What if I was to tell you that there was a huge online trade in illegal drugs and services
happening right now under the noses of the police.
What if I were to tell you that accessing that black market was as easy as installing
a web browser and what if I were to tell you that the police are almost powerless to do
anything about it.
We spoke to a number of people who've used this black market and they told us of their
experiences.
So, here's Sam's journey into the darkweb.
The internet, with just a quick search you can buy almost anything...
almost.
But what if you want something a little less legitimate?
Like say, some heroine.
Well actually there is a place for that too but just like in real life you have to go
underground.
Welcome to the darkweb.
It's the side of the internet that you just can't get to through Google or standard browsers.
It can only be accessed through easy-to-find specialist software which sends your signal
down a maze of routes making it almost untraceable.
It was designed for political activists and those who didn't want the government tracking
their actions, but it's frequented by criminal elements including child pornography rings,
gangs claiming to be hitmen and very real drug dealers.
"Something special came in the mail."
Libertarian vlogger Adam Kokesh of Adam vs. The Man amazed his subscribers by buying hallucinogenic
DMT on one such site, the Silk Road, and inverted commas 'enjoying it' online.
So just what is the silk road?
Well it's the eBay of the illicit world in which buyers and sellers anonymously exchange
drugs, books and paraphernalia.
Adam says it's an inevitable product of our times.
"Fortunately the Silk Road is a great solution to what is merely a temporary problem.
The drug war creates a need for an online anonymous marketplace where you can evade
that accountability.
It just shows how futile the drug war is when people want to take control of their body
chemistry and if you try to stop them from doing that, they're going to find a way."
The site trades in an encrypted currency developed for computer games but bought and sold in
real life, known as Bitcoins and users rely on a feedback system to ensure dealers are
legitimate.
"I feel much more safe consuming substances or anything that I would buy from Silk Road
then ideally even at a grocery store.
You have solved one of the problems of the black market which is lack of accountability.
Anytime you point guns at people for what is normal economic activity and say well if
you do that, you exchange those goods and services we're going to lock you in a cage,
you have a great problem that is created and that is that of accountability.
On the Silk Road you have both perfect anonymity for the sellers as well as perfect accountability
because you have an account where people can be rated, where they can be held accountable
if something goes wrong.
So for a dealer on the black market outside of the Silk Road, yeh there's a little sketchiness
to that because someone could sell you something and then disappear but on the Silk Road people
actually have reputations and their business is based on their reputations.
It is a near perfect system.
Now I don't want to say that if you have something delivered to your door nothing bad will happen
to you because that's not true but you do have plausible deniability and it is very
difficult for them to prosecute in cases like that.
It's not perfect, but it's still a heck of a lot safer than buying on the street."
But that doesn't mean you can't get burned buying drugs online.
In Spring 2012 one of the Silk Road's most trusted buyers under the name Tony76 launched
a fire sale of cut price drugs whilst demanding up-front payment rather than the usual method
of putting money into a digital holding pen.
Buyers, trusting his good name, bought drugs thought to be worth hundreds of thousands
of dollars which never arrived because Tony vanished taking the cash with him never to
be seen again.
Likewise there's nothing to stop law enforcement leaving bad feedback or selling fake drugs
themselves exploiting the one kink in the system's armor that the often paranoid buyer
and seller have to trust each other.
But questions over trust and the obvious illegality of many of its products aren't the Silk Road's
and other websites like it only conundrum.
There's an obvious moral question.
Is it right that drugs should be freely available online for anyone to get their hands on.
An adult making a decision about what to put in their body is one thing but what's to stop
a 12-year-old from buying cocaine for example then either using it or selling it at school.
Silk Road claims not to sell anything that could harm others but that means nothing to
the end user who may just have found an easy supply to sell on.
But how about this for an interesting twist?
Assuming some people are always going to take illegal substances, could the Silk Road's
very active community forums actually be a tool to engage with and encourage safety among
the drug use community?
Tim Bingham is an independent researcher who also has links to the Irish Needle Exchange
Forum and he says the site could be a useful tool to encourage those who want to use to
do so responsibly and help those who want to quit.
"There's a load of information on the forums and there's some very good information on
the forums as well around safety.
A lot of the people engaged on the forums are, have an awful lot of knowledge and they
are prepared to share that knowledge with other people, to keep other people safe.
I mean you've got people, you've got people... there's a thread on how can I, you know, if
someone wants to reduce their drug use and reduce what they're taking how can they do
that safely and other people engaged in that will say it's safe to take x drug with x drug.
There was a thread recently on Benzos and how can I come off Benzo's safely.
I think part of it is a new era for, even for drugs workers, I think drugs workers actually
start engaging on these sites because you're engaged with a cohort of users that wouldn't
necessarily be presenting these services.
I think that's another interesting step for us to be taking."
So what do you think?
Have you used the darkweb to buy drugs?
Is it safer, or is the anonymous marketplace more of a danger to society than the identifiable
drug dealer?
Comment, post your video responses and there's always subscribe, like and share...
the video that is.
Not drugs.
That's illegal.