The Dark Net (35 page)

Zuckerman, E.,
Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection.

Chapter 1
Unmasking the Trolls

Coleman, G.,
Our Weirdness is Free
.

Olson, P.,
We Are Anonymous
. This and the above are both excellent accounts of the hacktivist group Anonymous, of the evolution of /b/, and of trolling more generally.

Phillips, W., ‘LOLing at Tragedy: Facebook, Memorial Trolls and Reaction to Grief Online’,
First Monday
volume 16, number 12,
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3168
. Whitney Phillips is one of the few academics who specialises in trolling.

Schwartz, M., ‘The Trolls Among Us’,
New York Times
, 3 August 2008. One of best articles about trolling and trolling subcultures, featuring the notorious hacker and troll ‘weev’.

The websites Encyclopedia Dramatica and KnowYourMeme are both excellent resources for trolling culture: but enter these sites at your own risk. Examples of trolling on Bulletin Board Systems are usefully archived on the website
textfiles.com
; while there are several online resources dedicated to Usenet trolling groups, notably those maintained by Ken Hollis at
www.digital.net/~gandalf/
.

Chapter 2
The Lone Wolf

Bartlett, J. and Littler, M.,
Inside the EDL
, Demos.

Bergen, J. and Strathern, W.,
Who Matters Online: Measuring Influence, Evaluating Content and Countering Violent Extremism in Online Social Networks,
International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

Conway, M. et al., ‘Uncovering the Wider Structure of Extreme Right Communities Spanning Popular Online Networks’.

Copsey, N.,
The English Defence League
, Faith Matters,
http://faith-matters.org/images/stories/fm-reports/english-defense-league-report.pdf
.

Simon, J.,
Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat.

Chapter 3
Into Galt’s Gulch

Greenberg, A.,
This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers
. An invaluable guide to cypherpunk technology and ideology, and the significance of the cypherpunk philosophy to whistleblowers.

Levy, S., ‘Crypto-rebels’ in
Wired
and
Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in a Digital Age
. ‘Crypto-rebels’ was the first mainstream account of the cypherpunks; while
Crypto
remains the best account of the movement overall.

Manne, R., ‘The Cypherpunk Revolutionary: Julian Assange’, in
Making Trouble: Essays Against the New Australian Complacency

May, T.,
Cyphernomicom,
Tim May’s book-length essay, providing an excellent insight into the cypherpunk philosophy. Available here:
http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html
.

For the technically minded, David Chaum’s paper ‘Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete’ is perhaps the most important single document in terms of understanding the mathematics of the cypherpunk movement. Most of the Cypherpunk and Metzdowd Cryptography Mailing List posts are archived and available online:
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/
and
http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/
.

Chapter 4
Three Clicks

Davidson, J. and Gottschalk, P.,
Internet Child Abuse: Current Research and Policy.

Finkelor, D.,
A Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse
. A work which sets out the ‘classic’ model of child grooming, written before social networks were widely used.

Martellozzo, E., ‘Children as Victims of the Internet: Exploring Online Child Sexual Exploitation’.

Ogas, O. and Gaddam, S.,
A Billion Wicked Thoughts
. An unusual and extremely valuable piece of detailed work into people’s sexual desires based on internet search terms.

Wortley, R. and Smallbone, S.,
Internet Child Pornography: Causes, Investigation and Prevention
. An excellent overview of how the
advent of the internet radically transformed child pornography.

Following the ups and downs on the Tor Hidden Service child pornography is extremely difficult, and has not been written about in detail.
The Daily Dot, Gawker, Wired
and
Vice
all have extremely useful articles and reports on the subject. In particular: Patrick Howell O’Neill’s articles on Freedom Hosting:
http://www.dailydot.com/news/eric-marques-tor-freedom-hosting-child-porn-arrest/
; Adrian Chen’s articles on ‘Operation DarkNet’:
http://gawker.com/5855604/elaborate-anonymous-sting-snags-190-kiddie-porn-fans
; and
Wired
’s series ‘Threat Level’:
http://www.wired.com/category/threatlevel/
.

Chapter 5
On the Road

Christin, N., ‘Travelling the Silk Road: A Measurement Analysis of a Large Anonymous Online Market Place’. An innovative academic study of the volume of trading on the Silk Road in 2012.

Daly, M. and Sampson, S.,
Narcomania: How Britain Got Hooked on Drugs.

European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction,
European Drugs Report 2013: Trends and Developments.

Powers, M.,
Drugs 2.0
. An excellent account of how the internet has changed the way drugs are bought and sold.

Criminal Complaint documents are extremely valuable sources, including those laid against Ulbricht himself. As usual, online
magazine tend to have the most detailed accounts of the Silk Road and the other dark net markets. Of particular note are Adrian Chen’s 2011
Gawker
article ‘The Underground Website where you can Buy any Drug Imaginable’,
http://gawker.com/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imag-30818160
(which was the first significant journalistic exploration on the subject), and Eileen Ormsby’s excellent blog ‘AllThingsVice’ which covers several aspects of the deep web, but especially the dark net markets,
http://allthingsvice.com/about/
.

Chapter 6
Lights, Web-camera, Action

Attwood, F.,
Porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography
. An excellent overview of how the internet is changing pornography, and in particular how home-made pornography changes the relationship between viewer and producer.

Boellstorff, T.,
The Coming of Age in Second Life
. One of the first detailed anthropological studies of life in virtual worlds, and indispensable for understanding how virtual-world avatars reflect their user’s behaviours.

Panek, E. et al., ‘Mirror or Megaphone? How Relationships between Narcissism and Social Networking Site Use Differ on Facebook and Twitter’,
Computers in Human Behaviour
, vol.29.

Senft, T.
Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks.
The first detailed, and still most comprehensive, study of cam-models.

Chapter 7
The Werther Effect

Adler, P. and Adler, P.,
The Tender Cut: Inside the Hidden World of Self-Injury.
An excellent and very detailed study of self-injury, in particular cutting.

Barak, A., ‘Emotional Support and Suicide Prevention through the Internet: A Field Project Report’,
Computers in Human Behaviour
, vol.23, and (2009) ‘Suicide Prevention by Online Support Groups: An Action Theory-Based Model of Emotional First Aid’,
Archives of Suicide Research
, vol.13, no.1. Barak’s work provides a critical analysis of the effect of online suicide support groups on users.

Bond, E.,
Virtually Anorexic – Where’s the Harm?
An accessible but rigorous study of the scale, type and content of pro-ana sites, and an excellent introduction to the subject.

Coleman, L.,
The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines.

Gunnell, D. et al., ‘The Use of the Internet by People who Die by Suicide in England: A Cross-Sectional Study’,
Journal of Affective Disorders
, vol.141.

Hawton, K. et al., ‘Self-harm and Suicide in Adolescents’,
The Lancet
, vol.379, issue 9834.

Mental Health Foundation,
The Lonely Society.

Montgomery, P. et al., ‘The Power of the Web: A Systematic Review of Studies of the Influence of the Internet on Self-Harm and Suicide in Young People’,
PLoS ONE.

Sueki, H., ‘The Effect of Suicide-Related Internet Use on Users’
Mental Health: A Longitudinal Study’,
Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention
, vol.34 (5).

Conclusion
Zoltan vs Zerzan

Istvan, Z.,
The Tranhumanist Wager
. Zoltan’s loosely autobiographical work, which sets out a picture of a fairly bleak near future in which transhumanists go to war with the rest of the world.

More, M. and Vita-More, N. (eds),
Transhumanist Reader
An excellent overview of some of the more technical and philosophical aspects of the transhumanist movement, edited by two leading exponents. It includes a chapter by Anders Sandberg on mind uploading.

Naughton, J.,
From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What you Really Need to Know About the Internet.

Segal, H.,
Technological Utopianism in American Culture.

Zerzan, J.,
Future Primitive
and
Future Primitive Revisited
. A handy introduction into the anarcho-primitivist philosophy, and Zerzan’s most well-known written work.

First and foremost, I’d like to thank all those people who have let me into their world: Paul the extreme but affable nationalist, Zack, ‘Old Holborn’, Michael, Vex, Blath and Auryn, Amir, Pablo, Timothy May, Smári, Zoltan and Zerzan, Charlie Flowers, Tommy Robinson, Hel Gower, the anonymous EDL social media admins, @Norsefired, Jimmy Swales, Alexander Jones, Queen Lareefer, Jessica and Elle St Claire, the strange dancer in the Utherverse brothel, Jessi, the owners of the Pink Pussy Gentleman’s Club, Al the forum admin, the individuals who comprised the composite character Amelia in ‘The Werther Effect’, Gerard and Dr Anders Sandberg.

This book wouldn’t have been possible without the dedication and talents of Tom Avery, my brilliant editor at William Heinemann, and the rest of the team there: Jason Arthur, Anna-Sophia Watts, Sophie Mitchell, Chloe Healy, Jason Smith and Nathaniel Alcaraz-Stapleton. Thanks also to Gail Rebuck.

I relied greatly on specialists, who are quoted throughout. I’d like to reiterate my appreciation for their time. In no particular order: Fred Langford and other anonymous analysts who welcomed me to the Internet Watch Foundation,
Professor Sir David Omand, Professor Sir Peter Kirstein, Emma Bond, Derek Smart, Fiyaz Mughal, Nick Lowles, Maura Conway, Mike Hearn, Khadhim Shubber, Miguel Freitas, Professor Richard Wortley, Elena Martellozzo, Tink Palmer, Nathalie Nahai, Luke Upchurch, Steve Rolles, Sam Smith, Shirley from Chaturbate, Vex’s fans (especially Vince), Anna-Lee, Joe Ferns, Manko, Donald Findlater, Paul Cudenec, Celia Blay, Professor Paul Montgomery, Rachael Spellman, Beat Bullying, James Smith, Amanda van Eck from Inform at the London School of Economics, Tristan, all the members of the Oxford Transhumanist Society who welcomed me for an excellent debate in Magdalen College, especially Andrew Snyder-Beattie, Avi Roy and Tomas Halgas.

Many people contribute to the writing of a book. The person who contributed most was undoubtedly Louis Reynolds, my fantastic researcher who worked at least as hard as I did to make this happen. Daniel Janes provided exceptional research support throughout; and Pavol Koznac, Rutger Birnie and Joe Rowlands all produced very helpful briefing notes. And then there was a small army of friends and experts who gave their time to review various chapters and unfinished thoughts, without whom this book would look very different indeed. Above all Jonathan Birdwell, Carl Miller, Pablo Turner, Joe Miller, Catrin Nye and Hannah Joll. They’ve all been indispensable. Thanks are also due to Jeremy Reffin, Professor David Weir, and the soon-to-be-Dr Simon Wibberley, my colleagues at CASM, Eva Pascoe, Graham Macklin, Andy Moorling, Jake Chapman, ‘IamSatoshi’, Ken Hollis, David Stark, Gemma Cobb, Professor Tom Boellstorff, Niels Ten Oeven, Nick Pickles, Grace, Mike Harris, Chris Waller, Sofia Patel, Phillida Cheetham, Dan
Sutch, Mona Bani, Moritz Bartl, Runa Sandvik, Marley Morris, Simon Sarginson, Niki Gomez, Mevan Babaker. And my family of course who, in addition to reading drafts, provided all sorts of other support, including somewhere to write in peace: Daniel, Samantha, Mum (sorry for all the swearing) and Phil. Thanks also to Noreena Hertz, David Goodhart and Catherine Mayer for early discussions about the ideas. And of course my agent Caroline Michel along with Rachel Mills and Jonathan Sissons at PFD who were extremely supportive and understood exactly what I was trying to do. All of my colleagues at Demos have had to endure my extended periods of absence (which they seemed to do with great pleasure). For all those who I’ve carelessly and thoughtlessly forgotten, please accept my apologies along with my thanks.

There are many others I cannot thank for various reasons, but to whom an enormous debt is owed. This includes the countless thousands who create and make available free software, free websites, free online archived material, often in their own time. We all owe those people a great debt. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to research this book; and much else besides.

Finally to Kirsty, who first gave me the idea for this book in a very roundabout way, whose talent for writing I have tried to emulate, and who helped me throughout – albeit from a distance.

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