Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2P

335 Pages·2018·1.78 MB·English

by  Robert W Gehl

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