The Information Society Series Laura DeNardis and Michael Zimmer, Series Editors Interfaces on Trial 2.0, Jonathan Band and Masanobu Katoh Opening Standards: The Global Politics of Interoperability, Laura DeNardis, editor The Reputation Society: How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World, Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey, editors The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright, Hector Postigo Technologies of Choice? ICTs, Development, and the Capabilities Approach, Dorothea Kleine Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests, Patrick Burkart After Access: The Mobile Internet and Inclusion in the Developing World, Jonathan Donner The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media, Ryan Milner The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy, Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community, Jessica Lingel Protecting Children Online? Cyberbullying Policies of Social Media Companies, Tijana Milosevic Authors, Users, and Pirates: Copyright Law and Subjectivity, James Meese Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2P, Robert W. Gehl Weaving the Dark Web Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2P Robert W. Gehl The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2018 Robert W. Gehl All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in ITC Stone Serif Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN: 978-0-262-03826-3 eISBN 9780262347570 ePub Version 1.0 I wrote parts of this while looking around for my father, who died while I wrote this book. I miss seeing him sitting at his desk among his books, looking over his glasses, typing, thinking, smiling. Table of Contents Series page Title page Copyright page Dedication Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 Violence, Propriety, Authenticity: A Symbolic Economy of the Dark Web 3 The Dark Web Network Builders 4 From Agorism to OPSEC: Dark Web Markets and a Shifting Relationship to the State 5 Searching for the Google of the Dark Web 6 Being Legit on a Dark Web Social Network 7 Facebook and the Dark Web: A Collision 8 Conclusion Bibliography Index List of Tables Table 2.1 Objects, power and discursive practices, relevant social groups, and academic fields for each meaning of legitimacy Table 5.1 Search engines across various Dark Web networks Table 5.2 Actors and interest relations potentially mediated by Dark Web search engines Acknowledgments Multiple people read portions of this book and offered generous and critical feedback. Nathalie Maréchal read chapter 3 and offered copious amounts of correction to factual errors, for which I’m grateful. She’s also been a great panel mate at meetings of the Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR), and I’m looking forward to reading more of her work. Megan Cullinan, Oscar Mejia, and Jeremy Freed, all PhD students at Utah, read early versions of the manuscript and helped me clarify the legitimacies. Michael Stevenson, Maria Bakardjieva, and Fenwick McKelvey, who have become great collaborators and friends, also provided lengthy feedback on the manuscript or advice at key stages. And of course, I am deeply indebted to the editors and peer reviewers at the MIT Press. Gita Manaktala, Michael Zimmer, and Laura DeNardis have been tremendously supportive of this project, and the three peer reviewers did a thorough job examining a later draft of the manuscript. One of them later revealed himself to be Nicholas John, and I am very flattered that the author of The Age of Sharing supported the publication of my book. The staff at the MIT Press, including Virginia Crossman, Kyle Gipson, and Susan Clark, have been wonderful to work with. Special thanks goes to Melanie Mallon who copyedited the manuscript, checking up on every link—no small task in a book about the Dark Web. I met many of the above people through AOIR, and I need to acknowledge the support of that organization. When I’m asked about writing, I often use the cliché of the roller coaster: sometimes I’m up, and sometimes I’m down. At one very low point in writing this book, I got a surprise e-mail from AOIR informing me that my last book won that organization’s Nancy Baym Book Award. Immediately, the writing roller coaster went back up, and I returned to this manuscript with new energy. I owe a lot to AOIR for that. I am grateful to Graham Denyer Willis, Jaime Amparo Alves, and Jim Martin for discussions at the “Policing the City” symposium at Stanford University about legitimacy, the state, and trust in online interactions. Angele Christin served as a respondent to my presentation (an early version of chapter 4) and her comments were invaluable. Firat Bozcali deserves extra praise for all the work he did making “Policing the City” a success. I also presented parts of chapter 4 to the iSchool at the University of Texas. Daniel Carter, a PhD student who arranged my trip, has my thanks, as do the faculty and students there who attended my talk. Special thanks go to the dean of the iSchool, Andrew Dillon, who expressed enthusiasm for my work, and to Casey Boyle for feedback, beer, and ramen. Finally, my gratitude goes to the Critical Genealogies Workshop, particularly Brad Stone, Perry Zurn, Colin Koopman, Andrew Dilts, and Verena Erlenbusch. Like my previous work, this book was influenced by my friends from my time at George Mason. Professor Paul Smith once gave me a D. In a moment I will never forget, he corrected me in class when I said “legitimate use of force” by reminding me that it’s “legitimated use of force.” Denise Albanese invited me to return to Mason to speak to the cultural studies program, where I got feedback on chapter 5 from my advisor Hugh Gusterson as well as faculty members Roger Lancaster and Tim Gibson. PhD students and alumni there, especially Fan Yang and Gavin Mueller, also provided comments. I owe a debt to Katy Razzano, who pointed out the link between state discourses of legitimated violence and nonstate, hacker appropriations of those discourses. She also allowed me to guest lecture in two of her media courses. And, of course, I could not do this work without the support of my friends at my home university, the University of Utah. Several colleagues deserve special thanks: Kevin Coe for enthusiasm over my citation of M. C. Hammer; Avery Holton for generously helping research Twitter hashtags; Rachel Griffin for the best hallway conversations; Mike Freemole for help with computer meltdowns; David Roh and Lisa Swanstrom for inviting me to participate in digital humanities; Michael Middleton for all he does— win; Ashley Givens for putting together the soccer team; Sean Lawson and Cynthia Love for their cooking, thinking, and friendship; and Lucas Moyer Horner for his calmness, camaraderie, and for letting me beat him at games on rare occasions. Above all others at Utah, I have to thank Kent Ono and Dianne Harris who provided career support that is increasingly rare in the academy. Their work made mine possible. This book could not have been written without guides to the Dark Web. I found one such guide, as well as a collaborator, in G. M. H. His idea to host a literary magazine on Tor was brilliant, and I was honored to help with that project. Thanks for showing me “all things counter, original, spare, strange.” I found other guides on Galaxy and later Galaxy2, some now gone, but many still active. Thanks to Lameth for doing the work of keeping that social network alive for so long. And my gratitude goes to all those who took the time to talk Dark Web with me in interviews. More than anyone, however, I have to thank my family. My son, Teddy, was patient with me, even as I became a grumpy writer-dad. He also helped me practice soccer. My partner, Jesse: I am not sure how to thank her. My best bet is to take her on a long vacation (consider this a promise!). I wrote portions of this book while visiting my in-laws, Joe and Karen, who have treated me like a son. I wrote other parts at my mom’s house. My mom taught me the importance of writing. I feel I did the best writing at her house. Thank you, all. 1 Introduction Truth and Light, a now-defunct Dark Web site hosted on the Tor network, had the purpose of bringing people to Christ. As the site’s “About Us” page put it, We are a very small group of people who in one way or another have become “brothers.” We all are unified in wanting to help you. It may sound strange to you but we do not know you and we want to help you. Let us prove it to you with our kindness. We have no hidden agendas. We are sick of corporations who “Grind the faces of the poor” crushing the needy and injured to get more money for themselves. We are upset with the Governments we’ve trusted who are more concerned with their private agendas then those that suffer underneath them. Our Purpose: Help those that need it, lift people to Christ, Build His Kingdom. This site was a blog, soliciting questions from curious visitors. One visitor asked, why do you believe in what you believe in? Like, how can you just randomly believe in stuff like this??? What about proof??? Proof if it’s real, or nay??? Truth and Light’s response presented their theory of truth and reality: Is “Proof” what can be proven by science? What about conflicting scientific theories? Is proof what you can detect with your senses? Radio waves cant be detected by your senses, do you disbelieve them? To me true “knowledge” is only given from God.