In 2013, Ross Ulbricht, the head of Silk Road, an e-commerce platform for illicit drugs, unwittingly revealed his name in an email, leading to his arrest by the FBI and the closure of the platform. But that did not stop its operators and users. Within a couple of years, they had adopted a new identity verification system and migrated to other markets, conducting more than one million transactions over the next four years, according to research by Professor Isak Ladegaard of the Department of Sociology. What makes this case interesting is that it is not a solitary example. As Professor Ladegaard shows in his new book Open Secrecy: How Technology Empowers the Digital Underworld, other illicit operators, including American far-right groups and Chinese software developers seeking to get around firewalls, have similarly been able to regroup despite efforts to shut them down. And this is creating a new challenge for the state. “This is not about tech-savvy criminals,” he said. “Open Secrecy is about how state control is undermined by these new capacities for collective action. Even though we live in a time of mass surveillance, people are using information technology to organise and maintain their own worlds, even when they work against the state.” This is made possible by the novel mixing of technologies. For example, the online drug trade is supported by military-grade encryption, cryptocurrencies, and rerouting software, in particular, Tor. Users can remain anonymous to others, including law enforcement, while also working together publicly on the platform. The Thriving Dark Web Rebuild and carry on The case is somewhat different for Chinese software developers and engineers, who develop tools to circumnavigate rules and restrictions on internet access. They tend to do this voluntarily, for practical or interest reasons, and do not have the same financial pressures or motivations as the far right and drug dealers. But they operate similarly, communicating via encrypted channels, anonymously or pseudonymously, and regrouping when one arm is shut down, in this case by Chinese law enforcement. “I focussed on these three cases in part because even when powerful organisations try to stop them, people are still able to rebuild and carry on,” Professor Ladegaard said. “If the police catch one big player or one market, it doesn’t really matter anymore because the cat is out of the bag. People have learnt how to work together across different digital spaces.” And while AI may add a new dimension, both sides have access to the same technology. “Law enforcement is changing its strategies, but it does seem like a fight it will not be able to win, because people in these underworlds are capable, and there are more of them than there are people trying to stop them. “This is part of a bigger story. Oftentimes new technology just reproduces the world as it already is, for example, the internet reproducing inequality. But sometimes technology leads to real social change. I think this is an example of that because state power is undermined in a new way.” Encrypted and anonymised Professor Ladegaard started researching online drug markets while he was a journalist in Oslo (he graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism from HKU in 2012) and noticed online drug markets were brazenly presenting their wares like a stripped-down Amazon or eBay. The encryption technology has meant they can blur communications from non-parties. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have meant they can make payments to anyone without using banks and regulated processes. And Tor gives them access to the dark web so internet activity can be anonymised. “Even the National Security Agency in the US has a hard time figuring out who is using Tor, which tells you a lot about how solid the technology is,” he said. The benefits of all this to the illicit drug trade are obvious. But in his investigations, Professor Ladegaard was also interested to see how others use the technology to organise and communicate. “The far right was a pretty obvious choice because they’ve always had a strong presence on the internet and they’re a dangerous force,” he said. “They’ve also always been into adopting new technology, I think because it promises simple solutions.” Far-right platforms have also been shut down by big tech companies, such as Google, Apple and Meta, yet managed to relocate to the dark web. Because they have millions of users, the move is expensive, so they financed it with cryptocurrencies and adopted anonymising technology, similar to the drug trade. “There are overlaps in how they operate and exist because of advances in information technology. They could not really have existed in the same way 15 or 20 years ago,” he said. Professor Isak Ladegaard If the police catch one big player or one market, it doesn’t really matter anymore because the cat is out of the bag. People have learnt how to work together across different digital spaces. Open Secrecy: How Technology Empowers the Digital Underworld Author: Isak Ladegaard Publisher: University of California Press Year of Publication: 2025 The digital underworld is a thorn in the side of authorities, who struggle to eliminate communities involved in dealing drugs, promoting far-right conspiracies and circumventing state firewalls, among other illicit activities. Professor Isak Ladegaard explores this phenomenon in a new book. HKU Bulletin | Nov 2025 Books 50 51
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