Deep Web is a documentary film that was produced in 2015 and directed by Alex Winter. Keanu Reeves, the narrator of the film, gives us a comprehensive analysis of the events that surround the bitcoin, Silk Road, and politics of the dark web. A significant portion of the film focusses on the trial of Ross Ulbricht. Ross William Ulbricht is an American convict who is famed for the creation of Silk Road, the darkest market website in American history. The operation of the site was to facilitate drug trafficking between 2011 up to 2013 when Ross was arrested. It used bitcoin as currency and Tor for anonymity. It was not until February 2015 that Ross was found guilty of crimes concerning a conspiracy to trafficking fraudulent identity documents, money laundering, conspiracy in facilitating the trafficking of narcotics online, and computer hacking. He was later sentenced to a double life sentence. The premise of this essay will be to assess the film and give responses to questions regarding the same. Is Ross Ulbricht a hero or a criminal? This is an issue that has drawn a lot of debate. Some people consider Ross as a villain while others view him as a hero (Spaven, 2014). Some even consider him as a character who plays double roles. However, I will side with the group that considers Ross as a hero and explain why this perspective outweighs the view of him being a criminal. Many will agree with me that facilitating drug trafficking is a vice within the society but what they fail to consider is that this has been common practice in a long time even before Ross’ time. Even long after Ross was convicted, the presence of the drug business is still prevalent today as we speak. Thus, we cannot single-handedly blame him as a pioneer for drug trafficking. What is intriguing in this matter is that the inspiration to start the Silk Road was to eliminate violence in the drug trade. The sophistication of the website’s operation was to create a give people freedom on the internet to conduct their affairs without the impediments of state regulations. The pioneers of the site were neither interested in violence nor wanted to harm innocent people. Under the stewardship of Ross and his team, they banned activity like transacting with counterfeit money or activities like children porn. Besides, he was kind enough to be transparent on his platform. Ross could shut down the site if he wanted to, but his strictness with ethos made him a considerate and just man. However, the federal government and state agencies were blinded on one-sided only to consider him as a criminal. They did not see that he had worked to reduce violence and casualties in the drug trade. Did Silk Road contribute to a less violent society? In my opinion, yes. Drug trafficking is a dirty game that often culminates in disputes and violence. Even innocent people will die in a drug-deal-gone-sour when instances like shooting break out. Silk Road had managed to curb this mess through its online and secure internet presence. The pioneers of the websites had an entrepreneurial motivation and wanted to capitalize on the internet to reduce fishy and violent deals in drug trafficking. According to the narrator, Silk Road was unlike the 1990s drug trafficking businesses. While violence, deaths, and double-dealing were common occurrences in bad drug businesses in those days, Silk Road had managed to make such incidents a thing of the past ingeniously. Maybe one instance of “murder-for-hire” taints the picture of the whole Silk Road business, but it is not convincing because this was not even part of the charges that Ross was convicted for. Was Ulbricht’s 4th amendment rights violated? Given a chance, I would say yes in a loud voice. Firstly, Ross was denied bail because of what authorities described him as a threat to community safety. The authorities had pinned a murder-for-hire charge in the killing of Curtis Green. However, this was only an allegation which surprisingly got dropped later in the case due to lack of proof to identify Ross as the pseudonymous Dreaded Pirate Roberts (DPR) character. According to Ross’ defence attorney, federal agencies had created a negative atmosphere that made the jury prejudiced to some extent. Besides, Ross was denied the privilege to bring expert witnesses on stage to provide their witness. The federal government up to date has never revealed how they learnt about the physical presence of the Silk Road servers in Germany and Iceland. There could have been tampering of evidence in the due process of retrieving information from these databases, but the defending party never got answers to their pleas and desire to know how the government made it to these servers. Ulbricht argued that the government had used pen/trap orders to monitor IP address traffic in and out of his home router. However, the Second Circuit rejected the argument, thus violating the 4th Amendment because the government’s move to obtain the orders was unwarranted (Moxley, 2017). Also, the government’s move to search his laptop and Google accounts were in violation of the Fourth Amendment Law. Was the trial fair? I do not think Ross got a fair trial considering that key witnesses in his case were dismissed. As narrated by his parents, a whole 5000 page of evidence was dismissed ten days to his trial. Most of Ross’ rights were violated. To begin with, he was denied bail on a charge that was later dropped due to lack of evidence. He was also denied a chance to bring in experts witnesses who would elaborate the tech side of the story to the jury. His property (computers and Google accounts) were rummaged through by the authorities without his consent. Besides, the privacy about his case was publicized to the point that the media convicted him before trial. The “freedom of the press” seems to have been granted for all wrong reasons. The involvement of the media who talked about one side of the story ruined all the chances that Ross would use to stage his plea. The prejudgment of the media transcended to the public as well as the federal government, which created a negative atmosphere for the case. Consequently, the jury got prejudiced on the same and sided with the prosecutor’s opinions, thus rendering an unfair verdict. In conclusion, the Ross Ulbricht story has generated a lot of controversy in not only the dark wed world but also in the justice system. Some believe that he was a hero while others perceive him as a hero who just got on the wrong side of the law. Throughout the film, I have sided with his attributes based on my judgments which range from the belief that he was unfairly convicted to his liking for transparency and his zeal to eradicate violence in drug traffic.
References
Moxley, L. (2017, June 2). Second Circuit in Silk Road Appeal: No Fourth Amendment
Protection in IP Addresses under the Third Party Doctrine . https://www.insideprivacy.com/united-states/litigation/second-circuit-in-silk-road-appeal-no-fourth-amendment-protection-in-ip-addresses-under-the-third-party-doctrine/ .
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Spaven, E. (2014, October 4). Ross Ulbricht: Hero or Villain? CoinDesk. https://www.coindesk.com/ross-ulbricht-hero-villain .
Winter, A., (2015). Dark Web Film . Retrieved on: 21 August, 2020.
