.0 since the original got
shut down in November or
late October last year--
is an online marketplace
where anything and everything
with a couple of tiny exceptions
like personal identification
and child pornography
and now weapons,
is available to buy and sell.
This is only accessible
with a Tor browser.
It's a Tor hidden service,
and that essentially
means the servers are
very hard to locate.
And anyone using it uses
various types of encryption
which makes them
very hard to locate.
And essentially you can buy
and sell drugs remarkably easy
on that site.
Now everybody thinks
about the Silk Road
as being driven by
encryption systems.
You have to use bitcoin,
the crypto currency,
to buy your products.
You need Tor to be
able to access it.
Actually you can
do it without Tor,
but it's a very bad
idea, because you
can be traced if you do that.
You communicate using
pretty good encryption,
PGP encryption.
And people think
that's the secret.
That's the trick
of the Silk Road.
But that's not the secret
of the Silk Road at all.
And in my chapter, I bought
a very, very small amount
of marijuana.
Just a gram or
something like that.
The reason people
use the Silk Road
is because it has introduced a
genuine market in an industry
which has been
traditionally dominated
by cartels and monopolies.
So if you go and buy
drugs on the street,
your choice is limited to
whatever dealer you know
and whatever products
they happen to have.
You have no real comeback
mechanism on that.
You have no real choice if you
don't like what you're getting.
And as a result, you
the consumer, suffers.
You go to the Silk
Road, you have a choice
of between around a thousand
vendors, all of whom
are competing for your custom.
All of whom you can
communicate with and talk to.
All of whom are
rated out of five
for the quality of the
products that they've given you
and how good their
customer service was.
How attentive they were.
How good the postage
and delivery was.
And you know,
guess what happens?
What a surprise.
They are unbelievably attentive,
helpful, and completely focused
on making sure you, the
consumer, are content.
Because if you're
not, you're going
to give them a bad review.
And everything in this anonymous
world depends on reputation.
And so they work bloody
hard to make sure
they have a good reputation.
So I emailed one.
Drugs Heaven.
Dear Sir, I'm new to this site.
I only want to buy a
small amount of marijuana.
Could you please advise?
Drugs Heaven had an unbelievably
wide array of products.
Replied within
three or four hours.
Dear Sir, thank you
so much your inquiry.
I completely agree.
As a new vendor, I
too would probably
start with a small amount.
Perhaps you'd like to
try x, y, and z product.
This is really highly
recommended by my other users.
I do hope we can do
business together.
It would be a pleasure.
Any more questions,
please let me know.
Best wishes.
Drugs Heaven.
[LAUGHTER]
Product arrived three
or four days later.
My friends tell me
it was very good.
So I gave a review.
And that's how it works.
And you know what, thought?
And this will lead me
onto my second point
about moral ambiguity.
Think about it for a second.
If you are ingesting
drugs, you need
to know the purity of the
drugs that you're getting.
You need to have
a system to know
that it's not being
laced with anthrax.
14 people died of heroin
being laced with anthrax
a couple of years
ago in Glasgow.
That doesn't really
happen on the Silk Road,
because the vendors are so
worried about their reputation.
You need to know how pure
your drug is, because you need
to be able to predict how your
body's going to react to that.
And on the Silk Road,
there is a remarkable array
of consumer led feedback
on every single product.
How strong is it.
How should you mix it.
What should you do it.
What's the best way of
responding if things go wrong.
This is a remarkably
innovative system,
but incredibly familiar to
anybody that's been on Amazon
or eBay.
But one that you would not
expect to find in this place.
And they have an
incredible array
of ways in which people
can mask their identity.
The great difficulty
on somewhere
like the Silk Road is, of
course, everything you're doing
is completely illegal.
So you can't phone up the
police-- and some people
have done this--
phone up the police
and complain about the fact
that their drugs weren't
quite good enough.
You're going to get
in trouble for that.
And the problem is, of course,
drugs dealers on the whole
tend to be not very reliable.
And they can run
off with your money.
They can run off
with your bitcoin.
Or the police can raid the
Silk Road, shut it down,
and all of your bitcoins vanish.
So what have they done?
They've created something
called multi-signature escrow.
It's a bit laborious.
But it's a bit like
a payment system
where you need all three keys
to turn to open the lock.
So the vendor needs to put
his digital signature in.
The seller does when he
or she receives the goods.
The site needs to
when they think
that the transaction's
been completed.
And at that point, the money's
transferred over from the buyer
to the seller, and
everybody's happy.
And if something goes wrong, the
money goes back to the buyer.
And this was an innovation
that the community developed
within about three months of the
original Silk Road going down,
because people thought that
the payment mechanism was
too centralized.
And it was not to be trusted.
We need to decentralize how
payments work so that everyone
involved in the transaction
has to sign it off.
The Silk Road is
remarkably innovative.
And it has to be.
It has to be.
Creativity, innovation, the
mother of all necessity.
Right on the edge.
And they have to work
out ways of operating
in a uniquely
hostile environment.
That's point one.
Innovation.
The second.
And I felt it in the Silk Road.
This moral ambiguity.
Going into these
places and thinking,
I knew what was wrong here and
I knew what I'd think about it.
And then coming out
being not quite so sure.
Now the hardest
chapter I had to write
was about suicide forums
and pro-anorexia forums.
So these are the
places that encourage
people to view
those mental health
conditions-- and
anorexia is actually
one of the most dangerous
mental health conditions
that there is-- as something
of a lifestyle choice.
A culture.
Something to be embraced.
Something to be encouraged.
This was the most difficult.
Of all the chapters, it was
the hardest one to write.
It was really distressing
to go into these forums.
We're often talking about
very young teenage girls who
are extremely depressed, are
starving themselves of food,
and suffering
greatly as a result.
And it's a very similar
picture on the suicide forums.
And actually just today--
I don't know if any of you
saw this-- but just today,
William Melchert-Dinkel
was convicted in
the Supreme Court
for having encouraged
somebody and assisted them
in committing suicide through--
it's a usenet group called ASH,
Alt Suicide Holiday,
where people go
and openly talk about methods
for committing suicide.
And what this guy did,
under a pseudonym,
was to pretend that he,
too, was extremely suicidal.
And would encourage other people
that were in the forum with him
to create a suicide pact.
People that commit
suicide often feel
they need someone to
commit suicide with.
He would create a pact with
someone and say, you go first,
and I'll watch on the
webcam, and then I'll do it.
And, of course, he never did it.
He was pretending to be
a 30-year-old nurse, when
in fact he was a 50-year-old
middle aged married man.
And he was convicted,
again-- it was overturned.
It was overturned in the
Supreme Court yesterday.
So it's extremely
depressing and difficult.
But here's the thing about
those suicide forums.
I met a number of people
who credit those suicide
forums for saving their lives.
Because it was the
only place they
felt they could go and speak
with people who understood
them, that were going
through the same thing
as they were going through
and wouldn't be judgmental.
It was something of a
release, the opportunity
to be able to just
share-- almost
expel some of your fantasies
about committing suicide.
Suicidal ideation is
where people often
have these fantasies
about committing suicide.
And just being able to talk
about that with people that
wouldn't judge you or demand
that you go and see a shrink
or demand that you go and
tell your family immediately
how you're feeling, was
incredibly relieving.
And I met people that have been
using these forums for years
and years and years.
Now all of us-- most of
us, rather-- whenever
we're feeling
unwell, we go online.
I mean, I've done it.
I recently had ACL
surgery on my knee.
It's why I'm sort
of limping around.
And I just-- your
GP's not open all day.
And you're late at
night, terrified.
This feels really weird.
What's going on?
And you go for every bit of
information, you go online.
And you try and
find other people
and get advice from them, see
what they've gone through.
If anyone's done that-- and I'm
sure a lot of you have-- it's
actually terrifying.
There's been quite
a lot of research
on Dr. Google and the
way that certain types--
if you put in chest pain, I
think something like heart
attacks comes up higher in
the ranking than indigestion,
or whatever it is.
But that's where people go now.
And people who are lonely
and who are depressed,
to be able to find other people
like them, for some of them
it's incredibly,
incredibly helpful.
And for others, they might
meet a William Melchert-Dinkel
who will try and push
them over the edge
and encourage them
to commit suicide.
And I came out of
that thinking, well.
I'm not really sure anymore.
I assumed I'd just want
these things shut down.
Now I think, I don't
think I do want
these suicide forums shut down.
I think I'd rather
they were moderated.
I think I'd rather there were
people, professionals in them.
Where people could go
anonymously and talk
about it and a
professional-- someone
from the Samaritans, whatever--
would be in there moderating
the conversation and
discussion to make sure
it didn't get out of hand.
But to allow people to have
the opportunity to speak.
Third thing.
Empathy.
So very first person I
met writing this book
was a really virulent,
angry, radical neo-Nazi
who I call Paul.
He spends 95% percent of his
time, he tells me online.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
blogging about white pride.
And about how we need
to restore Britain
to its original entirely
white population.
Get rid of all the immigrants.
Get rid of all the newcomers.
He's angry and he's frustrated
and he's extraordinarily nasty
and mean online.
So I went to meet him.
After a lot of negotiating.
I'd met him online.
And I went up to
the small town--
he lives up north-- to meet him.
I didn't know what to expect.
I had no idea what
he looks like.
He never shares any
pictures of himself.
And this guy comes up to me.
Handsome guy.
Tattoos.
Spiky hair.
And he's like, you're Jamie
Bartlett off the television.
I can't believe
you've actually come.
I'm so pleased to meet you.
And it was him.
It was Paul.
He was-- it's quite hard to
say, but I really liked him.
I really liked him.
I felt so sorry for him.
Every time we talked
about anything
that wasn't to do with
immigration and race,
we got on very,
very well indeed.
We had a great laugh talking
about football teams and this
and that.
Really got on well with him.
And then the minute I saw him
again online, it broke down.
And he started being angry
and vicious and frustrated
and annoyed about everything.
And obviously, it's
extremely difficult
to work out precisely
what's going on in his head
and why he's doing that.
But I think what's happened
to him in particular--
and it's happening to a lot
of people-- he started off
with no real interest
in far right politics.
But nothing was going
on in his life at all.
And I really felt sorry for him
as we walked around his town.
And he said how he'd love
to get involved in politics.
He'd love to move
to a bigger city.
He left school at 16.
He's got no
qualifications whatsoever.
We both knew it was
never going to happen.
But he has created
an identity online
that is far more exciting,
far more meaningful,
than anything he does offline.
He has thousands of people
that listen to his stuff.
He's almost boxed himself in,
because his identity online is
the source of so much
self-gratification and meaning
in his life, that
he's stuck doing that.
He can't break out
of it, because he
has to carry on with
that type of behavior
and that language to
keep his fans happy.
To keep the people that
listen to him happy.
And so he's a bit trapped in
an online identity entirely
of his own making.
And he got there gradually.
He started off
being mildly racist.
Let's put it like that.
Then he would have interactions
with Muslims, in particular,
on Facebook walls.
Where if anyone's been on
a hostile Facebook wall
where things are
going to and fro,
it really gets quite nasty
quite quickly, doesn't it?
And it degenerates
a bit like a comment
is free comment section.
The law of Nazi analogies, that
a longer conversation goes on,
the probability that
one person refers
to the other as a
Nazi approaches one.
Which, ironically in this
case, is actually true.
In the case of Paul.
But each side created demons
and enemies of each other.
This one sided, one dimensional
version of themselves
that would constantly clash and
just harden each other's views
in this strange echo chamber, to
the point where Paul has become
an extremely committed neo-Nazi.
But here's the strangest
thing about it.
He told me one story and
it really sticks with me.
He lives on his own.
Doesn't really have much
going on, as I've said.
One day-- it's a
very small town--
one day about a year or so ago,
some supporters of the English
Defence League-- you guys know
the English Defense League,
EDL guys who [INAUDIBLE]--
they're hard to pin down,
exactly.
They're an interesting
group, because they
started on Facebook and then
went into the real world
after that.
He started as a member of
the English Defence League.
That's how he got into
politics, through Facebook.
He wasn't interested.
A friend of his liked a Facebook
page, and then he liked it too.
And that's how he was
drawn into this movement.
Now he never, ever
saw or met anyone
in his town that had
similar views to him.
And then one day, he was going
down to the petrol station
at the end of his road,
and three lads with EDL
hoodies on walked
past chanting EDL.
And I said to him, Paul.
Well that's sort of great.
I mean, in a way.
You could make some friends,
people-- he's like, yeah.
Yeah, I thought it
was really nice.
It was really nice to see
some fellow EDL people.
I was like, oh, cool.
Did you speak to them?
No.
Why didn't you speak to them?
He's like, well, I didn't
really know what to say.
So he just walked past,
went back home, logged on,
and then carried on
his online blitz.
He didn't want to speak
to the offline people,
because who is he offline?
The real world Paul
isn't really anything.
These guys wouldn't know him.
The digital Paul, the angry,
violent, virulent neo-Nazi,
he has a following.
He has meaning.
So he much preferred
to leave these guys,
walk home, and log back on.
And the final one.
Normalization.
This is a bit of a
personal story as well.
Because over the
course of a year,
something that I
discovered-- and many of you
have probably
experienced it, too--
is these with which--
if you surround yourself
with the same images
and the same ideas,
it very quickly
stops being shocking.
When I first got one
4chan for this book
and on the random
B board of 4chan,
I could not believe
what I was seeing.
I'm quite easily shocked.
Couldn't believe
what I was seeing.
Next day, didn't seem like
a big deal whatsoever.
Couple of days later, seemed
pretty boring actually.
Rather go and find something a
bit more radical and extreme,
if you don't mind.
4chan's pretty dull these days.
And that's something
that you see
repeated over and over again.
And that is a very
good evolutionary trait
for human beings to
have, by the way.
But it can lead you into
some very, very dark places.
And I'll give you the
most distressing story
of all, which is of Michael.
Man in his 50s, convicted
for the possession
of 3,000 indecent
images of children.
Again, similar to Paul.
In some ways, very nice
man on a personal level.
But this was his story.
And it is actually supported
by a lot of research
in this subject.
He started off
watching pornography,
watching teen pornography.
Now teenage pornography--
that being anything
over the age of 18, technically,
because anything below that
is classed as child
pornography or child abuse
images-- is by far the
most popular voluminous
and commonly searched for
category of pornography.
Teen pornography.
Which is slightly
worrying, isn't it?
And there is an
enormous gray area
of what's called jail bait
pornography, which is anywhere
between about 14 and 18.
But it's very difficult for
the Internet Watch Foundation
or anybody else to be
sure about people's age,
with people changing
how they look.
And there is so much
of that online as well
and it's incredibly
difficult to police.
And I know some-- I know the
work that Google was been doing
on this subject and the money
that you gave to the Internet
Watch Foundation
partly as a result.
Now for Michael,
what happened here--
and it is a story I
heard repeatedly--
was that's where he started.
A few weeks later, he was
getting rather bored of this.
Shifted into jail
bait pornography.
After that, wanted
another taboo.
Went down a couple of years.
Another taboo needed to
be found and breached.
Went down again.
Two or three years later, barely
with him-- and I believe him--
barely with him
realizing it, he'd
suddenly wound up watching
pornography of children
under the age of 10.
Hardly realizing
how he'd got there.
And barely understanding himself
how he'd ended up where he had.
And to, me this is the
story of that normalization
and how that can happen.
And I saw it happen
with me on 4chan,
also on the pro-anorexia sites.
How in the beginning,
I found them
so distressing and terrible.
Pictures of emaciated bodies.
By the way, this book is
quite distressing to read.
I should warn you now.
I hope it's
interesting, but there
are bits of it that
are hard to read.
But that's really
why I wrote it.
I wanted people to
be slightly shocked.
Started off being very shocked
by the emaciated bodies.
But then again, very
soon afterwards,
I was more interested in,
well, which bits are emaciated?
That's an interesting pose.
And she's really
featured on her knees.
And you start looking at these
images in a very different way
to how you started.
And that's the story of Michael.
Even in the darkest and
deepest bits of the book
and of the Net overall.
So there are my four themes.
And the final word-- and
it will be, there we go.
Exactly 30 minutes.
The final word is I
was rather depressed
writing a lot of this book.
I found it extremely difficult
at times and a lot of time
spent worrying and
sleepless nights.
And I just imagined
it was because
of the depressing and
difficult subjects
that I was having to work on.
And it was partly that.
But I think more so, it
was something far simpler,
which is I was missing
out on so much offline.
I was just spending
all of my day
on the internet with
these virtual characters.
And I was missing all the
rest of my social life.
All the rest of my friends.
All the other things I could do.
And instead I was crunched
over a computer screen
and my entire life
was being lived
through this tiny little box.
And so I ended up coming out
of the book far more worried,
not about what people are doing
online and where it takes them
and why they do it.
But how do we make sure
people's lives offline are
more meaningful, more
interesting, more fulfilling
for them.
Because if they
were, then I think
they'd spend far more
time there and far less
time in some of these darker
and worrying corners of the net.
And that's it.
I'm done.
Thank you very
much for listening.
[APPLAUSE]
So I think I'm in charge of
taking questions, aren't I?
Yeah.
So if anybody has any
questions-- oh, yes.
You.
AUDIENCE: Were you
every worried that you
might be arrested
during your research?
And did you have a
back-up plan for what
you might do in that event?
JAMIE BARTLETT:
I'm still worried
that I won't be let
into the United States,
because I said that I'd
bought one gram of marijuana.
And they have rather strict
rules on this kind of thing.
I went into this,
starting off thinking,
oh I'm going to really
get to the bottom of all
this nasty, crazy,
dirty internet stuff
and really expose
it for what it is.
But there were so
many bits where I just
dared not click any further.
I dare not go beyond that,
because I didn't-- one
of the internet adages is you
can't see what you've seen.
And once you've done
some-- it's very easy,
I think, in these sites
and these communities,
to unknowingly
step over the line.
So I was incredibly careful.
I went to see the police before
I did any of this research.
I tried to tell as many people
as possible what I was doing.
I was very careful not to
do anything illegal, apart
from that one case with
the small amount of drugs
and I determined
that you could make
quite a good public
interest case
for buying such an incredibly
small amount of drugs
in that instance.
So in the end, I wasn't
actually that worried
because I think I've
done it rather well.
I was more worried about whether
any of the people that I'd
been speaking to
might be identified
or that I might cause them
some distress or harm.
Even the people that
I found objectionable.
As a researcher-- I'm not really
an investigative journalist.
I'm a standard researcher.
I work for a think tank.
I was more worried
about making sure
that the research
participants weren't harmed.
And I really tried to bend
over backwards to mask
who they really were
and where they live.
Details were changed
throughout, but without losing
the thread of the story.
And I think I've done it well
enough, but people are smart.
People can normally
identify people.
And all of these
ethical questions
are a question of judgment.
About do you think you've
done enough to protect
the identity of individuals.
Have you taken reasonable
measures to do so.
Have you informed them
of your intention.
Have you told them and showed
them drafts of what you've
done, so they're
content to be talked
about in this way in
the public domain.
I did all of that stuff.
I think I did it well enough.
It's only been out
for a month or so,
so there's still time
for me to get arrested,
so-- maybe I shouldn't answer
that question just yet.
Thank you.
AUDIENCE: So, two questions.
First one, do you know if
they can force you to--
for example, child pornography--
to tell the government
or someone names of people
and stuff like that.
Because you can mask
things, but maybe
they can get you to
court to tell the names.
So that's one--
JAMIE BARTLETT: Yeah.
Yeah, I'm pretty
sure they could.
I mean, I could go
to court over it
as a journalist
saying I'll protect
my sources to the death.
But of course,
they can-- whatever
the equivalent of subpoenaing
is in this kind of-- I
don't know what the
actual legal term is.
But yeah.
I mean, they could
seize my computer
and demand the passwords.
And if I don't give them
those under the Regulation
of Investigatory
Powers Act 2000,
I could end up in prison for
not disclosing my password.
So yeah.
They could.
AUDIENCE: OK.
And you think you
got to the bottom,
or were there subjects that
you didn't dare to go into?
JAMIE BARTLETT: Well.
See, people talk about
this in terms of depth,
like going deeper and
deeper and deeper.
But it's not really like that.
Cyberspace doesn't
really have any depth.
If you know where
the link is, it's
as easy to get to the Silk Road
as it is to get to the BBC.
It's really simple.
There are obviously-- in
particular communities
within Facebook or
on forums-- there's
a secret password
protected forum.
And within that, you
might meet people
who tell you about another
secret protective password
forum.
And no, I never felt like I'd
got anywhere near the bottom.
I mean, the problem
is, you never
really know whether you're
scratching the surface
or you've reached the bottom.
Because you can never tell
quite how far it goes.
And I probably could have just
spend another year constantly
trying to follow links around
and get further and further
away from where I started.
But I'm quite confident that
I didn't get near the "bottom"
or whatever you want to call it.
The end of the line or whatever.
Absolutely not.
And I had to stop at
certain places anyway.
I decided I wasn't
going to go trying to,
under false pretenses, get
into password protected
suicide forums, for example.
I tended to go to the open ones.
So there would have been
that bit, for example.
But there were
other areas, yeah.
You should read this more
as a skirt across some
of these cultures
and communities.
I had to make a decision
between-- a trade off
between depth and breadth.
And I went for breadth.
AUDIENCE: OK.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Even I'm using
the depth and deep and stuff,
even though I keep saying
that's not what it is.
But it's a very easy
analogy to just trip into.
AUDIENCE: I have a
couple questions.
First of all, what's
your background?
And second, if I were
to pick up that book,
would I just be able
to understand anything,
or should I read-- this
is like my first exposure
to anything like this.
So should I read
more this is what
it is before I were to
pick that up and read it.
JAMIE BARTLETT: The book is
exceptionally well written.
It's actually probably more
intended for people like you
than for people that have been
on the Silk Road, like you.
OK.
It was meant to be--
I mean, I arrogantly
hoped it would be like
Louis Theroux online,
going to these places,
explaining it really clearly.
There's not much technical
language in there.
There's footnotes with
really heavy detail,
but it's a very-- I hope--
the intention was that it's
a very accessible and simple
guide to these cultures told
through the stories of people.
So whenever you
bring people into it,
it becomes immediately
more accessible as well.
There's a few descriptions of
how the onion root of the Tor
browser actually works, and
how Tor hidden services work
and why they're
hard to track down.
But they're only-- there's
not so much of that.
Because I just thought,
what's interesting
about these cultures are the
people and how they behave
and what they do, not really the
technology that underpins it.
And my background
is in research.
So I work for a
think tank, Demos.
And for the last
seven years, I've
worked there doing social,
political, cultural research.
Using standard methodologies
of questionnaires and surveys
and ethnography and polling on
quite a wide array of subjects,
but mainly looking at
extremist and radical groups,
political groups.
And I did a big Facebook survey
of the English Defence League.
I've written a lot
about intelligence work
and how intelligence and
policing use the internet.
I wrote a paper with David
Omand, former GCHQ director,
about the polices and MI5 and
GCHQ's use of the internet
as a form of intelligence.
And at the moment, I
run a center at Demos
called Center for the
Analysis of Social Media
with the University
of Sussex, where
we're trying to develop
computational natural language
processing, automated
text mining and analytics.
Trying to develop software
that allows social scientists
to be able to use and apply
those computational methods
for the purposes of
social policy research.
So essentially what's happened
is all the stuff on big data
analytics is really driven by
people like you or advertising
and marketing people,
and not so much
the social scientists
who, I think,
have got an awful lot to
bring to this in terms
of deeper analysis,
sampling methodologies,
ethics of good research.
So we're trying to combine
and mix those disciplines.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Jamie.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Hello.
AUDIENCE: Very interesting,
thanks for that.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Pleasure.
AUDIENCE: I was just wondering--
I was interested more
on the solution side.
So you mentioned, for example,
about moderating the suicide
forums.
And do you go into
your book-- and maybe
you don't want to answer
the question, which
is fair enough-- but do
you have any suggestions?
Like if you had a
magic wand, would you
do anything about Silk Road
or some of the other things
that you've come across
in your research?
JAMIE BARTLETT:
One of the reasons
I made it a series of
portraits rather than polemic
is because I don't know
what the answer is.
I really don't.
And the Silk Road
is a combination--
it's either it
makes drugs easier
to get and more
drugs easier to get,
but makes those drugs
more reliable and safer.
What's important to you?
Is it that it's harder
for people to get it?
Or assuming that
they will get it,
make sure it's better
for them to get it?
And that comes down to moral,
personal, ethical judgement
that you make.
And it's quite similar on
a lot of these subjects.
So with Paul and
the neo-Nazis, I
tend to-- it's often
a question of erring
on one side or the other,
between censorship or openness.
And I tend to, having looked
at what these guys do online,
I tend to err on the
side of openness.
And let them talk
and hear them out.
And let them speak.
Give them a safety valve.
It's really important.
Because everything
in the book to me
suggests that every time
you clamp down on anything,
it pops up somewhere else
or it goes somewhere else.
And it gets worse and it gets
darker and it gets deeper.
And actually bringing this
stuff out into the open
makes it far less
terrifying than when
it's hidden under the bed
and shoved away in a corner.
Now I know that's not a specific
clear government policy.
It's just a general approach
that I've thought through
for how we deal with all these
difficult subjects online.
And I stopped there, because
beyond that, I'm not sure.
And that's not the purpose
of the book really.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
No, that's fair.
I guess where I was coming from
was exactly that last point.
Where if we stop it,
that might be good,
but it'll pop up again.
But if we keep it going,
it will get more extreme.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Well,
the Silk Road-- so
when it was shut
down in October,
and they're doing a
really decent trade.
There was probably three big
online drugs marketplaces
or anonymous marketplaces.
They're called Dark Net markets.
Six months later,
they're about 30 of them.
They're far harder to close
down now than they were before.
They're selling far more
drugs than ever they were.
And what really has been
achieved by closing this down?
More people know
about than ever.
I'm probably contributing
to that problem
by writing about it.
And they're smarter, harder
to crack, more encrypted
than they were before.
So that is a pretty
good-- I often
trotted out the
easy liberal line.
Oh, if you censor
something, it merely
just comes out in another
and gets even more radical.
But I hadn't really
seen evidence of it.
That was a nice
comfortable assumption,
philosophical
assumption, to draw.
But I hadn't seen so much
actual evidence of that.
But I think in writing this
book, I did see evidence.
I did see evidence of that.
And I saw how people
get around censorship
and how they work ways out
of getting their message out.
And nothing good
ever comes of things
being hidden and not
allowed to be talked about
and always off limits
and always taboo.
Nothing.
So again, it's an approach
rather than a policy.
But you are-- I agree
with you on that.
AUDIENCE: That's great.
Thank you.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Thanks.
AUDIENCE: Hey, Jamie.
Thanks a lot.
Question for me was
thinking about anonymity
has its importance
but credibility
seems to also have
an importance.
And when you think about where--
whether it's online forums
or it it's-- whether its
users are secret or Snapchat--
so the evolution of where
people are having anonymous
but controlled systems
where they operate in.
Where does that
fit in in the way
you've seen the Dark
Net as it's evolving,
versus the open
communities that--
JAMIE BARTLETT: Yeah.
So the chapter three is
about the cypher punks.
Anyone know the Cypher Punks?
Oh, you guys would be
interested in the Cypher Punks.
So the Cypher Punks were a
group of American libertarians,
California libertarians
from the early '90s, who
more or less predicted
all of this stuff
and built systems of encryption.
They predicted black markets.
They did anonymous re-mailers.
And it was all part
of a political vision
to try to undermine
the power of the state.
Crypto currencies as well
came from the Cypher Punks.
It was especially on
the cryptography mailing
that bitcoin was
first introduced.
Part of a political project.
If the government can't
trace what we're doing,
it can't tax us.
If it can't tax us,
it's got no revenue.
It can't control us.
So it was currency.
It was messages
and communication.
It was your online activity.
Just a big battle over secrecy
and privacy and anonymity
online.
The big challenge
that they always faced
was how do you combine
anonymity with reputation.
Because without
reputation, black markets
or any marketplace collapses.
Any social system
collapses quite quickly.
So they were obsessed with
the idea of people building up
reputable pseudonyms.
Identities that were online
couldn't be traced back
to the real you, but where you
had an incentive to make sure
you kept building up
that positive reputation
within your community.
You were still totally secret
about who you really were.
It's a separate identity
that was reputable.
And that's the trick
of the Silk Road.
And that's what the
Silk Road has done.
And that's exactly what the
Cypher Punks in the '90s
were trying to develop systems
to be able to work out.
And I think there's a lot
of modern Cypher Punks.
The people behind bitcoin
are all Cypher Punks.
There's loads of them.
And there's a huge growth of
citizen encryption systems.
You've probably been following
it post Snowden especially.
And that's always been the key.
Reputation versus anonymity.
And I think on
the Silk Road, why
I think it's so
innovative is they've
worked out some
ways around that.
Where is that going
to evolve and develop?
I don't know.
But it is going to
evolve and develop.
AUDIENCE: And just a
quick follow-up on that.
How does that fit in
where like, GCHQ or MI5.
If they are understanding
identity as a pseudonym
and understanding online
behavior as pseudonym,
is that sufficient
or will they still
continuously try to
link between online--
JAMIE BARTLETT:
Well, they're going
to continue to try and link.
Of course they are.
You can't prosecute a pseudonym.
I mean, pseudonyms--
I think this
is going to be one of the
big battles over the future
of the internet is about
the right to anonymity
and pseudonymity and
whether companies are going
to be forced to constantly
track and push together
your online and your
offline identities.
And there's so many
people out there
who believe that you
shouldn't do that.
And that's the
citizen led rebellion
against controlling
your online identity
and matching it against
your offline one.
Governments and big
companies, of course,
are going to
constantly try and push
those two identities together.
Lots of citizen and
civil liberties groups
are going to keep trying
to pull them apart.
And that's going to
be, I think, the battle
over the next five or 10 years.
But yeah, GCHQ are going to
be on the side of pushing
together.
I think that's fair to assume.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Jamie.
Where do you stand
on the recent Right
to be Forgotten
rulings that we've
seen in Europe versus America?
Obviously anonymity and
that plays a massive part
in your book.
But in terms of governments
getting involved and actually
taking a position on what the
individual right of a person
is to be able to
take down data that
might be out there, et cetera.
Do you believe
that that should be
within an individual's right?
Or is anything that one does
online-- is one automatically
potentially culpable or
actionable based on that?
JAMIE BARTLETT: Well.
I'm not a civil--
I'm not a libertarian
about internet freedom.
I think it's extremely important
that democratically elected
governments are
able to trace people
providing it's legitimate
and proportionate.
Security is incredibly
important, and public safety.
And I met a lot of people
in these communities
that really suffer online.
And they're abused
and they're stalked.
And an increasing
number of domestic cases
start on Facebook.
And people are
desperately-- they
want to find who
these stalkers are.
Who these people are,
bullying them, stalking them.
And it's extremely
important that we
do police these parts
of the internet,
because I think it's wrong
to think-- especially
as more and more people live
more and more of their lives
that it's somehow separate.
It's not separate.
And that also includes policing.
But the Right to be
Forgotten point-- well,
without wanting to
preach to the converted,
I think it's
completely ludicrous.
I mean mainly for
practical purposes.
It strikes me as
extremely odd that it
should fall to a private
company to be asked to determine
what is and what isn't
available in the public domain.
De facto Google, Facebook,
YouTube, and Twitter
have become the public space.
It is where the
public space is now.
It's just masked
speaker's corner.
It's where the big debates
of the day play out.
Now I think we've got to be
very careful-- understand what
you guys do-- to
cede total control.
To stop pushing more and more in
the responsibility of managing
the space to
companies who run it.
Now, I know it's
your server space,
but I believe that most
of you have a commitment
to free expression.
And the more and more we're
trying to police it and force
people to take
things down and ask
lawyers sitting in California
or wherever they're
sitting to make decisions
about that, the more and more
the public space is becoming
commercialized, complicated.
Quite apart from the
fact that, as we've
seen with this, the
Right to be Forgotten
appears to me to be more like
the right to tell Google not
to show this particular piece
of data high up in the search
results, but not
actually take it offline.
And then you'll be
able to find out--
there's already
been a site set up
to do this-- to find
out what things Google's
been asked to remove.
So it's barely a right
to be forgotten, is it?
It's more like a
right to be remembered
or to be highlighted
as being asked
to be forgotten about something.
And that's a good analogy
for the net in general.
Obviously as you all know,
it's incredibly difficult
to censor and to
remove items entirely.
And because there's
such a strong current
of feeling against censorship--
partly for the reasons
that I've said.
Like the danger
of over-censoring
this public space.
There's going to be
a battery of people
that are ready to highlight
attempts at censorship that
appear to be
overstepping the mark.
So for that and a
host of other reasons,
it's genuinely ridiculous.
Bewildering that it would pass.
But you can see
that there has been
a lot of public pressure
or political pressure,
maybe not even public pressure.
Political pressure to be
seen to be doing something
about bad things going online.
And as a result, the
mentality is often,
we need to do something.
This is something.
Let's do this, then.
Rather than thinking
really carefully about what
the best thing to do is.
AUDIENCE: Thanks a lot.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Yes.
This is probably
the last question.
ANTHONY HOUSE: Well, you've
got time for last question.
JAMIE BARTLETT:
One more question.
AUDIENCE: So when I was
listening to your speech--
it was very
interesting, thank you--
and you were talking about
things like these suicide
forums and things.
And I was sitting there and
all I was thinking was, wow.
Technologically savvy.
Suicide forums.
As in people who know
how to find these things
and get to them.
Or buying drugs
online or whatever--
technologically
savvy drug buyers.
People know how to get
them and find these things.
And then at the end
you said how you
think what could make it better
would be if people's lives were
more interesting,
that they wouldn't
spend so much time in there.
But then you also
mentioned in your answer
to one of the
questions that you've
explained how Tor browsers
work and how encryption works
and how people go about
using these things.
And I just wonder, are you not,
as a result through this book,
empowering people who are
probably quite curious but just
not capable to become capable
and get lost in this very world
themselves?
JAMIE BARTLETT: That's
probably the single question
I asked myself repeatedly.
Should I even write this thing?
Is there a public interest
to putting some of this stuff
out there, or not?
I was very careful not
to give a careful guide.
Precisely how you do it.
Precisely how you stay
totally secure if you're
going to go onto the Silk Road.
Precisely what the names of
all these different forums
and places are.
So I did what I could to
limit the guidebook problem.
But in the end, I
concluded, yes, it's
quite possible that
people will become
fascinated by some of this.
And adventure in there
and get stuck in there
and lost in there
and trapped in there.
But in the end I just decided
society's usually better served
when we know what's going
on, rather than pretending
it doesn't or hiding it
or not talking about it.
Because people tend to
find this stuff anyway.
So my final
conclusion was really
when I was thinking about
this ethically in my head,
I think it's better that
it's out there than it's not.
AUDIENCE: No, I agree
it's great that there's
a revelation as to the
stuff that's going on.
It's just whether or not are
there enough instructions there
for people who
read it to go, huh.
Wouldn't mind finding out a
bit more about this myself.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Is that
a personal question?
AUDIENCE: Possibly.
Well, yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, certainly.
I could well do so.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Yeah.
I don't think so.
I tried carefully to avoid that.
There may be bits
where people-- I
mean, if no one's ever
heard of the Silk Road
and they see basically how
good the quality of cocaine
is that you can buy there,
they might decide, oh.
I think I'm going
to go on Silk Road.
And that's a possibility.
But let's face it.
The Silk Road has been
talked about an awful lot
for an awful long time.
And most of these things
do pop up in the news.
As I said in the beginning,
they do pop up in the news.
You do hear about them.
But I actually don't
think you could
get quite the full picture.
So if no one had ever
mentioned the Silk Road before
and it had never
been in the media
and I was the first
person to discover it,
I think I probably
would be really
careful about writing about it.
I think most of these subjects,
you've heard stuff about them.
Anyone curious is going to
have heard and found them.
I'd rather go in
there and really
find out why this
stuff's happening.
AUDIENCE: OK.
Thank you.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Yeah.
Yeah.
You had to read it and find out.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Jamie,
have you got time
for one more question
before we wrap up?
JAMIE BARTLETT: Yeah.
I was going to say a joke about
that being a question, but yes.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Hi, sir.
I'm Oliver.
And I think following on
from Shane's question, where
he's saying essentially for
people who wouldn't have found
out how to find
something, whether you've
written about it, in
fact it's really, really
easy to find stuff, right?
So I'm an 11-year-old.
I can type porn into
Google, and there's
a picture of people having sex.
So I click on something.
I get a video.
I can have homosexual,
heterosexual.
There's probably some
not legal stuff on there.
So it's actually, I think,
more of a question to Googlers.
At what point do we actually
say should it be moderated.
Because I think it's well
enough not to have it
openly advertised somewhere,
but it's in fact very,
very easily accessible.
And I know within the company,
there's some programs going on.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: On having child
settings, so on and so forth.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: But I think
the problem is probably
the other way around.
A lot of stuff is out there.
And for adults, I
totally agree with you.
Everybody should be
able to see most things.
I'm very liberal there.
But where with children
do we draw the line?
And how do we moderate them?
What would you do
if you-- I don't
know whether you have children.
JAMIE BARTLETT: Sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I should put an 18 plus
warning on the book, maybe.
So--
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
JAMIE BARTLETT: You're right.
It's a question for you.
I think more broadly, it's a
question for public debate.
It's a question
that we try to have
to come to something of uneasy
conclusion collectively.
And I don't think the answer
just rests with Google
or certainly not with me.
The one thing that
I did notice overall
is that I imagine that
the Dark Net, as in Tor
hidden services, the most
anonymous bit of the internet,
would be where I'd find
all the nastiest stuff.
And that's really not the case.
It can be anywhere.
It's on Facebook.
It's on Twitter.
Beheading videos on YouTube.
It's not all hidden away.
It's very easy to find.
And I often think
back to-- I'm 34 now.
And if I was 14 or 15
and I had a smart phone
and I had internet
access at home,
I dread to think
what I-- I mean,
I would be looking for
everything all the time
There's no doubt about it.
And sharing amongst my friends
and doing terrible stuff
like that.
Sexting and-- just
I can imagine.
Because I know what it's
like when you're that age.
And you'll find it.
And these kids will
find a way around this.
So it is a really big
question, I think,
for all of us to try to answer.
But I don't have
the answer to that.
I don't think you do.
But I think collectively
we can figure out something
maybe slightly better
than we have now.
ANTHONY HOUSE: Thank
you for your time.
[APPLAUSE]
ANTHONY HOUSE: Thank you
very much for coming in.
[APPLAUSE]
