The day after the premiere screening of the Silk Road documentary Deep Web, director Alex Winter, Lyn Ulbricht, consulting producer Andy Greenberg and producer Marc Schiller answered questions about the trial of Ross Ulbricht, the longtime legal implications of the ruling, and the notions of online anonymity. Below are five key points that were discussed.
Read the review of the film here.
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The nature of the trial
The odds were already stacked high against Ross Ulbricht – up against the might of government prosecution, and faced with several drug and money laundering charges – and it made even more difficult by the way the trial was conducted. Evidence was suppressed, and then released to the defense at the last minute – such as documents that were 5,000 pages long, making it impossible for the defense to prepare. The judge blocked their witnesses, and their entire line of questioning was restricted. Every person on the panel agreed unequivocally that the trial was unfair, as Ulbricht’s defense lawyer was basically unable to make his case.
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The potential legal precedent
Greenberg passionately stressed that Ulbricht’s case could become a legal precedent for cases in the years ahead. He argued that the suspicious way that the government agents had accessed the Silk Road servers, and their behaviour in the trial, could have serious implications for digital and online rights in the future. Indeed, if governments are effectively able to break their own laws in order to access information, it poses big ethical questions. The lack of accountability and information is troubling, the panel argued.
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Anonymity and privacy online
Winter explained that he himself used Tor – the software that enables users to access and browse the dark web anonymously – purely because he was the victim of credit card fraud three times over. He said that governments using the argument ‘if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn’t be worried’ is beginning a new era of McCarthyism, stripping everyday citizens of their online right to be anonymous, and not have their data analysed. Winter told the audience that we should all have a little bit of fear.
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To raise questions and not editoralise
Winter, also the director of critically acclaimed documentary Downloaded (exploring Napster), explained that he wanted to raise questions about the case, and not editoralise, within Deep Web. He pointed to the facts of the case – that Silk Road was a website that sold illegal substances, that Ulbricht was undoubtedly an administrator of this site – and how he never tried to disprove these facts. Rather, he said he wanted to examine the people behind the headlines: who was Ulbricht? Why was the case conducted in this way?
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The end of the war on drugs?
It was a sticky notion that was raised – could websites like Silk Road effectively end the war on drugs? Winter claimed that the site moved the sale of drugs into a “safe place”, eliminating the danger of buying drugs on some dark alleyway from sketchy individuals. If you take away that interaction, instantly the danger of violence, that occurs so frequently in bad drug deals, is gone. Obviously this idea does not take in to account the dangerous nature of the drugs themselves – which should never be understated – but when you consider how many billions of dollars that have been spent, and how many lives have been lost in the brutal and bloody drug underworld, perhaps Silk Road was not as vile as it was made out to be.
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Deep Web screened as part of the 2015 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, on Sunday. There will be an additional screening on Wednesday at the Stateside Theatre at 11:00am.
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