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133. “Someone knew the real IP. I assumed they obtained it by becoming a guard node. So, I migrated to a new server and set up private guard nodes. There was significant downtime and someone has mentioned that they discovered the IP via a leak from lighttpd,” wrote Ulbricht in his diary on March 25. “Attack continues. No word from attacker. Site is open, but occasionally tor crashes and has to be restarted,” he wrote on May 2. “Ulbricht Log,” United States of America v. Ross William Ulbricht, Case 15-1815, Document 121–1, SA-38 through SA-42, June 17, 2016.
134. Andy Greenberg, “Read the Transcript of Silk Road’s Boss Ordering 5 Assassinations,” Wired, February 2, 2015; “Ulbricht Log,” Document 121–1, SA-38 through SA-42. After a user told Dread Pirate Roberts (aka Ross Ulbricht) he had hacked Silk Road and obtained contact details for every user of the site, and threatened to leak the information unless he was paid off, Dread Pirate Roberts talked to the Hells Angels—a major supplier of drugs for Silk Road—and put out several hits. This information came out during a federal trial that showed in the end Dread Pirate Roberts paid the Hells Angels $730,000 to kill a total of six people (the blackmailer and the blackmailer’s associates), although it is not clear whether those murders were actually carried out. The founder of Silk Road did approve and pay for the murders; some journalists speculate that it was actually a ruse to extort money from him. See: Joe Mullin, “The Hitman Scam: Dread Pirate Roberts’ Bizarre Murder-for-Hire Attempts,” Ars Technica, February 9, 2015, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02 /the-hitman-scam-dread-pirate-roberts-bizarre-murder-for-hire-attempts/.
135. The system administrator, Curtis Green, was never actually killed. He was busted by the police and turned into an informant. His death was staged for Ulbricht’s benefit. “Dread Pirate Roberts believed Green had stolen money from Silk Road. Green worked closely with Carl Mark Force, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who masqueraded as a hitman. He pretended to murder Green and even sent Roberts staged photos of the hit. Federal law enforcement and prosecutors argue that Ulbricht was the one who ordered the hit.” Howell O’Neill, “Silk Road Murder-for-Hire Target Is Writing a Memoir,” Daily Dot, June 21, 2016, https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/curtis-green-silk-road-memoir/.
136. Sarah Jeong, “The DHS Agent Who Infiltrated Silk Road to Take Down Its Kingpin,” Forbes, January 14, 2015.
137. Joshuah Bearman, “The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall,” Wired, June 2015.
138. It’s not clear whether Julian Assange’s support was what gave Dread Pirate Roberts the confidence to use Tor to build Silk Road, but the young programmer began developing the site almost at the same time WikiLeaks became an international sensation.
139. “Child-Porn Website Creator Accidentally Reveals IP Address, Leading to 870 Arrests,” ABC News, May 6, 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-06 /playpen-child-porn-site-creator-steven-chase-sentenced/8502626.
140. Joseph Cox, “Confirmed: Carnegie Mellon University Attacked Tor, Was Subpoenaed by Feds,” Motherboard Vice, February 24, 2016, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7yp5a/carnegie-mellon-university-attacked-tor-was-subpoenaed-by-feds.
141. Roger Dingledine, “Did the FBI Pay a University to Attack Tor Users?” Tor Project (blog), November 11, 2015, https://blog.torproject.org/blog /did-fbi-pay-university-attack-tor-users.
142. “Ethical Tor Research: Guidelines,” Tor Project, November 11, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20170506125847/https://blog.torproject.org/blog /ethical-tor-research-guidelines.
143. “Tor Stinks,” National Security Agency top-secret presentation, June 2012, first released by the Guardian, https://surveillancevalley.com/content/citations /tor-stinks-national-security-agency-top-secret-june-2012.pdf.
144. Barton Gellman, Craig Timberg, and Steven Rich, “Files Show NSA Targeted Tor Encrypted Network,” Washington Post, October 5, 2013.
145. This Washington Post article, published on October 5, 2013, just four days after Ulbricht’s arrest in San Francisco, added that techniques developed by the NSA were being used by federal law enforcement to target dark web sites like Silk Road.
146. “Tor Stinks,” 23.
147. The 2012 “Tor Stinks” NSA presentation also revealed that the NSA, along with the British spy agency GCHQ and other partners, ran multiple Tor nodes in order to control as much of the network as possible. Although the document omits the exact number of nodes run by the NSA and its partners, the author plainly indicates that the agency was interested in running more. This was an important detail that promoters of Tor were loath to discuss. Despite Tor’s claims of having thousands of nodes that made up the parallel network, the network was engineered in a way that routed traffic through nodes with the largest bandwidth. As a result, the vast bulk of Tor’s connection ran through a handful of the fastest and most dependable servers. Fifty relays handled about 80 percent of the traffic, whereas just five relays handled 30 percent (Roger Dingledine, email message, “[tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays,” July 23, 2012, http://web.archive.org/web/20170502103740/https://lists.torproject.org/piper mail/tor-relays/2012-July/001433.html). Running fifty Tor nodes doesn’t seem too difficult to do for any of the world’s intelligence agencies—whether American, German, British, Russian, Chinese, or Iranian. Hell, if you’re an intelligence agency, there’s no reason not to run a Tor node. As Snowden’s documents showed, both the NSA and GCHQ ran such nodes.
148. Sander Venema, “Why I Won’t Recommend Signal Anymore,” November 5, 2016, https://sandervenema.ch/.
149. Yasha Levine, “#J20, Signal, Spies and the Cult of Crypto,” Surveillance Valley (blog), January 14, 2017, https://surveillancevalley.com/blog /thoughts-on-activists-and-the-cult-of-crypto.
150. “Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed,” WikiLeaks, March 7, 2017, https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/.
151. It later emerged during the trial of Chelsea Manning that the army private used Tor during his work in Iraq. “Tor is a system intended to provide anonymity online. The software routes internet traffic through a network of servers and other Tor clients in order to conceal the users location and identity. I was familiar with Tor and had it previously installed on a computer to anonymously monitor the social media website of militia groups operating within central Iraq,” he said during trial. Micah Lee, “Bradley Manning’s Statement Shows that US Intelligence Analysts Are Trained in Using Tor,” Micah Lee’s Blog, March 12, 2013, https://micahflee.com/2013/03/bradley-mannings-statement-shows-that-us-intelligence-analysts-are-trained-in-using-tor/.
152. In 2010, 70 percent of people polled by Gallup said they were against the tracking of online behavior for advertising (Lymari Morales, “U.S. Internet Users Ready to Limit Online Tracking for Ads,” Gallup, December 21, 2010, http://www.gallup.com/poll/145337/internet-users-ready-limit-online-tracking-ads.aspx). In another poll a few years later, 68 percent believed current privacy laws did not do enough to protect people online (Lee Rainie, Sara Kiesler, Ruogu Kang, and Mary Madden, “Anonymity, Privacy, and Security Online,” Pew Research Center, September 5, 2013, http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/09/05 /anonymity-privacy-and-security-online/).
Epilogue
1. D. M. Luebke and S. Milton, “Locating the Victim: An Overview of Census-Taking, Tabulation Technology and Persecution in Nazi Germany,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 16, no. 3 (Autumn/Fall 1994): 35.
2. Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (New York: Crown, 2001).
3. Götz Aly and Karl Heinz Roth, The Nazi Census: Identification and Control in the Third Reich (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).
4. Stephen Wolff, telephone interview with author, October 23, 2015
Index
Advanced Network Services, 122
advertising and marketing
Apple’s “1984” ad, 115–116
Facebook, 170
Google’s targeted a
dvertising system, 5, 152–153, 159–161
Internet revolution as liberating technology, 6
political campaigns, 170–171
public relations response to Sputnik launch, 16–17
AdWords, 152–153
Afghanistan: WikiLeaks data, 243
African Americans. See race
Agent Orange, 14–15
Air Force, US: Social Radar initiative, 189–190
Algeria: Arab Spring, 248
Allo app, 258
al-Qaeda, 142, 199, 265
Amazon
CIA as client for, 180
monitoring and profiling individuals, 169–170
Signal app data, 265
American Airlines, 81–82
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 245
American Institutes for Research (AIR), 29–30
Angry Birds, 169
anonymous communication. See Tor/Tor Project
Anonymous movement, 212
ANS CO+RE Systems, 122
ANSNET, 122
Anthropometric Survey of the Royal Thai Armed Forces, 53–54
anticipatory intelligence, 189–190
anti-communist activities and sentiment
covert government initiatives, 23–24
Radio Free Asia, 254–255
Simulmatics Corporation work, 65–66
Stewart Brand, 107–108
tabulating racial data on immigrants, 55–56
William Godel’s counterinsurgency efforts, 22
See also Cold War
antisurveillance movement. See privacy
AOL, 154–156
Appelbaum, Jacob
background, 239–242
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, 242–245, 247
Moxie Marlinspike’s Signal, 257
privacy movement, 245–247
32C3, 221–222
Tor encryption, 260
training Arab Spring protesters in social media use, 250
training political activists around the world, 251–253
Apple
“1984” ad, 115–116
personal computers, 124–126
Signal data, 265
Arab Spring protests, 247–251, 254
ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency)
anthropomorphic data on Thais, 53–54
anti-communist operations, 23–24
Brand’s advocacy for, 105–106
collaborative computer technology for civilian use, 57–59
Command and Control Research program, 48–51
communications technology research, 35–37
computer and networking technology development for counterinsurgency, 51–59
creation and objectives of, 16–18
cybernetics, 111–112
defoliation in Vietnam, 15
history of NSA involvement, 191
Nicholas Negroponte, 130
Project Agile, 13–15, 24, 27, 31–33, 52, 65–66, 145
Project Camelot, 67–68, 160
psychological warfare programs, 28–31
Stanford Industrial Park presence, 145
student protests against, 69–71
surveillance systems in Vietnam, 24–25
Tunney’s congressional investigation of domestic surveillance, 90–93
See also ARPANET
ARPANET
ARPA and communes, 111–112
as tool of repression, 8
Cambridge Project, 68
connecting the network, 59–62
early Internet development, 6–7
exposé on domestic data files, 87–90
Godel’s counterinsurgency operations, 21
government spying on civilians, 187–188
Larry Page’s connection, 144
privatization of the technology, 117–121
routing system protocol design, 93–97
spying on Americans with, 73–75
student protests targeting, 62–64
Tunney hearings on domestic surveillance, 90–93
Ars Technica, 196–197
art galleries, crypto culture and, 210–211
artificial intelligence (AI), cybernetics and, 47
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Stanford University, 104–107
artillery, 38–39
Assange, Julian, 220–222, 242–247
Atlantic Monthly, 82–84
Atlantis, 261
Atlas Shrugged (Rand), 109
Augmentation Research Center, 50–51, 112
backbone of the Internet, 119–123, 127, 191–192
backdoor hacks: Tor Project, 223
BackRub, 149
Bamford, James, 238
Baran, Paul, 61
Barlow, Perry, 228
Bechtolsheim, Andy, 151
Beck, Glenn, 199
Bell Labs, 145
Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine, 248
Beria, Lavrentiy, 37
Berman, Ken, 228–230, 246–247
Bezos, Jeff, 169–170, 180
Bitcoin, 201–202, 205
Blue, Violet, 240
Blue Origin missile company, 180
Bolt, Beranek and Newman, 92–93, 191
Brand, Stewart, 101(quote), 104–116, 131–132, 134, 137, 152
Brantingham, Jeffrey, 165–168
Brautigan, Richard, 112, 183–184
Brin, Sergey, 5, 139–140, 139(quote), 140–141, 147–153, 157, 163–164, 173–175, 208
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
China’s censorship of radio and Internet, 234–236
Cold War origins of, 231–233
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 254
Internet Freedom policies and digital weapons, 234–236
Jacob Appelbaum and, 241–242
Radio Free Asia, 258
Russian Deployment Plan, 236–239
Tor, WikiLeaks, and US Intelligence, 245–247
Tor Project funding, 222–224, 228–230, 236
Burton, Fred, 182
Bush, George W., 141–142, 193
Cambridge Project, 63–65, 68, 90, 130, 160–161
Carnegie Mellon University, 147, 263–264
censorship
China’s censorship of CIA radio propaganda and Internet, 234–236
Russian Deployment Plan, 236–239
Tor Project as weapon against Internet censorship, 236–239
training Arab Spring protesters in social media use, 250
US foreign policy targeting China’s Internet censorship, 234–236
Census, US, 54–55
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
anti-terrorist activities, 142
ARPA’s Command and Control, 49–50
as Amazon client, 180
congressional hearings on domestic surveillance, 91–92
congressional investigations of radio networks, 233
counterinsurgency in North Vietnam and Laos, 21
covert communication, 224–225
exposé on domestic surveillance, 89
Godel’s work with, 19
Google’s involvement with, 5
hacking tools targeting smartphones, 265–266
Internet Freedom weapons, 235
Keyhole Incorporated, 174–176
LSD study, 108
Oakland’s DAC, 3–4
open source intelligence, 188–189
origins of the BBG, 231–233
predictive policing, 167
protesters targeting the Cambridge Project, 69–70
Radio Free Asia, 234, 254–255
Snowden’s employment, 197–198
spying on Americans with ARPANET, 73–75
Tor Project funding, 230
Cerf, Vint, 93–96, 120–121, 176
Chen, Adrian, 201
child pornography network, 205, 262
Chile: Project Camelot, 67–68
China
anti-censorship activities, 234–239
C
IA propaganda targeting, 232–234
using Tor anonymity in, 205
Chomsky, Noam, 71
Ciabattari, Scott, 179
civil rights activists, 8, 76–78, 187
Clapper, James R., 193
Clinton, Bill, 127
cloud computing: Google penetration into the private sector, 178–179
Cohen, Jared, 181
Cold War
anti-communist operations, 23–24
CIA radio propaganda, 232–233
origins of the BBG, 231–233
Combat Development and Test Center, 24–25, 53
Command and Control Research program (ARPA), 15, 48–51, 53, 59, 64–65
communes, 109–112
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (1994), 227–228
communications technology. See telecommunications technology
Community Online Intelligence System (COINS), 91–93
computer technology
artillery trajectory calculations, 39–40
Command and Control Research program, 47–49
computer and networking technology development for counterinsurgency, 51–59
cryptography research, 38
cybernetics, 42–51
ENIAC computer, 39–41, 117
SAGE, 41–42
ComputerWorld magazine, 134
Congress
CIA investigation, 233
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 254
domestic surveillance hearings, 84–87
privatization of the Internet, 126–127
Tunney’s congressional investigation of ARPA, 90–93
Wired magazine and Internet infrastructure, 135
Consolidated Appropriations Act (2014), 254
containment policy, 231
CONUS Intel (Continental United States Intelligence), 76–80, 84–85, 87–88
Cooke, David, 91–93
corporate sector
backing Internet Freedom policies, 234–236
Bay Area boom, 102–103
collaborative computer technology for civilian use, 57–59
database construction, 81–82
expansion of data mining, 169–173
interactive computing, 51
military involvement, 5–6
NSA PRISM program, 192–193
personal computers and Internet access, 124–126
predictive policing, 165–168
privatization of the Internet, 121–124, 126–127
profiting from weaponization of the Internet, 267–269