
The other “Silk Road” and the problem of privacy
Published on September 6, 2022
The Silk Road on the dark web highlights a heated and tense debate: how far should data control and privacy go?
Pablo A. Ruz Salmones; CEO – X eleva Group
We have all heard of the Silk Road: that famous group of roads that originated in China in the Han dynasty in 130 BC. (although it was not called the Silk Road until the 19th century), and which grew to connect all of Asia and part of Europe for more than 1,000 years.
But have you heard of the Silk Road on the dark web? It is one of the most fascinating – and to some extent terrifying – stories of the internet, which puts the focus on one of the main technological and political debates of our times: how far should data control and privacy go?
The internet is a fascinating world, and most people are completely unaware of what is going on beyond Google, FB and Twitter. But it is so vast, that there are innumerable classifications and divisions, with certain main categories:
- Surface web: includes all the pages indexed by browsers; that is, they are common web pages such as Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube and others.
- Deep web: these are sites not indexed by search engines, but which you can access with some basic security keys; for example, username and password. Here are intranets, bank profiles, scientific articles, and even your email inbox.
- Dark web: it is a hidden part of the internet that can only be visited by special browsers. The most famous of them is “Tor”. The websites of this part of the internet have the ending “onion”, as well as the “normal” ones have the ending “.com” or similar. The dark web allows completely anonymous browsing. When you are on the dark web with special browsers, you can do it completely anonymously, since it masks IP addresses.
An IP address is a series of characters that identifies each device connected to the internet. Tor and other similar browsers hide IP addresses, making it impossible or very difficult to identify a device or its location, protecting the user.

Since it is completely anonymous, it can be used, for example, by journalists to spread news in countries that censor any kind of content that is not in accordance with the regime and also to keep state secrets. However, it can also be used to carry out illicit activities of all kinds.
Entering the dark web is something that generates a lot of curiosity. The good news is that it is perfectly legal. However, it can be risky if one does not take the necessary precautions, and of course, there are several sites that are exclusively dedicated to illegal activities. One of the most famous was known as Silk Road , founded in 2011.
All transactions were made with Bitcoin, which helped maintain the anonymity of buyers and sellers. The site quickly gained popularity among dark web users and went from selling harmless stuff to not-so-harmless stuff. As it became known, US authorities began extensive efforts to confiscate it, but it wasn’t easy.
In fact, the FBI was unable to block it until 2013, when they finally managed to identify Ross Ulbricht as the owner, and proceeded to arrest him on more than 7 counts, including computer fraud conspiracy, narcotics trafficking conspiracy, and money laundering. He was convicted of all of them and is currently serving 2 life sentences. It is estimated that at the time of the arrest the Silk Road had generated $213.9 million in sales and almost $13.2 million in commission for Ulbricht.
The case of the Silk Road was one of the first, or at least one of the best known, that put in the eye of the hurricane the issue of how far privacy should be something real and desirable. Today, almost 10 years after the closure of the site, the debate about privacy is more relevant than ever, because it raises an underlying social question: do we trust our authorities and companies to have our data? Or would we prefer something completely anonymous where things like what happened with the Silk Road can keep happening?
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