The Dark Net

by Jamie Bartlett

  p.31 ‘But real life investigations into . . .’ http://internettrash.com/users/adflameweb/TROLLFAQ.html.

  p.31 ‘The vicious troll, it turned out . . .’ http://magstheaxe.wordpress.com/2006/08/16/memories-of-the-usenet-wars; Boyd’s email to the group about Kehoe is in full here: http://internettrash.com/users/adflameweb/2belo.html.

  p.32 ‘Smart was also stalked by . . .’ On 2 April 2003, Derek Smart posted the following on his website (his exasperation with the consistent trolling I think is fairly self-evident): ‘I have three police reports and in one such case, that kid he instigated got visited and was almost carted away. That’s when they found out that he was, in fact, a juvenille. I have spoken to the San Diego police. So has my attorney. They can’t do anything until he does something criminal. And they offered that we contact the FBI if we have all this evidence because it leads directly to criminal cyberstalking. We did. Nothing has become of that yet. I tried to get a restraining order – in San Diego (I actually flew there!) but it wasn’t granted because there was no implied violence or threat. I guess they’re waiting for him to show up at my house and kill my family first. Especially considering that shortly after this kid mentioned spotting me in my neighborhood (he lived about 20 mins from me at the time – according to the police report), was boasting about owning a shotgun. And that was before the kid got visited and then said that he had made the whole thing up (about me calling his house, following him etc) and that Huffman had asked him to find out where I lived. I have almost had SEVEN years of this crap. I choose NOT to post about it nor even talk about it because some of them have been very, very painful experiences. To the extent that when this kid posted – on July 4th weekend 2000 (while I was out of town!!) – that he had seen me (he described the car I was driving, what I was wearing etc), my fiance threatened to up and leave unless we moved. So, wumpus, while somewhere obviously in your brain you have a few brain cells on the fritz and which lead you to believe that THIS IS FUN, let me tell you something, retard, ITS NOT FUCKING FUN!! I have NO idea what your motivations are and I don’t give a flying fuck. You want us to turn the forum into a battleground, fine, that is EXACTLY what we’ll do!’

  p.32 ‘Smart applied for restraining orders . . .’ The US court documents relating to the charges brought by Smart against Huffman: http://ia700703.us.archive.org/0/items/gov.uscourts.casd.404008/gov.us courts.casd.404008.1.0.pdf.

  p.32 ‘At the turn of the . . .’ SomethingAwful.com hosts a wide variety of funny and offensive content – especially blogs, videos and stories – written by editors and forum members; it also hosts several large forums. Fark.com is a satirical site with stories submitted by users of the site. Slashdot.com was more about open-source software and technology but also had a subversive edge and was opposed to censorship. Slashdot, founded in 2000, had a vast online community, many of them Usenetters, and celebrated user-generated in-jokes and memes. SomethingAwful forum members – those who posted regularly on the site called themselves ‘Goons’ – frequently targeted other more serious websites for raids and general mischief-making.

  p.35 ‘Out of this milieu came . . .’ http://www.thestar.com/life/2007/ 09/22/funny_how_stupid_site_is_addictive.html.

  p.35 ‘Futaba’s web address was . . .’ http://jonnydigital.com/4chan-history.

  p.35 ‘The quasi-enforced anonymity meant that /b/ . . .’ Shock trolling (v.) Shock value trolling is a common tactic practised by exposing the targeted victim to disturbing or shocking content, such as materials from shock sites, horror or pornographic images, in order to provoke a strong reaction. The Goatse image is probably the best known example (Source: Know Your Meme). YouTube Troll (n.) Hateful, racist, sexist, immature, misspelled, questionable comments made by internet trolls mainly consisting of an age group of 7–13, where immature coward kids go to gain confidence by writing hateful messages they’ll never have the guts to say in their lifetime (Source: Urban Dictionary). YouTube Troll II (n.) 4chan /b/ users who randomly pick an obscure YouTube video from an obscure band, and simultaneously write serious-looking RIP messages of condolences about a band member that has supposedly just passed away. The intention is to scare fans, other band mates, family members, friends et cetera. (Disclaimer: this is actually quite funny.) (Source: Me, watching them do it). Advice trolling (v): Advice trolling is used to mislead people by offering dubious or false advice, especially to newbies who are less experienced and more gullible than others. Prime examples include Download More RAM, Delete System 32 and Alt*+ F4 (Source: Know Your Meme). Bait-and-switch trolling (v.) A common tactic in online fraud and practical humour that involves falsely advertising a hyperlink as a destination of interest, when in fact, it leads to something that is irrelevant or undesirable. Examples of bait-and-switch images and videos include The Hampster Dance, Duckroll, Rickroll, Trololol, Epic Sax Guy and Nigel Thornberry Remix, as well as copypasta stories like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Spaghetti Stories, Tree Fiddy and Burst into Treats among others (Source: Know Your Meme). Facebook Memorial / RIP Troll (n.) Groups of users who look for the memorial pages on Facebook of users – especially those who have committed suicide – and then bombard the page with insults, pornography and anything else that might cause offence. www.knowyourmeme.com.

  p.41 ‘In 1990, the American lawyer . . .’ Remarkably, Godwin’s Law was itself consciously designed to become a meme to counter the use of Nazi analogies online. http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if.html.

  p.42 ‘According to other academic studies . . .’ Pease, A. and Pease, B., The Definitive Book of Body Language: How to Read Others’ Thoughts by their Gestures; Birdwhistell, R. L., Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication; Mehrabian, A., Nonverbal Communication.

  p.43 ‘The trolls themselves claim that they are . . .’ Phillips, W., ‘LOLing at Tragedy’, First Monday: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3168/3115.

  Chapter 2

  The Lone Wolf

  p.49 ‘Blood and Honour, the epicentre . . .’ De Koster, W. and Houtman, D. (2008) ‘Stormfront is like a Second Home to Me’. Information, Communication and Society, Vol. 11, Iss. 8. See also http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/white-homicide-worldwide.

  p.49 ‘According to researchers at King’s College. . .’ Bergen, J. and Strathern, B., Who Matters Online: Measuring Influence, Evaluating Content and Countering Violent Extremism in Online Social Networks, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

  p.50 ‘In early 2007, supporters of . . .’ Burkeman, O., ‘Exploding pigs and volleys of gunfire as Le Pen opens HQ in virtual world’, Guardian, 20 January 2007 (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jan/20/news.france, accessed 24 December 2013). The Guardian’s Oliver Burkeman, using an avatar, tracked the party down to Axel, another Second Life neighbourhood, ‘where they had rebuilt their headquarters and were engaging a handful of opponents in relatively restrained debate’. Au, Wagner James, ‘Fighting the Front’, 15 January 2007, New World Notes (http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/01/stronger_than_h.html, accessed 24 December 2013). The arrival of the party led to a virtual riot, in which a peaceful protest descended into a battlefield. According to Second Life authority Wagner James Au, it was a ‘virtual conflagration of mini-guns, cursing Frenchmen and exploding pigs’. As he puts it: ‘And so it raged, a ponderous and dreamlike conflict of machine guns, sirens, police cars, “rez cages” (which can trap an unsuspecting avatar), explosions, and flickering holograms of marijuana leaves and kids’ TV characters, and more . . . And when the lag was not too overwhelming to stream audio, the whole fracas was accompanied by bursts of European techno . . . One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they’d explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel.’

  p.50 ‘The Jewish human rights organisation . . .’ http://web.archive.org/web/20140402122017/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140402122017/hatedirectory.com/hatedir.pdf;; Council
of Europe, Young People Combating Hate Speech On-Line, Mapping study on projects against hate speech online, April 2012, www.coe.int/t/dg4/youth/Source/Training/Training_courses/2012_Mapping_projects_against_Hate_Speech.pdf; Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2012 Digital Hate Report, Simon Wiesenthal Center, (accessed 20 March 2013).

  p.50 ‘The online world has become . . .’ Wolf, C., ‘The Role of The Internet Community in Combating Hate Speech’, in Szoka, B. and Marcus, A. (eds), The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet, TechFreedom: Washington, DC. See also Tiven, L., Hate on the Internet: A Response Guide for Educators and Families, Partners Against Hate, www.partnersagainsthate.org/publications/hoi_defining_problem.pdf (accessed 20 March 2013).

  p.51 ‘Large chunks of it were copied . . .’ Berwick, A., 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, p.595.

  p.51 ‘The term was popularised . . .’ http://nation.time.com/2013/02/27/the-danger-of-the-lone-wolf-terrorist/.

  p.53 ‘By June 2011, he’d farmed . . .’ Berwick, A., 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, pp.1,416–8. He then goes on to say, ‘I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year. I played MW1 as well but I didn’t really like it as I’m generally more the fantasy RPG kind of person Dragon Age Origins etc., and not so much into first-person shooters. I see MW2 more as a part of my training simulation than anything else. I’ve still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations.’

  p.54 ‘Some of them were supporters of . . .’ Breivik used the pseudonym Sigurd Jorsalfar to write on an EDL forum in 2011. He may have attended an EDL demo in 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/07/26/norway-gunman-anders-brei_n_909619.html; http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/07/anders-breivik-and-the-english-defence-league.html; in 2083, he claims to have had more than 600 Facebook friends from the EDL – and he even claims to have ‘supplied them with processed ideological material’. Tommy Robinson has repeatedly denied having any knowledge of Anders Breivik’s links to the EDL.

  p.55 ‘It took these parties years . . .’ Wiks-Heeg, S., The Canary in the Coalmine? Explaining the Emergence of the British National Party in English Local Politics’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 62, no. 3; McGuinness, F., Membership of UK Political Parties – Commons Library Standard Note, 3 December 2012.

  p.55 ‘Stephen Yaxley-Lennon . . .’ ‘Tommy Robinson’ is a pseudonym first used by a former Luton Town FC football hooligan.

  p.55 ‘Tommy and his friends decided to . . .’ Copsey, N., The English Defence League, p.8.

  p.56 ‘It attracted hundreds of people . . .’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1187165/Nine-arrested-masked-mobs-march-Muslim-extremists-turns-violent.html.

  p.56 ‘Together with a friend . . .’ The earliest days of the EDL remain the subject of some debate. By the time Tommy set up the EDL Facebook page, the UPL had a Facebook page (‘Ban the Terrorists’) with over 1,500 fans. Paul Ray, another early member, has claimed that ‘The original EDL was instigated by myself coming together with members of UPL (United People of Luton) and other anti-Jihad activists around the country who finally had enough of the danger posed to our local communities and the country as a whole.’ This is denied by Tommy, who said Ray had very little to do with the EDL in the beginning.

  p.57 ‘But the group’s reputation grew . . .’ Bartlett, J. and Littler, M., Inside the EDL, Demos.

  p.60 ‘According to Hel Gower . . .’ In 2009, the EDL Facebook admins started banning people who used racist language, in response to growing media scrutiny of the group. Dozens were purged, and coalesced around another blog, mainly to complain about the touchy and politically correct admin. An old but good article is A. R. Edwards’ ‘The Moderator as an Emerging Democratic Intermediary: The Role of the Moderator in Internet Discussions about Public Issues’, Information Polity, 2002.

  p.63 ‘It’s an online collective mainly based . . .’ It is now on its thirty-second incarnation, as it has been closed down so many times.

  p.65 ‘Tommy Robinson told me that almost every . . .’ The purpose of infiltrating a group is usually to get access to more private conversations, and then make them public. In 2012, one antifa group claimed to have found and infiltrated a hidden EDL group, The Church of the United Templars, which was being used ‘as a platform for grown men to post pictures of themselves dressed as Templar Knights and dream about violent attack on Muslims and “saving England”’.

  p.67 ‘Even then, he says . . .’ Anders Breivik’s writing also reveals how important he believed it was to ensure that nationalists make themselves difficult to identify. In 2083, he advises: ‘Avoid using channels they can monitor for activities involving planning of the operation. Use aliases when corresponding while doing research. Use software which masks your IP address and other technology while researching via the internet (for example the Tor network, anonymize.net or Ipredator). Be extra careful when researching for bomb schematics (fertiliser bombs) as many terms will trigger electronic alerts. You can consider using other people’s networks remotely via laptop by parking outside their apartment/house. You can also buy an anonymous laptop and browse free from your local McDonald’s etc. Use software to remove spyware, cookies etc.’ (2038: A European Declaration of Independence, p.853).

  p.68 ‘Its self-confessed aim is to find and identify . . .’ People associated with Nick Lowles had managed to infiltrate the RedWatch Yahoo group in 2004, and claim that the purpose of doxing was to subtly encourage other people to physically attack them, without actually inciting them directly.

  p.68 ‘It is infrequently updated, but retains . . .’ RedWatch was first published by the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 as a printed bulletin in the 1990s (probably March 1992). The website was launched in 2001. Perhaps the most significant incident, which first brought notoriety to RedWatch, took place in April 2003, when Leeds schoolteachers Sally Kincaid and Steve Johnson had their details appear on RedWatch and soon afterwards their car was firebombed. On January 2004, the question of the legality of RedWatch was brought up by Lord Greaves, and was answered by Baroness Scotland in the House of Lords. The website was last updated on 12 September 2013, and is now only infrequently updated; who it is that currently updates and maintains the site is unclear. http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/insider/article/2522/redwatch-raided.

  p.68 ‘Doxers seem to know no limits . . .’ The Communications Act 2003, for example, makes it an offence to send an electronic communication that is grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or of menacing character. It is also an offence to use such a network to send for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety a message that the sender knows to be false. However, it is often difficult to secure prosecution under this piece of legislation, because of the difficulty of determining how serious and realistic a menace really is.

  p.68 ‘People go to great lengths . . .’ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/27/the-mujahedeen-hackers-who-clean-facebook-and-the-facebook-privacy-breakthrough.html.

  p.69 ‘He was a football hooligan, and now . . .’ In January 2014, Robinson was convicted of mortgage fraud and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. At the time of writing – June 2014 – he is out on early release.

  p.69 ‘Creating our own realities is nothing new . . .’ The American academic Eli Pariser has documented something he calls online ‘the filter bubble’: people increasingly surround themselves with information that corroborates their own world view and reduces their exposure to conflicting information. Pariser, E., The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You. In the UK, we already have what is called a ‘reality–perception gap’. For example, in a 2011 survey, 62 per cent of respondents thought of ‘asylum seekers’ when asked what they associate with immigrants. In fact, asylum seekers are only 4 per cent of the immigrant population. Perceptions and reality part company: and social media
can make this worse. It certainly has in these groups.

  Chapter 3

  Into Galt’s Gulch

  p.74 ‘Millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin . . .’ http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/26/bitcoins-gain-currency-in-berlin (accessed 9 January 2014).

  p.76 ‘One day in late 1992 . . .’ Manne, R., ‘The Cypherpunk Revolutionary: Julian Assange’ in Making Trouble: Essays Against the New Australian Complacency, Black Inc, p.204. This story is also brilliantly told in Greenberg, A., This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers. I draw on Greenberg’s account throughout.

  p.76 ‘The all believed that the great political issue . . .’ Levy, S., ‘Crypto-rebels’, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels.html?pg= 8&topic=, 1993 (accessed 23 February 2014); www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2011/march/1324265093/robert-manne/cypherpunk-revolutionary (accessed 23 February 2014).