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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.

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Speaker 2: Our colleague Noel is on an adventure, but will be

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Speaker 2: returning soon.

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Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our

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Speaker 3: super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you argue,

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Speaker 3: you are here and that makes this the stuff they

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Speaker 3: don't want you to know. Longtime listeners, Matt, Dylan, you

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Speaker 3: guys know this as well. We're familiar with the concept

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Speaker 3: of the dark net, the way it is both misrepresented

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Speaker 3: and accurately explored in the information age. Matt, what's the

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Speaker 3: most basic definition of the dark net?

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Speaker 2: It's the stuff that's not easy to get to if

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Speaker 2: you're just using a browser the way most of us do,

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Speaker 2: when we're accessing parts of the Internet that we're used to.

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Speaker 2: It's the stuff that's a little more hidden.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, and that's that's a really great starting point

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Speaker 3: for that definition. You know. It's it's the part of

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Speaker 3: the wide Internet that is not indexed by search engines,

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Speaker 3: as you said, but there's a lot more to that,

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Speaker 3: because in the absence of transparency, all sorts of things

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Speaker 3: can thrive. I think we're both interested to learn study

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Speaker 3: show the dark net is home to an astonishing, terrifying

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Speaker 3: amount of criminal activity of almost any genre one might imagine.

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Speaker 3: And this evening, fellow conspiracy realist Matt We are thrilled

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Speaker 3: to be joined with the award winning journalist, technology researcher,

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Speaker 3: global pre eminent expert on all things involving the dark

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Speaker 3: net and the future of a technological age. It's the

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Speaker 3: author and host of the number one podcast kill List,

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Speaker 3: Carl Miller. Carl, thank you so much for joining us today.

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Speaker 4: Hi Ben, Hi Matt. Thanks for having me on and

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Speaker 4: few I was I was afraid you were going to

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Speaker 4: make me do the technical definitions. That's a relief.

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Speaker 2: Well we got this. I assure you. We probably didn't

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Speaker 2: do as well as you could. Carl, But because you

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Speaker 2: know those are the terms, let's actually start there. Because

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Speaker 2: the terms the deep web, the dark net, all of

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Speaker 2: these things get thrown around a lot. Is there a

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Speaker 2: better way to like set us up for that, Carl?

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Actually, a few days ago at a Journalism Club in London.

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Speaker 4: I was doing a live event where we talk about

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Speaker 4: darknet investigations and it was kicked over to me to

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Speaker 4: define it at the very beginning, and it actually did

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Speaker 4: make me pause for a moment because because you're right,

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Speaker 4: it's a whole kind of pylon of different phrases that

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Speaker 4: kind of overlap and but they also mean different things.

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Speaker 4: So you've got the Onion router. You've got the tour browser,

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Speaker 4: so particular browser that basically uses encryption in one way

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Speaker 4: or another to basically hide the websites that you're looking

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Speaker 4: at from both the website and from an ultimately you.

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Speaker 4: So it kind of camouflages the request in layers and

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Speaker 4: layers of encryption. But then you've got tour hidden services,

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Speaker 4: which is different. These are specific websites, and these are

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Speaker 4: typically what we mean by the dark web. They don't

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Speaker 4: have a dot com or dot net extension domain at

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Speaker 4: the end. They've got a dot onion domain and it's

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Speaker 4: normally an address which is tons of numbers. And these

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Speaker 4: are specifically the websites that probably people mean because they're

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Speaker 4: the ones that when accessed by the tour brows and

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Speaker 4: mean that you are genuinely anonymous.

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Speaker 3: And this is this is an important differentiation, right, a clarification, because,

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Speaker 3: as I'm sure you have seen in your work, Coral,

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Speaker 3: there are so many It is a Venn diagram, isn't it.

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Speaker 3: We see so many breathless headlines sometimes that perhaps frightened people.

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Speaker 3: We see so many headlines that perhaps downplay some of

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Speaker 3: the clear and present dangers here. You have been in

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Speaker 3: this world for quite some time in your work on

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Speaker 3: the promises and the potential dangers of the information age,

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Speaker 3: pull in so many related subjects, disinfo, cybercrime, the rise

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Speaker 3: of online conspiracy groups or hate speech, and of course

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Speaker 3: kill List. Before we get to kill list, could you

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Speaker 3: give us maybe a bit of your origin story and

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Speaker 3: share with the audience what set you on the path

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Speaker 3: to pursue this vocation.

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Speaker 4: Of course, you're making me sound like a superhero, and

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Speaker 4: I'm certainly not with an origin story. But I've been

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Speaker 4: sometimes somewhat reluctantly, kind of immersed in this kind of

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Speaker 4: world of what we would call as research as online

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Speaker 4: harms for a very long time. Now, it goes all

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Speaker 4: the way back to about two ninety ten. I was

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Speaker 4: at a think tank at that point. I just was

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Speaker 4: I was wet behind the years fresh out of university,

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Speaker 4: and kind of it was just coinciding with the kind

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Speaker 4: of rise of social media. You know, Facebook was just

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Speaker 4: creeping out of campuses. Twitter was just a few years away,

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Speaker 4: and me and some colleagues of mine back then, we

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Speaker 4: were like completely convinced of two things, and I think

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Speaker 4: we were right about both of them. We were wrong

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Speaker 4: about lots of other things. Number One, the rise of

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Speaker 4: this new world was going to be a tremendous agent

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Speaker 4: a social change. It was going to change just about everything.

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Speaker 4: Who we thought we were, the problems that we saw

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Speaker 4: in the world, the identities that we held most preciously,

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Speaker 4: the relationships we were all going to have, the politics

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Speaker 4: that we were going to pursue. All of that was

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Speaker 4: going to get radically reformed, we thought, in the years ahead.

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Speaker 4: But on the other hand, there was this unbelievable opportunity

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Speaker 4: to research ourselves in new ways because when you were

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Speaker 4: looking at social media data, you look at all these

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Speaker 4: forums or even.

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Speaker 2: The dark net.

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Speaker 4: Suddenly you had tremendous amounts of data and information and

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Speaker 4: evidence that you could access, which completely totally eclipsed the

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Speaker 4: kind of normal ways in which we try to understand people,

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Speaker 4: and so began then this kind of more than a

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Speaker 4: decade now than me basically trying to get my head

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Speaker 4: around how to research these different spaces. Sometimes that's been

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Speaker 4: in the form of data and building technologies, using AI

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Speaker 4: and crunching lots of numbers. Sometimes it's been much more journalistic,

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Speaker 4: trying to reach the people and go to the places,

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Speaker 4: whether they're online or offline, where I really thought I

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Speaker 4: needed to be in order to learn what's going on.

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Speaker 4: And as suppose, from about twenty seventeen onwards, the main

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Speaker 4: question has been around power, like how power was changing,

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Speaker 4: like who was being newly empowered by the kind of

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Speaker 4: revolutionary emergence of these technologies, and who in fact was

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Speaker 4: being being kind of undermined and really cutting through as

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Speaker 4: much of the hype and waffle and as I possibly could.

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Speaker 4: I think one of the things, I'm sure that you

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Speaker 4: share it. One of my big frustrations is that this

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Speaker 4: kind of whole conversation we've had around the rise of

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Speaker 4: the Internet has been actually quite a bad one, and

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Speaker 4: it's been full of you know, really poor kind of

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Speaker 4: assumptions and as much myth and exaggeration as reality.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, at least we won't have to use it

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Speaker 2: very much, at least for much longer, because it'll all

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Speaker 2: just be language learning models right doing everything, and we'll

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Speaker 2: just kind of get to get a little window into

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Speaker 2: the Internet every once in a while. I'm curious about

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Speaker 2: how Chris Montero enters into your life and into that

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Speaker 2: world that you're already exploring. He seems like a very

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Speaker 2: interesting human being. He's just he describes himself on medium

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Speaker 2: as a pirate, cis admin, transhumanist, and Internet hipster. Who

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Speaker 2: is Chris Montero? And how does he work into the

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Speaker 2: story and get you to kill.

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Speaker 3: List and vigilante style too?

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Speaker 4: I mean Chris is a hacker.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it professional.

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Speaker 4: Chris is the hacker. And I first got to know

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Speaker 4: Chris when I was actually really trying to meet as

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Speaker 4: many people I could in both law enforcement and the

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Speaker 4: world of cyber crime and everyone in the middle. I

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Speaker 4: was writing a book and I thought that this about power,

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Speaker 4: and I thought this area of how kind of crime

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Speaker 4: was changing, and how law enforcement's changing, and how maybe

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Speaker 4: the balances and equilibria of power between those two different

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Speaker 4: kind of forces were also changing. I thought that was

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Speaker 4: probably one of the most important stories to tell about

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Speaker 4: the last twenty years, and so I was. But that

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Speaker 4: story couldn't be told just sitting behind the screen. You

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Speaker 4: can't just like google together some stories from the New

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Speaker 4: York Times or The Guardian to get you to that answer.

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Speaker 4: So I basically resolved to go out and meet and

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Speaker 4: get to know and in fact live in the different

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Speaker 4: place where I needed to in order to try and

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Speaker 4: get a better sense of that question. So I became

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Speaker 4: embedded with a police cybercrime team for a bit, and

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Speaker 4: I was learning more about all of that. I was

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Speaker 4: actually living in a political technology commune at that point

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Speaker 4: as well. But then I also decided that I need

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Speaker 4: to understand more about what cybercrime looked like. And I

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Speaker 4: was kind of being passed from person to person in

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Speaker 4: the way that this kind often happens in this world,

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Speaker 4: especially when there's not a lot of trust and you've

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Speaker 4: got a lot of people that are not entirely open

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Speaker 4: to meeting new new friends. And then I first got

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Speaker 4: to meet Chris that way, a kind of mutual friend

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Speaker 4: of ours puts in touch. And it was probably twenty seventeen,

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Speaker 4: I think, and it was just before Christmas. It was

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Speaker 4: a kind of I remember it was a kind of

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Speaker 4: really rainy day and I was quite ill, and I

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Speaker 4: definitely wasn't looking forward to going to one of the

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Speaker 4: overstuffed pubs of central London to have an elbow in

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Speaker 4: my back for hours. And then as soon as I

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Speaker 4: kind of met Chris there, he kind of turned around

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Speaker 4: his phone. He said, I'm looking at these assassinations sites

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Speaker 4: that exist on the darkneck.

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Speaker 2: That was just how.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: That was within minutes of us beginning to talk, and

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Speaker 4: he was kind of beginning to dig into them. He

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Speaker 4: had actually kind of blogged about it, and he'd began

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Speaker 4: to say publicly he thought they were scams. The big

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Speaker 4: question was like are these real? Are they are these scams?

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Speaker 4: We knew that drug markets were real, we knew there

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Speaker 4: are a lot of other markets that were not, and

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Speaker 4: we were like trying to work out whether these things

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Speaker 4: were or not. And he'd actually the other thing that

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Speaker 4: he sent me, which made me very nervous and not

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Speaker 4: quite sure how to proceed, was he turned his phone

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Speaker 4: around again and there was a video of a man

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Speaker 4: in a kind of mask with his username Chris is

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Speaker 4: username on a piece of paper and a torch shines

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Speaker 4: at the paper and then it goes dark, and then

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Speaker 4: you could hear a rustling and then a there's a

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Speaker 4: car in the kind of middle distance, and then suddenly

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Speaker 4: it burst into flames. It was a warning, and scammers

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Speaker 4: don't really do that. Scammers don't really torch carves very often,

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Speaker 4: Matthia do. Organized criminals do, but not scammers. And so

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Speaker 4: that was my first meeting with Chris.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 3: And when we fast forward a little bit, we go

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Speaker 3: to twenty twenty, you and you and Chris know each other.

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Speaker 3: I'm still still a bit amazed by that classic Chris

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Speaker 3: small talk of and nice to meet you. Yeah, here's

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Speaker 3: the list of hitman's sites. So he reaches out to

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Speaker 3: you and he says, look, I haven't just found one

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Speaker 3: site in specific, I have managed to compromise this site.

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Speaker 3: I have hacked it. I have gained what we would

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Speaker 3: call back end access. Could you tell us a little

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Speaker 3: bit about the moment when you and Chris discover this

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Speaker 3: and maybe your initial reaction actions. I'm especially interested in

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Speaker 3: the point you already made their Carl, that it's sort

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Speaker 3: of known a lot of these sites might be scared.

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Speaker 4: Well, so we were actually already embarking Chris and I

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Speaker 4: and some producers on a podcast slightly before that keystone

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Speaker 4: kind of life changing revelational discovery.

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Speaker 3: It was.

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Speaker 4: It was on assassination markets, but it was supposed to

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Speaker 4: be a quick, little six week retrospective looking at them

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Speaker 4: over the last couple of years and maybe talking to

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Speaker 4: some people that had been digging into them as well,

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Speaker 4: and people that had been kind of either implicated and

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Speaker 4: using them or had been targeted, you know, and there

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Speaker 4: were some stories knocking around about them, and so, you know,

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Speaker 4: it was COVID. It was twenty twenty. It was probably

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Speaker 4: like April ish, twenty twenty, and and like kind of

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Speaker 4: most of my attention was on the world shutting down,

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Speaker 4: and on where was I going to get my alcohol

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Speaker 4: wipes from to wipe down my apple, you know, and

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Speaker 4: kind of when's my oga mat going to arrive, you know,

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Speaker 4: and all these sorts of things. And then during one

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Speaker 4: of these calls, like me and Chris and the others

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Speaker 4: were just beginning to spin up, like our thinking around

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Speaker 4: how are you going to do this? Then Chris kind

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Speaker 4: of tells us that he'd made this faithful discovery, you know,

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Speaker 4: he'd found this vulnerability in the way the site worked,

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Speaker 4: and he'd wiggled through it, and that allowed him to

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Speaker 4: essentially get, as you said, into the back end, so

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Speaker 4: for the site to believe that he was basically an administrator.

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Speaker 4: And in that first meeting, you know, he laid out

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Speaker 4: for us like what that really meant, like the implications

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Speaker 4: of what that meant. It wasn't immediately clear to me

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Speaker 4: what gaining back end access to an assassination market would

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Speaker 4: really mean to me, to our team or to the podcast.

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Speaker 4: But the implication really was that he could then see

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Speaker 4: the orders that were being placed. That was the big thing.

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Speaker 4: So you log into this site and you've got to

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Speaker 4: user name and password, and you're kind of messaging you

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Speaker 4: believe you're messaging the kind of mafia's e commerce portal. Basically,

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Speaker 4: that's what this that's what these sites claim to be.

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Speaker 4: They're like, hey, with the Albanian Mafia or with the

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Speaker 4: Comoral Mafia or whatever, you know, log in and talk

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Speaker 4: to us and we'll we'll we'll sort out your hip

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Speaker 4: man for you. We'll be the honest middleman, will be

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Speaker 4: the broker. That's they're like the eBay, you know, we'll

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Speaker 4: hold the money safely for you until the hit man's

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Speaker 4: done the job. That's what they're saying they'll they'll do.

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Speaker 4: And we thought there were dozens of people, like dozens

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Speaker 4: of like serious sustained conversation chains, some of them going

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Speaker 4: on for weeks or months between the users of this

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Speaker 4: site and the administrators, and that was all now coming

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Speaker 4: into our inboxes in real time.

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Speaker 3: Wow. And the administrators did not know this was occurring at.

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Speaker 4: The time, The admins did not know that we had access. No,

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Speaker 4: and we we were very careful to not leave any

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Speaker 4: traces or tracks, so we weren't don't change anything. We

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Speaker 4: certainly weren't replying or adding any messages. We were just

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Speaker 4: very very quietly lurking in that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and being able to see that stuff in near

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Speaker 2: real time, to see new names pop up, new you know,

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Speaker 2: photographs of a human being pop up on there that

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Speaker 2: is at least within the showkill list listening to it.

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Speaker 2: That's an intense concept to then process and imagine you guys,

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Speaker 2: you know, on the cutting edge there and then trying

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Speaker 2: to decide what to do. So, once you have this information,

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Speaker 2: there's a lot of responsibility perhaps or maybe you felt

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Speaker 2: the weight of that responsibility. What did you guys choose

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Speaker 2: to do immediately following that or how long did it

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Speaker 2: take to figure out what to do?

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Speaker 3: Well?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so I mean it's as you said, real time

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Speaker 4: threw us from any kind of idea of as being

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Speaker 4: a retrospective into a kind of a real time, kind

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Speaker 4: of contemporary scramble. Actually realized two things going through these messages.

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Speaker 4: I think probably the day we first saw them, or

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Speaker 4: at least the week. Number one, there were lots of

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Speaker 4: people not truly trying to acquire a hit man. Number two,

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Speaker 4: there didn't seem to be any actual hitmen. So if

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Speaker 4: these were hit men, they were the most incompetent hit

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Speaker 4: men that you would ever imagine. They kept getting lost,

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Speaker 4: they kept losing their weapons. They would like, you know,

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Speaker 4: the target would be too well protected, so that you

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Speaker 4: know you needed to I'll not have this hit man,

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Speaker 4: but instead a more expensive, military trained team. You know,

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Speaker 4: every time these conversations seemed to lead to a kind

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Speaker 4: of a dead end and then a request for more money.

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Speaker 3: So there was always something.

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Speaker 4: There's always something. But of course we saw in lots

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Speaker 4: of cases people paying more money again and again they

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Speaker 4: were just lumping more money in, and so.

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Speaker 2: How much money are we tarking?

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Speaker 3: Coral?

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Speaker 4: So it ranged drastically In fact, I think like the

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Speaker 4: cheapest I think was maybe one hundred pounds what and

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Speaker 4: then yeah, yeah, very cheap. And then it went all

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Speaker 4: the way up to the kind of eighteen ninety thousand

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Speaker 4: all in bitcoin. So it does depend exactly when you

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Speaker 4: would have decided to take out your bitcoin, it would

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Speaker 4: be a lot more.

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Speaker 3: Now, oh no, kidding, And we want to go back

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Speaker 3: to the crypto aspect in a moment for now, perhaps

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Speaker 3: it's it's mission critical for our fellow conspiracy realist to

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Speaker 3: know that along with these payments or attempted payments through crypto,

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Speaker 3: people were also you could almost say, paying personal information.

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Speaker 3: They were giving as you note they were they were

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Speaker 3: giving photographs of these intended targets. They were giving different

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Speaker 3: details even onto you know, daily routines, where is this

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Speaker 3: person going to be, what's their point A to point z?

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Speaker 3: And with this I was also fascinated to learn there

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Speaker 3: were specific requests for the method of homicide. Could you

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Speaker 3: tell us a little bit about what these people who

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Speaker 3: think they're putting out a hit, like, what kind of

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Speaker 3: information are they providing about the target and what's the

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Speaker 3: level of sophistication in that information?

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Speaker 4: Well, this this document, this kind of collection of these

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Speaker 4: orders that became known as the kill list. This is

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Speaker 4: the single most grotesque thing I have ever had to

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Speaker 4: deal with or read, I mean every single one with

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Speaker 4: that exception of the of these like conversational chains, these

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Speaker 4: order messages, they are really really difficult to deal with

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Speaker 4: even now retrospectively, let alone at the time. They're almost

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Speaker 4: always a mixture I think of two different things. On

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Speaker 4: the one hand, as you said, Ben Logistics, Facebook profile

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Speaker 4: photo more often than not, like the time, is looking

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Speaker 4: often very happy, relaxed, surrounded by their family, usually on

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Speaker 4: a holiday, tanned by boat in a casino. That's what

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Speaker 4: first gets you because they're always smiling. The targets looking

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Speaker 4: at you through the screen. Practical information that a hit

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Speaker 4: man would need, location of the target, their address, phone number,

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Speaker 4: often car registration number, very often, pattern of life information,

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Speaker 4: and some of that would be coming in real time.

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Speaker 4: And that was one of the scariest aspects of this

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Speaker 4: is that we would be receiving a message from the

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Speaker 4: person saying she's just left the house. I have reason

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Speaker 4: to believe that she's visiting her folks in in sert

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Speaker 4: Us State next week. You know, really sometimes quite specific,

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Speaker 4: intricate descriptions of where the person would be. But mixed

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Speaker 4: in with all of that, you would also have and

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Speaker 4: this was weird, weirder to me, and I wasn't expecting

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Speaker 4: less of this, like justifications, so like it seemed important

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Speaker 4: to many people that they make the moral case in

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Speaker 4: a weird way to the hit man or who they

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Speaker 4: believed to be the hit man, for why this person

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Speaker 4: needs to get killed. So it would there would often

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Speaker 4: be descriptions about why there's such a problem in their

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Speaker 4: life or that they're really you know, that they're a cheat,

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Speaker 4: or that they're violent, or that they're unfair and those

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Speaker 4: two things. Sometimes it would be a cut, single clipped

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Speaker 4: message or so as the messages sometimes twenty thirty pages

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Speaker 4: if I were to print them out for you, you know,

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Speaker 4: going on for months and months.

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Speaker 2: Wow. And with that, let's take a quick break. You're

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Speaker 2: a word from our sponsor and we'll be read back.

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Speaker 2: And we've returned with Carl Miller talk and kill List.

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Speaker 2: Hey Carl, Sorry bother man, I cut you off earlier.

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Speaker 2: We were talking about the responsibility you felt when you

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Speaker 2: know you have this list and you're going through all

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Speaker 2: these things, you're looking at what we just discot Could

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Speaker 2: you just please continue there for a moment.

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Speaker 4: Sure, So, you know, it was obvious to us at

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Speaker 4: the beginning that the people placing these orders, some of them,

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Speaker 4: had like a serious, sustained determination to have these people killed,

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Speaker 4: and we thought that was going to be the real danger.

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Speaker 4: These people might be doing it themselves, they might be

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Speaker 4: planning or doing it themselves, or they might be seeking

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Speaker 4: other means to have this person killed as well as

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Speaker 4: this site. So we were looking I mean, I remember

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Speaker 4: quite clearly, like sat in my COVID surrounded flat in

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Speaker 4: my room, kind of looking at this document, scrolling through

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Speaker 4: these people and thinking we might be the only people

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Speaker 4: in the world now that know that these people are

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Speaker 4: in danger, Like we have to try and do something

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Speaker 4: about this. This isn't something that we can sit on.

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Speaker 4: It's not something that we can drop or walk away from.

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Speaker 4: And that's you know, I mean, by the way everyone

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Speaker 4: listened to this doesn't know me. I'm not a particularly

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Speaker 4: risk attracted guy. Like, like I don't really like risk,

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Speaker 4: you know, I don't like fast cars or like extreme

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Speaker 4: sports or anything like that. This is not the kind

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Speaker 4: of story that I normally do. So kind of against

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Speaker 4: I think some of my kind of instincts shouting at me.

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Speaker 4: I decided with the team that we were going to

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Speaker 4: have to try and act on this as serious threat

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Speaker 4: to lives. So the first thing I did was whatever

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Speaker 4: one would do, I imagine listening to this, I phone

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Speaker 4: the police. I've phoned the police in London, and before

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Speaker 4: long there are two quite bemused young police constables at

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Speaker 4: my door and they're there basically because they think I'm mad, right,

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Speaker 4: They're conducting and they literally are conducting a mental health check,

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Speaker 4: so they're concerned for my welfare and they're trying to

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Speaker 4: work out whether the story is in fact real as well,

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Speaker 4: and they candidly said, you know, we ninety nine times

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Speaker 4: out of one hundred, nine hundred and ninety nine times

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Speaker 4: out of one thousand, like this kind of thing is

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Speaker 4: a mental health problem. And so I had to go

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Speaker 4: through that, and after kind of some diligence, I guess

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Speaker 4: with the police they did in fact believe that it

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Speaker 4: was real. The problem was that there were no UK

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Speaker 4: cases at that point.

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Speaker 2: I see, uh huh, jurisdiction.

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Speaker 4: Man, jurisdiction, And this is this is by the way,

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Speaker 4: like one of the one of the general kind of

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Speaker 4: ideas or thoughts that I'd already had around cyber crime

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Speaker 4: and why it's so unbelievably difficult for police to deal with.

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Speaker 4: Is crime on the Internet passes between borders, out even noticing,

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Speaker 4: and police forces are nothing if not massively geographically bounded.

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Speaker 4: Like police forces, they live in their area, they know

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Speaker 4: the streets, they're drawn out of their area. You know

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Speaker 4: that the whole point of police force is to police

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Speaker 4: are given geographic space. And you try and ask that

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Speaker 4: police force often to like reach across boundaries and bring

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Speaker 4: evidence and victims and perpetrators into a courtroom, and they

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Speaker 4: simply can't. And and here the met was basically like,

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Speaker 4: this isn't our problem, that this is a no UK

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Speaker 4: target site. So they packaged it up. They sent it

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Speaker 4: to INTERPOL, which is the international policing organization. It's not

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Speaker 4: really an investigatory body. It's more like the glue that

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Speaker 4: sticks different police forces together. And for one reason another

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Speaker 4: which I can go into if you want, gets a

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Speaker 4: bit technical, we became convinced that this was not going

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Speaker 4: to work. That we couldn't talk to the investigating police forces,

437
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:25,800
Speaker 4: They couldn't make sure that I wasn't mad. We couldn't

438
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:28,480
Speaker 4: send any new messages, We couldn't send any of the

439
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:32,679
Speaker 4: payment information that we were increasingly uncovering. And so we

440
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:36,040
Speaker 4: took another faithful decision, really, and that was to approach

441
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 4: the targets on the kill lift ourselves.

442
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:43,080
Speaker 3: And I want to go with this with these threads.

443
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:45,959
Speaker 3: We've got some concurrent threads here, Carl, I want to

444
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:50,800
Speaker 3: go to a specific moment a little bit before this,

445
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:55,840
Speaker 3: maybe what began to laudnge these thousand ships of racing

446
00:24:55,920 --> 00:25:00,400
Speaker 3: against time. There was a moment wherein you when your

447
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 3: team discovered that one of the targets listed did in

448
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:10,240
Speaker 3: fact die in twenty sixteen, I believe the person Amy

449
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:16,120
Speaker 3: or Wine expired. Could you tell us about how this

450
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:21,200
Speaker 3: transformed the investigation that you and the team were already

451
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:22,360
Speaker 3: beginning to conduct.

452
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, And we begin with the story of Amy in

453
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:29,200
Speaker 4: the podcast as well, not because it was attached to

454
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:32,240
Speaker 4: our investigation, but because it was the most important memory

455
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 4: precedent thing that was in our minds. Really, Amy was

456
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:38,400
Speaker 4: in our minds when we were to stop making all

457
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:42,359
Speaker 4: these decisions. So it happened in twenty sixteen there had

458
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 4: been a hack of the site the person running the site.

459
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 4: This is a theme is not very good at cybersecurity,

460
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:51,919
Speaker 4: and some information had leaked out of it, including the

461
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 4: fact that there was a use of a site called

462
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:58,480
Speaker 4: dog Day Gods and he was targeting Amy or Wine.

463
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 4: A police had gone to Amy or Wind's house to

464
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 4: warn her in Cottage Grove in Minnesota. I believe in

465
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 4: the United States. What they had said to her was basically,

466
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:15,360
Speaker 4: there are some internet threats about you. And it seems,

467
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:18,159
Speaker 4: or it sounds at least like the basic kind of

468
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:21,959
Speaker 4: problem that they thought they were dealing with and that

469
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:24,240
Speaker 4: they were warning Amy about, was that there was like

470
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:27,200
Speaker 4: nasty messages about her online, not of course that there

471
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:31,040
Speaker 4: was a person who in secret was trying to plot

472
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,120
Speaker 4: her murder, but that there were kind of nasty messages,

473
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 4: maybe abusive messages. And one of the police officers had

474
00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:43,360
Speaker 4: advised the all Winds to buy a firearm for her safety,

475
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 4: and then a few weeks later she was killed by

476
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 4: that firearm. So the nine to one one called Sorry America,

477
00:26:54,400 --> 00:27:00,119
Speaker 4: was that Amy had committed suicide with that firearm. We

478
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 4: spoke to and this is the kind of voice he

479
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:04,440
Speaker 4: first here in the kills. We spoke to the investigating

480
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 4: officer Randy McCallister, who by the way, is a hero.

481
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 4: Like they were inches seconds away from closing up the

482
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 4: scene as a suicide, and Randy McAllister thought that they

483
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:22,399
Speaker 4: should just that. So something didn't feel right about where

484
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:26,439
Speaker 4: the body was, where the gun was, and so he

485
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 4: didn't close it up. In fact, he kept it open

486
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 4: as a crime scene. They luminold, so they spread the

487
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 4: house with this with this substance that basically glows in

488
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 4: the presence of blood, and then they found that there

489
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 4: was blood all over the house that being cleaned up.

490
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 4: In fact, it wasn't a suicide. It was a murder.

491
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:46,239
Speaker 4: And that amy you'd be moved in the house in

492
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 4: order to stage a suicide. And the person that had

493
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:56,480
Speaker 4: killed her was her husband, Stephen R. Wine who's now

494
00:27:56,520 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 4: serving life in prison without parole in the United States.

495
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 4: The first agree and he was to do day.

496
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 2: God's Wow. They also found scopolamine or scopelamine in her blood.

497
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 2: I believe it was just the tale that you tell

498
00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 2: within the story is chilling, well well worth your time.

499
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 2: Please do listen if you get a chance. Man. Okay,

500
00:28:18,800 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 2: so there's this one person that you have in mind

501
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:24,160
Speaker 2: as you're going through all of this stuff, you are

502
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 2: trying to contact these individuals. How does an individual react

503
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 2: to you when you call them up or get get

504
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:34,440
Speaker 2: their attention somehow and then say, hey, you're on a

505
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:35,080
Speaker 2: kill list?

506
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 4: Quite poorly?

507
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also before you answer this with Carl, I

508
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 3: want to take a personal moment and just just to

509
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 3: share a connection with you. I think it's in episode two.

510
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 3: This is not a spoiler, but you're you're fairly uh,

511
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 3: you're fairly transparent about how not everyone loves calling people

512
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 3: even if you know them, and calling people out of

513
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 3: the blue, especially strangers, to tell them this stuff is

514
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:10,120
Speaker 3: is itself a pretty heroin thing, and that I think

515
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 3: you've you've set this up beautifully. You know, we have

516
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 3: to put ourselves in the place of the folks you

517
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 3: were contacting, right, most of many people don't want to

518
00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 3: answer an unfamiliar number at all. Right, So with these

519
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:30,160
Speaker 3: initial reactions, how many people thought you might be doing

520
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 3: a scale?

521
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:34,160
Speaker 4: All of them, every every single one of them? Initially?

522
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:37,480
Speaker 4: I mean it was loads of things came together there,

523
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 4: I think to mean that our first try didn't work.

524
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 4: It really didn't work. Number one, As you said, like

525
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:48,080
Speaker 4: this is COVID time. I mean, there are scams everywhere.

526
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 4: People are getting phoned up all the time, and you know,

527
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 4: I think in many cases, you know, and it's on

528
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 4: the it's on the press all the times, in the news,

529
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 4: you know all these You know how crime is not

530
00:29:56,600 --> 00:29:59,040
Speaker 4: having to reach in your own home. I was a

531
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 4: bag of nerves, Like there is nothing scarier that I

532
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 4: ever had to do than phone up a complete stranger

533
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:08,840
Speaker 4: and tell them someone's trying to kill them. I was

534
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 4: also I was bagging nerves for a reason that I

535
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:13,960
Speaker 4: don't think we actually spoke about much actually in the narrative,

536
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:17,720
Speaker 4: but it's worth also dwelling on that moment of warning

537
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 4: them I actually we actually assessed was actually quite a

538
00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 4: dangerous one because either the person might react in a

539
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 4: way which was dangerous, like believe that they know who

540
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 4: it was and go out and kill someone else or

541
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 4: hurt someone else, which almost happened. Not they didn't kill

542
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 4: someone else, They just like were going to go over

543
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 4: and give someone a stern talking to, But it was

544
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:44,840
Speaker 4: it was it was nerve wracking. They didn't or and

545
00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 4: this was what I was really worried about. The person

546
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:50,239
Speaker 4: that put them on the list would be next to

547
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 4: them when I phoned them and hear the warning and

548
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 4: in that moment maybe believe that their window of opportunity

549
00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 4: was closing, and maybe believing that taking things that matters

550
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 4: into their own hands in that moment. And I know

551
00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 4: that sounds like maybe like a bit of a stretch,

552
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 4: but honestly, when you don't know how it's going to go,

553
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 4: you don't know what the future holds, like, that's the

554
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:16,400
Speaker 4: kind of stuff that's running through your mind. And so

555
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 4: when I'm phoning these people, I'm both sound extremely nervous

556
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 4: because of all of this, and it's what It washes

557
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 4: around in your mind, and you prepare for it, and

558
00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 4: actually nine times out of ten you don't get through

559
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 4: or they just hang up, and the one time they

560
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:30,920
Speaker 4: are actually talking to you, you're like, oh my god,

561
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 4: someone's actually But then you're and we wrote it's really

562
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 4: careful script that I wasn't to tell them straight up

563
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 4: that someone's trying to kill them. In fact, I was

564
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 4: trying to book another meeting with them where they could

565
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 4: talk to me in a place where they felt safe

566
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:49,760
Speaker 4: and were importantly alone. And how how suspicious does that

567
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:54,479
Speaker 4: sound when they're alone? Yeah, So I'm like, Hey, I'm

568
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 4: a journalist. I'm doing this investigation into scam sites on

569
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 4: the darknet. You know, I think that that kind of

570
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 4: roughly the way the script went. It turns out in

571
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 4: retrospect now, like looking back at it and listening back

572
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 4: to those just terrible calls. We were trying to solve

573
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 4: the wrong problem. Like we thought the problem was going

574
00:32:14,120 --> 00:32:17,280
Speaker 4: to be around the kind of psychological cratering impact of

575
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:20,520
Speaker 4: being told something like you're someone's trying to kill you,

576
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 4: and in fact the main problem was going to be scams.

577
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 4: It was going to be that we weren't believed, and

578
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:27,200
Speaker 4: so we kind of pivoted pretty quickly. I think we

579
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 4: spent probably about a week trying to do that, maybe

580
00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 4: even less, and then we started rolling out a new

581
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 4: strategy because it simply wasn't working.

582
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 2: Man. There was another moment, as I was listening through

583
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 2: that section of the show, just thinking about even if

584
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 2: the person wasn't immediately next to them and could hear

585
00:32:45,400 --> 00:32:49,200
Speaker 2: the conversation more than once within the instances of their

586
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:52,440
Speaker 2: kill list, the person was someone very close, if not

587
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 2: a partner, you know, if not someone who would be

588
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 2: a confidant for the person you're trying to warn, so

589
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 2: like even if it's a week and they're just having

590
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 2: a little conversation, Oh but that got this weird call

591
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 2: the other day. In that moment, that same moment you're

592
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 2: describing happens, and uh, you feel such on edge listening

593
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 2: to it, like listening to you go through it. Just

594
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 2: knowing that you went through it as is mind bargling.

595
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 2: I do want to know. So you're you're attempting to

596
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:25,440
Speaker 2: call all of these people, what is the first moment

597
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:29,959
Speaker 2: when you get through to somebody it actually starts working.

598
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 4: The first moment was when we started to send out

599
00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 4: local reporters. So we change it up and instead we

600
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:41,720
Speaker 4: start reaching out to people on the grounds that can

601
00:33:41,760 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 4: go to the area where each of these targets lives,

602
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:48,840
Speaker 4: can scoping out for us, and we thought can make

603
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 4: on you know, game time decisions. And what's so weird,

604
00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 4: by the way, is we begin to act a little

605
00:33:53,840 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 4: bit like a hit man. Yeah, we are taking outside

606
00:33:57,200 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 4: of people's facts.

607
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 3: Figure out either figure the routine out.

608
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean in one desire moment, we

609
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 4: had a man outside of a flat on Halloween night

610
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 4: in Amsterdam, you know, waiting for trick and treaters to

611
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:15,919
Speaker 4: call on the flat so that we could see who

612
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:18,760
Speaker 4: was answering the door, so that we would know whether

613
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:22,319
Speaker 4: a spouse was in there who we were afraid might

614
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 4: be the person that put them on the list. So

615
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 4: when we start sending these these local journalists out, the

616
00:34:31,040 --> 00:34:33,960
Speaker 4: first one we actually do that with and managed to

617
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:37,480
Speaker 4: reach in is in the outskirts of Zurich, and there

618
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 4: this kind of driving around and outside the flat and

619
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 4: we're like, you know, we're all on a signal group.

620
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 4: That kind of reduces and me and that I'm talking

621
00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 4: to them. We have a few calls with the local

622
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:50,000
Speaker 4: journalists and we record her thoughts and feelings as she's

623
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 4: going in, and I mean, I can't imagine, by the way,

624
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 4: I mean, however nervous I was what she was going through,

625
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 4: like physically going in. That is unbelievable heroism. They all

626
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 4: said yes, by the way, all these local journalists, and

627
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:05,920
Speaker 4: most of them were in there, are in their twenties,

628
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:08,320
Speaker 4: most of them are kind of just starting out in journalism,

629
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 4: and they, you know, to a person, when you told

630
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 4: them what was going on, agreed to participate, agree to

631
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:18,279
Speaker 4: step into the unknown in that way, and I think

632
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:20,440
Speaker 4: that as I mean, the kill is a story obviously

633
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 4: of very very grim human evil to one another, but

634
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:25,840
Speaker 4: it's also a story of that, and there's also a

635
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 4: story of people like that that put themselves on the

636
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:31,080
Speaker 4: line in ways that I'm not sure I would in

637
00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 4: order to in order to help someone. And she finally

638
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 4: goes into the fact and there's this kind of fifteen

639
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:44,400
Speaker 4: minute long silence, maybe the longest fifteen minutes of my life,

640
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 4: actually really really really gut wrenchingly, nerve rackingly and anxiety provoking.

641
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 4: And then finally we get a message saying I've reached her,

642
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,960
Speaker 4: she's ready to speak, and umkoo comes up and there

643
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:02,319
Speaker 4: she is.

644
00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:08,239
Speaker 3: And I remember that because listening to that, Carl, I

645
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:11,720
Speaker 3: was I had one of those moments where you pause,

646
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 3: you know, and you're in that other place waiting to

647
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 3: see the the end result, and felt physically lighter after that.

648
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 3: I'm not mad at you guys for that long pause,

649
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 3: but felt physically lighter learning that there had been success.

650
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:31,799
Speaker 3: And I think it's important, as we're going through this

651
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 3: thread here to share with our fellow listeners how you

652
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 3: began collaborating with this team of local reporters. We talked

653
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:45,799
Speaker 3: a little bit about interactions with law enforcement, you know,

654
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:49,239
Speaker 3: the big the big barrier of persuading them, Hey, I'm

655
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 3: not you know, for lack of a better term, some

656
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 3: nutter with too much time on their hands. These are

657
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 3: real things. There is a ticking clock. How how would

658
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:05,760
Speaker 3: you overall characterize your interactions with law enforcement? And then

659
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:10,280
Speaker 3: you know, given this spans multiple countries, right, it spans

660
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 3: multiple cases, jurisdictions, turf wars are always touchy with a

661
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 3: lot of these organizations. Was it the interactions with law

662
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:24,840
Speaker 3: enforcement that inspired you to make direct contact.

663
00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 4: Because of Amy? Yeah, because Amy didn't need to die,

664
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 4: and the way that law enforcement approached that I think

665
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 4: was ill conceived. And so that was one of the

666
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:41,440
Speaker 4: reasons why we felt like being present in the conversation

667
00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:44,160
Speaker 4: and talking directly to the people targets on the keyllers

668
00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:47,320
Speaker 4: could mean that we could also have a good relationship

669
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 4: with law enforcement, that we could be supplying them with

670
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 4: the information they needed. And the difficult kind of story

671
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 4: to tell about law enforcement in this is that they're

672
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 4: not a single character. As you pointed out, you know,

673
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 4: there's dozens of these law enforcement agencies all over the

674
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:06,759
Speaker 4: world that we interacted with in in one way or another. Initially,

675
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 4: the relationship with law enforcement was really quite tough, and

676
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 4: I didn't anticipate that I had had pretty good interactions

677
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 4: with law enforcement in the UK. I felt like I

678
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:20,319
Speaker 4: had a good working relationship with them, and ultimately here

679
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 4: like incentives were very, very aligned. The threat was so serious,

680
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 4: and because this has to do with lives and them

681
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:31,160
Speaker 4: either continuing or not, we were, you know, we were

682
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:34,479
Speaker 4: not drawing like any kind of like journalistic boundaries really

683
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:36,359
Speaker 4: around any of the information we were trying to pass

684
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 4: over to them. We were just like, here's a threat,

685
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:42,720
Speaker 4: here are the messages, here's the bitcoin payments. Buddy, step

686
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:44,759
Speaker 4: in and make this person say but that's what you

687
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:48,040
Speaker 4: need to do. And what I didn't anticipate was that

688
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 4: doing that in Spain, doing that in Switzerland, We were

689
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:55,160
Speaker 4: doing that in Holland, like quite often, the police were

690
00:38:55,640 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 4: reasonably hostile. Like in the Swiss case, the one I've

691
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:07,280
Speaker 4: just been talking about, the Swiss police told the target, Elena,

692
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 4: that they suspected that we were running the site, that

693
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 4: we were doing it for a story. Now, this is

694
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 4: like baseless speculation and maybe if you're in the police team,

695
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:20,399
Speaker 4: maybe that's a kind of a hypothesis that you want

696
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 4: to chase down. Like, yeah, I'm not saying they needed

697
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 4: to trust us, like police don't trust journalists, and I'm

698
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 4: sure journalists don't really trust police most of the time.

699
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:31,720
Speaker 4: But to share that with the target in the going

700
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 4: through this moment in her life that was probably hopefully

701
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:37,719
Speaker 4: one of the most difficult moments she has to live through,

702
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:40,839
Speaker 4: as you know, to say that about the one little

703
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:43,359
Speaker 4: group of people that's reached her and that understands what

704
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:46,720
Speaker 4: she's going through, that I just found that like so

705
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 4: so unacceptable and inappropriate way for the police to be acting.

706
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:54,399
Speaker 4: And it was happening in other places as well. And

707
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 4: then slightly later there was a kind of new pressure

708
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 4: where the police were in each of these cases, after

709
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 4: actually believing it was real, they would then try and

710
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 4: drag us into a courtroom. So they began to make

711
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 4: arrests and they began to do investigations. But their problem was,

712
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:15,400
Speaker 4: how do you tie the messages that we've intercepted with

713
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 4: the person and how do you say the messages are

714
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 4: really from that site? So the defense teams began to

715
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,279
Speaker 4: say these aren't you can't prove they're from this site.

716
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 4: This is just a word document that some random British

717
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:33,240
Speaker 4: guy sent you. You know, this isn't This doesn't mean anything.

718
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 4: You can't use this in it. You know, this isn't evidence.

719
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:38,360
Speaker 4: And so what they wanted to do basically was to

720
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:41,360
Speaker 4: bring either me or the producer or Chris into a

721
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:45,319
Speaker 4: courtroom to testify under oath as to how we got

722
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 4: the messages. Oh, Chris broke in like this and I

723
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:51,840
Speaker 4: know this because of this, and then he sent the

724
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 4: messages and here they are, right, And I couldn't do

725
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 4: that because as soon as we stepped into a courtroom,

726
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:00,839
Speaker 4: we expose the fact that we're broken in the middle

727
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 4: of this.

728
00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 3: Market, right, yeah, And this gives us this, I think

729
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:10,400
Speaker 3: gives us a perfect way to explore something that was

730
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 3: on your mind and on the team's mind for the

731
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 3: entirety of your investigation, which is the ethical quandaries, or

732
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 3: as you have often referred to them as ethical gray areas. Right,

733
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:28,560
Speaker 3: what is as a journalist? What is your what is

734
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:32,520
Speaker 3: your responsibility for protection of means and sources? Or what

735
00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 3: is your equally if not higher, responsibility toward being able

736
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:41,319
Speaker 3: to save a human life? Could could you tell us

737
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:45,600
Speaker 3: maybe spin out for us in a little more detail,

738
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:49,759
Speaker 3: the depth of the ethical gray areas that you ran

739
00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:52,919
Speaker 3: into and how you and the team navigated them through

740
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:53,799
Speaker 3: the pipeline.

741
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:57,799
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, yeah, Ben Is, I mean, really the

742
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 4: main experience to me, and one of the main threads

743
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 4: that we really wanted a foregram and telling the story

744
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:08,680
Speaker 4: was exactly that. Being thrown into this investigation was extremely disorientating,

745
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 4: like morally disorientating, professionally disorientating, and there was absolutely no

746
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:17,120
Speaker 4: clear guidance or precedent or anything like that that we

747
00:42:17,160 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 4: could find that could help us know what was the

748
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 4: right thing to do. I think we quickly began to

749
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 4: feel like we weren't really acting as journalists anymore. If

750
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:29,800
Speaker 4: I'm honest with you, I don't think journalists would typically

751
00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 4: like step in and intervene in the way that we

752
00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:35,800
Speaker 4: were doing. And I don't think that they would drive

753
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 4: the story in the way or cause the story almost

754
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 4: in the way we were doing by handing stuff over

755
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:41,480
Speaker 4: to the police and then trying to get them to

756
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:44,600
Speaker 4: do an investigation. And you know, that's just not what

757
00:42:44,680 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 4: you normally do. You sit back and you watch, and

758
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:49,960
Speaker 4: you report, and you know, you try not to step

759
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 4: in and become muddled in the middle of it. Our

760
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:57,319
Speaker 4: kind of guiding moral north star was that people's eyes

761
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:00,279
Speaker 4: were in danger, and all the decisions that we really

762
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:04,600
Speaker 4: took had to be about trying to make those lives

763
00:43:04,680 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 4: as safe as we could, and that's what we did.

764
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:11,960
Speaker 4: So that was very clear. One. If you don't think

765
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:15,480
Speaker 4: the police are going to be reached or investigate properly,

766
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 4: make make contact with the targets, okay, And so basically

767
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 4: all of those were quite straightforwards, but they all caused

768
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,439
Speaker 4: it's kind of profusion of like additional quandaries around it.

769
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:27,799
Speaker 4: So then it's like, okay, if you're stepping in, how

770
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:30,719
Speaker 4: how to do it safely? Like so many tactical like

771
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:32,920
Speaker 4: day to day like trade offs around all of that.

772
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 4: How quickly should you do it? You know, how do

773
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 4: you balance doing it in a way which is like

774
00:43:37,680 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 4: slower and safer in one sense, you know, learning more

775
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:43,480
Speaker 4: about their life, learning where they might be, learning where

776
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 4: they might be alone, versus you don't know whether that

777
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:50,200
Speaker 4: person sending those messages is genuinely in the middle of

778
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 4: plotting a physical attack on the person themselves. Likewise, with

779
00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:57,839
Speaker 4: the you know, the decision around and handing everything over

780
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:00,799
Speaker 4: to the police. I think most and this would say

781
00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:03,920
Speaker 4: that's not their job. Like it's not to just be

782
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 4: a adjunct to law enforcement. You know, you've got a

783
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 4: different priority. It's a journey. It's just supposed to tell

784
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:13,399
Speaker 4: the story. But again for us, when lives are at risk,

785
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:15,760
Speaker 4: and obviously we've got to know many of these people,

786
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 4: like you actually care about them as people. They're not

787
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:21,520
Speaker 4: just sorted or targets that I don't know what they

788
00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 4: really were, like maybe Frank, I mean I've got invited

789
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:25,360
Speaker 4: to one of their weddings.

790
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 2: So Chris describes what you guys became within medium as

791
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 2: a small podcast production team turned semi effective intelligence gathering

792
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:41,640
Speaker 2: in criminal investigations force. So have you considered.

793
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:42,960
Speaker 4: Starting your own is high Prades?

794
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 2: By the way, have you considered starting your own international

795
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,080
Speaker 2: intelligence agency? I feel like we could use you and

796
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 2: your whole team. Let's just do it.

797
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:55,400
Speaker 4: I really hope I never have to do anything like

798
00:44:55,440 --> 00:45:00,440
Speaker 4: this again. Matt.

799
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 3: We'll pause here for a word from our sponsor and

800
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:16,400
Speaker 3: return with more from Carl Miller. And we've returned, let's

801
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:20,319
Speaker 3: dive in. Matt. I think you make an excellent point

802
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:24,240
Speaker 3: referencing Chris's conversation there, if you're looking at the scope,

803
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 3: we're talking about an investigation that crossed more than eleven countries,

804
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 3: leveraging a lot of your previous research into the borderless

805
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:42,279
Speaker 3: areas of this second world called online interaction, and you

806
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 3: are involved with local, state level international law enforcement, and

807
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:53,680
Speaker 3: you start to dig into these larger trends right where

808
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 3: we're looking at individual trees, and now we start to

809
00:45:56,520 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 3: see the view of a terrifying forest. One thing that

810
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 3: stands out is when you all are initially looking at

811
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:10,719
Speaker 3: these potential targets, they don't appear to be closely linked, right,

812
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:14,319
Speaker 3: Not everybody works for the same big company or in geo,

813
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 3: not everybody is related. But you find that the majority

814
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:23,440
Speaker 3: of targets are women. Could you tell us a little

815
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 3: bit about these disturbing demographic commonalities and maybe what insights

816
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:34,800
Speaker 3: you and your team gleaned from that recognition. Yeah.

817
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:38,440
Speaker 4: I mean, firstly, as as you say, Ben, the investigation

818
00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:43,439
Speaker 4: begins to balloon and expands very quickly. There are one

819
00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:47,319
Speaker 4: or two substantially serious new cases falling in at least

820
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:50,840
Speaker 4: every month, and so once we made the decision, of course,

821
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:53,319
Speaker 4: well we need to intervene we need to do that.

822
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 4: Of course, for every single one of these cases. We're

823
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 4: also having to kind of triage every single order that

824
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 4: comes in, so that's open source intelligence, it's cryptocinth, so

825
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 4: tracing the payments and trying to work out whether each

826
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,399
Speaker 4: one does constitute a threat to life or not, which

827
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 4: itself can be a judgment call ultimately. I mean, obviously

828
00:47:14,719 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 4: we erd on the side of treating these things as

829
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 4: serious unless there was kind of like clear evidence they weren't.

830
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:23,359
Speaker 4: And actually, in that moment, it took quite a long

831
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 4: time for us to be able to step back and

832
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:28,279
Speaker 4: begin to see the wood for the trees, and in

833
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:29,960
Speaker 4: that moment, it felt very much like being in the

834
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 4: middle of a bunch of trees, because what we were

835
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:37,800
Speaker 4: having to deal with was investigation after investigation, thread after threads,

836
00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 4: each one normally dealing with a different law enforcement agency,

837
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 4: a different target, a different local journalist, different jurisdiction, different

838
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:51,799
Speaker 4: legal system, different approach that the police would have with us,

839
00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:55,400
Speaker 4: a different sense of threat, and different personality of the

840
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:58,320
Speaker 4: person that we were reaching and trying to help. And

841
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:02,080
Speaker 4: these weren't shutting down because, like you know, the investigations

842
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 4: could go on for weeks or months, and even after

843
00:48:04,239 --> 00:48:07,279
Speaker 4: an arrest it would continue and then that it would

844
00:48:07,320 --> 00:48:10,800
Speaker 4: then go into this new phase around the around the trial,

845
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:13,759
Speaker 4: and you know, and then and and and all the

846
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:15,920
Speaker 4: kind of legal shenanigans that happened in the run up

847
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 4: to a prosecution. So we were for a while it

848
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 4: really you know, it was expanding, and it really felt

849
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 4: like the investigation was going to fall apart. And during

850
00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:28,919
Speaker 4: all you know, we were knackered. Sorry, that's a British term.

851
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 4: I think we were very, very tired. We were up

852
00:48:32,719 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 4: like quite a lot of the night because we were

853
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:37,280
Speaker 4: having to deal with like cases in Australia and stuff

854
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 4: like that, very anxious, under a lot of psychological pressure.

855
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:44,200
Speaker 4: And it was it was just at that moment, I think,

856
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:47,680
Speaker 4: when we really were like discussing how much longer can

857
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 4: we actually practically keep doing this, that we began working

858
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:54,759
Speaker 4: with the FBI. So the FBI reached out and we

859
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 4: began a kind of strategic global kind of like disclosure

860
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:02,759
Speaker 4: regime with them where they would then begin to if

861
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:05,799
Speaker 4: it wasn't in the US, vouch for us with the

862
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 4: local police forces. And that really kind of changed the

863
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 4: whole nature of the investigation. We really started to see meaningful,

864
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:20,719
Speaker 4: effective investigations. At that point, the FBI were inventive in

865
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:22,680
Speaker 4: a way that most local police forces around the world

866
00:49:22,719 --> 00:49:25,880
Speaker 4: were not around how they could draw out the perpetrators,

867
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:28,200
Speaker 4: how they could get that evidence that they needed without

868
00:49:28,239 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 4: having to force us into a court. They were actually

869
00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:33,680
Speaker 4: really good and I think really really saved us there.

870
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:36,160
Speaker 4: And it was then a bit later, so as that

871
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:38,799
Speaker 4: was all happening, then finally we could begin to catch

872
00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:41,879
Speaker 4: our breath and we began to look at what we

873
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:45,720
Speaker 4: had done and what all these people kind of constituted together.

874
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 4: And I think number one, they were normal people. Everyone

875
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 4: seemed to be normal people. And that was still like

876
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:55,080
Speaker 4: so crazy to me. I mean, like, I don't know

877
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 4: what you guys think, but going into this, I kind

878
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:01,279
Speaker 4: of assumed maybe there's going to be like Gangland or

879
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:05,040
Speaker 4: like drug deals gonna rye or I don't know, at

880
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:09,680
Speaker 4: least like some kind of major business fallings out or

881
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:12,000
Speaker 4: something like that, and in fact it really wasn't. It

882
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:16,040
Speaker 4: was you know, a Galician fishmonger and an air traffic

883
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 4: controller from Wisconsin and a nurse from Amsterdam, all these

884
00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:22,920
Speaker 4: people that just seem to be living normal lives and

885
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:27,880
Speaker 4: the perpetrators too, like insanely it seemed to be to

886
00:50:28,040 --> 00:50:31,480
Speaker 4: most intents and purposes, keeping up this kind of facade

887
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:34,719
Speaker 4: of normalcy and respectability in them going about their lives.

888
00:50:34,719 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 4: Most of them had jobs.

889
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 2: You know, how did somebody like a doctor in Washington

890
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:44,920
Speaker 2: State in the United States end up on that website

891
00:50:45,040 --> 00:50:46,040
Speaker 2: requesting a hit man?

892
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:46,200
Speaker 3: Like?

893
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 2: How does that happen? How did they know that these

894
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:50,200
Speaker 2: sites even existed?

895
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:54,359
Speaker 4: Yes? Well, okay, two great questions there. Let's talk first

896
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:56,960
Speaker 4: about how they know the sites existed, because this is fascinating,

897
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 4: and this acquaints us with a character that we haven't

898
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 4: I haven't mentioned yet, but it's quite important to a

899
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:07,600
Speaker 4: story called Eura. So Eura is the shadowy Romanian cyber

900
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:11,080
Speaker 4: criminal who at least set up the site and then

901
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 4: probably in some way or another, continue to run it,

902
00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:19,279
Speaker 4: probably with a growing a growing gang. Eura is not

903
00:51:19,440 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 4: very good at cybersecurity. In fact, Chris has managed to

904
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:25,759
Speaker 4: run circles around Europe for many years. He hacked You're

905
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 4: Out of his own email address at one point, and

906
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:32,560
Speaker 4: then had a bizarre conversation with euro when Urine started

907
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:40,240
Speaker 4: emailing himself amazing, but is actually a very inventive digital

908
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:46,280
Speaker 4: marketer and disinformation merchant. And what he did was build

909
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 4: a marketing pipeline to lure people onto the site which

910
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:54,200
Speaker 4: begins with Google and believe it or not, a hit

911
00:51:54,239 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 4: man for higher comparison site that sits on the light nare.

912
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:03,239
Speaker 4: So he thought, okay, well, my clients are going to,

913
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:05,839
Speaker 4: like all clients are going to be trying to sort

914
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 4: between all the different brands, you know, and how do

915
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:11,040
Speaker 4: they know which brand to go for? So he needed

916
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 4: to build brand equity around his own assassination site. There

917
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 4: are others out there, and so a hit matha high

918
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,520
Speaker 4: comparison site on the light net, purports to help you

919
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:25,359
Speaker 4: navigate all those difficult assassination website. Decisions shows you which

920
00:52:25,360 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 4: ones are scans, shows you which ones are real, and

921
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:31,200
Speaker 4: actually gives some genuinely quite useful advice around cybersecurity. It

922
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:33,320
Speaker 4: provides a link you can download, tour you can go

923
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:38,600
Speaker 4: on the Darknet. He'd managed to manipulate Google so that

924
00:52:38,719 --> 00:52:41,680
Speaker 4: if you searched how to hire a hitman, his website

925
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:43,960
Speaker 4: basically he came up first. I think it was second.

926
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:48,880
Speaker 4: It was above the New York Times. He'd suborned thousands

927
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:52,799
Speaker 4: of websites Chinese wedding dress shops, Brooklyn foody blogs to

928
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 4: basically all be actually secretly linking to his site, so

929
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:58,879
Speaker 4: that Google thought it was this really well respected, high

930
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:03,280
Speaker 4: reputation site and that brought you onto his dot net empire.

931
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:10,759
Speaker 3: Wow, that's that's brilliant ethics. Aside, that is brilliant marketing, right,

932
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:16,880
Speaker 3: And I love that you're introducing the comparison, right, the

933
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:21,600
Speaker 3: the smart shopper aspect of someone who wants to wants

934
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:24,040
Speaker 3: to find a hit man. I mean, the worst way

935
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:25,800
Speaker 3: to say it is get the most bang for their buck.

936
00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:32,879
Speaker 3: There's a very interesting, fascinating interaction you have later in

937
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:38,360
Speaker 3: the show with someone related to the appearance of this

938
00:53:38,560 --> 00:53:42,680
Speaker 3: online economy. I don't know if it's too far for

939
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:46,239
Speaker 3: us to talk about it now, Carl, because I don't

940
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 3: want to spoil the show here entirely, But would you

941
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:53,680
Speaker 3: be comfortable giving us and the audience just a little

942
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 3: bit about Guido?

943
00:53:55,320 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 4: Guido? Sure? Yes, this this is this is last, this

944
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:05,160
Speaker 4: is the last episode of kill Lists come out, Yes,

945
00:54:05,239 --> 00:54:09,280
Speaker 4: Guido Finelli. So we couldn't speak to Era, of course,

946
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 4: because he's either arrested or in hiding or running some

947
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 4: other kind of scam or.

948
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:16,600
Speaker 3: Maybe changed his life and became a better person.

949
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:20,960
Speaker 4: Maybe he's maybe he's reformed somehow. I profoundly doubt that,

950
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:25,320
Speaker 4: but you never know. Yeah, So we we went to

951
00:54:25,360 --> 00:54:27,840
Speaker 4: the next best thing and spoke to someone who runs

952
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:31,400
Speaker 4: a assassination site and his name is his name is Guido,

953
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 4: and he set up a hire a Hitman dot com.

954
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 4: It was initially a joke. It was supposed to be

955
00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:41,920
Speaker 4: actually weirdly in a weird parallel with you, a marketing company.

956
00:54:43,239 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 4: But he then went away and did other things and

957
00:54:46,560 --> 00:54:48,839
Speaker 4: came back several years later and found that people were

958
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:52,120
Speaker 4: emailing into the site looking to hire a hit man.

959
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:55,840
Speaker 3: Not the best op.

960
00:54:55,640 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 2: SEC and he just went away and he's like, that

961
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:02,360
Speaker 2: was weird and that was end the story, right, No.

962
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:04,400
Speaker 4: It's not mad, No, we couldn't. You can dedicate an

963
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:05,520
Speaker 4: episode to that could.

964
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:10,240
Speaker 2: Well, let's not spoil it though, listen to that episode

965
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:13,240
Speaker 2: as well as we're going through this, Carl, We've we've

966
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:16,160
Speaker 2: taken so much of your time. Thank you so much

967
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:20,640
Speaker 2: for being here. Man. You do so many strange things.

968
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 2: And I don't mean that in a weird bad way.

969
00:55:23,120 --> 00:55:26,960
Speaker 2: I just mean you've spoken to NATO before. What is

970
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:30,000
Speaker 2: the weirdest thing about speaking in front of NATO.

971
00:55:31,200 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 4: Oh, I mean compared to all of this like that,

972
00:55:33,080 --> 00:55:39,360
Speaker 4: that's a that's nice saying to do nothing nothing apart

973
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 4: from you know, some stern looking some stern looking people

974
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 4: in informal military dress. It's it's not particularly weird at all. Well,

975
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:52,000
Speaker 4: although I do, I do reflect on all of this,

976
00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:54,719
Speaker 4: you know, because it's when we first started doing all this,

977
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:59,520
Speaker 4: you know, looking at influence operations or the shadowy roll

978
00:55:59,560 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 4: of state, saw things like that. This was a kind

979
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:06,240
Speaker 4: of geeky think tank discipline that me and my friends

980
00:56:06,280 --> 00:56:08,839
Speaker 4: began to do, you know, that we would just put

981
00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:11,040
Speaker 4: out these kind of think tank reports and that would

982
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:14,800
Speaker 4: be that. And this was ten years ago more fourteen

983
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 4: years ago now, and when I was actually about to

984
00:56:17,520 --> 00:56:19,360
Speaker 4: step onto a NATO stage just at the end of

985
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:21,719
Speaker 4: last year, I kind of paused and I thought, it's

986
00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:26,399
Speaker 4: incredible how this world that began there has now kind

987
00:56:26,440 --> 00:56:31,719
Speaker 4: of flooded into the world of serious multilateral institutions, geopolitics,

988
00:56:32,400 --> 00:56:35,480
Speaker 4: information warfare. And what I was really talking about to

989
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:40,520
Speaker 4: NATO was how information spaces have become these like key

990
00:56:40,600 --> 00:56:46,160
Speaker 4: venues for geopolitical competition absolutely, you know, and their kind

991
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:51,439
Speaker 4: of systematic manipulation and ways of therefore like reliably trying

992
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:54,720
Speaker 4: to change the behavior or the beliefs of the people

993
00:56:54,719 --> 00:56:57,560
Speaker 4: that live in those information spaces. This has become this

994
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:02,240
Speaker 4: absolutely kind of key like tradecraft that lots of people,

995
00:57:02,560 --> 00:57:06,080
Speaker 4: States included, are deploying and trying to work on and

996
00:57:06,120 --> 00:57:09,239
Speaker 4: trying to improve on, you know, and it's I've kind

997
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:12,080
Speaker 4: of often felt like the attacker is very much winning

998
00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:14,680
Speaker 4: that battle in the moment. And so, you know, I

999
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:16,439
Speaker 4: was talking to NATO and lots of other people about

1000
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:19,120
Speaker 4: how on Earth we like protect information spaces, but what

1001
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:21,720
Speaker 4: do we do to try and make them like harder

1002
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:26,920
Speaker 4: for adversaries and autocrats and others to actually infiltrate and use.

1003
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:31,360
Speaker 3: I love that you're getting to that point, because this

1004
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:35,280
Speaker 3: brings us to a larger context, right, and this is

1005
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:39,720
Speaker 3: something that your work explores in depth, and it must

1006
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:45,800
Speaker 3: it must be devilishly difficult to explore something that is

1007
00:57:46,120 --> 00:57:50,680
Speaker 3: unfolding as you research it, right as you are arriving

1008
00:57:50,720 --> 00:57:53,760
Speaker 3: at these new thoughts, all these intervening variables and global

1009
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:59,080
Speaker 3: sea changes that occur. Maybe we take it to a

1010
00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:04,720
Speaker 3: local level with two very important questions. The first question

1011
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 3: is for everyone listening now, who is hearing these heroin stories,

1012
00:58:10,720 --> 00:58:14,720
Speaker 3: who is encountering kill list, encountering your other work? Their

1013
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:18,360
Speaker 3: first question is going to be, well, thanks Carl, what

1014
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 3: can I do now? Like, what can I do today

1015
00:58:22,760 --> 00:58:26,040
Speaker 3: with my you know, with my social media presence or

1016
00:58:26,160 --> 00:58:30,720
Speaker 3: the various ways in which society increasingly forces people to

1017
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:33,200
Speaker 3: interact in a digital sphere.

1018
00:58:34,040 --> 00:58:37,680
Speaker 4: Great question. Yeah, By the way, I love researching things

1019
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:41,240
Speaker 4: that are unfolding generally. I actually wrote talking about kind

1020
00:58:41,240 --> 00:58:45,600
Speaker 4: of random think tank PDFs that no one, no one's

1021
00:58:45,640 --> 00:58:49,320
Speaker 4: read wrote. I wrote exactly on that in I think

1022
00:58:49,360 --> 00:58:51,880
Speaker 4: about twenty fifteen called real Time the Emergence of real

1023
00:58:51,880 --> 00:58:54,200
Speaker 4: time Research, and I was saying, look, the way that

1024
00:58:54,200 --> 00:58:56,080
Speaker 4: we've done this in the past, it takes months to

1025
00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:57,960
Speaker 4: get like a survey out to field and get the

1026
00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 4: results back and all the cross hand and crunch all

1027
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 4: the numbers. And now look, we can like research literally

1028
00:59:03,520 --> 00:59:05,800
Speaker 4: a phenomena that's unfolding in front of you. You know,

1029
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:08,200
Speaker 4: you can be collecting the data, doing the analysis, doing

1030
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:10,680
Speaker 4: the outputs, you know, in a time, you know, quick

1031
00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:12,760
Speaker 4: enough to actually affect the thing that you're researching. And

1032
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:15,840
Speaker 4: that to me has always been one of the most

1033
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:18,800
Speaker 4: exciting kind of reasons to do this kind of work.

1034
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:22,320
Speaker 4: And there's you know, of all of the scary things

1035
00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:26,960
Speaker 4: about our information space is becoming key venues of geopolitical conflict.

1036
00:59:27,720 --> 00:59:30,840
Speaker 4: It's not make me feel irrelevant. I think it's it's

1037
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 4: something in fact, actually more people should be working on

1038
00:59:33,520 --> 00:59:36,439
Speaker 4: and more mind should be bent towards trying to trying

1039
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 4: to think up solutions. But in terms of what people

1040
00:59:38,880 --> 00:59:44,760
Speaker 4: can do, I've got maybe two pieces of advice and

1041
00:59:44,800 --> 00:59:46,720
Speaker 4: if you want the show, I can send you links

1042
00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 4: if you want to stick in show notes. By the way,

1043
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 4: everyone to send people to these. Number one you mentioned

1044
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:56,400
Speaker 4: a great word. I think it was you ben opsec

1045
00:59:57,480 --> 01:00:05,240
Speaker 4: a compound word. Everyone should spend a weekend day if

1046
01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:09,440
Speaker 4: you've got it, and and do adversarial ocent on yourself.

1047
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:11,040
Speaker 4: You really should.

1048
01:00:11,520 --> 01:00:13,840
Speaker 3: We've left open source intelligence.

1049
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 4: You should sit there open source intelligence. You should sit there,

1050
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:20,480
Speaker 4: pretend that you are Eura or someone like him, and

1051
01:00:20,560 --> 01:00:22,920
Speaker 4: try and learn as much as you can about yourself

1052
01:00:22,920 --> 01:00:25,560
Speaker 4: that might make you vulnerable, Like could could could you

1053
01:00:25,600 --> 01:00:29,240
Speaker 4: construct a pattern of life about yourself? Could you construct

1054
01:00:29,280 --> 01:00:33,400
Speaker 4: a psychological profile as well? Like what what gets you going?

1055
01:00:33,560 --> 01:00:33,640
Speaker 2: Like?

1056
01:00:33,720 --> 01:00:36,440
Speaker 4: What what you really care? About like what makes you angry,

1057
01:00:37,080 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 4: what kind of information spaces you might live in, how

1058
01:00:39,200 --> 01:00:42,160
Speaker 4: might how might you get your own attention and and

1059
01:00:42,320 --> 01:00:44,680
Speaker 4: really do that because like I think we we often

1060
01:00:45,000 --> 01:00:48,400
Speaker 4: really don't realize like the vulnerabilities that we leave in

1061
01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:51,200
Speaker 4: our various trails online. And that might be everything from

1062
01:00:51,200 --> 01:00:53,880
Speaker 4: like cybersecurity in past words, all the way through to

1063
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 4: the kind of soft and more psychological stuff. But then

1064
01:00:56,960 --> 01:01:00,880
Speaker 4: behavior wise, and I began to think about this over COVID,

1065
01:01:01,680 --> 01:01:03,600
Speaker 4: and so many of us were kind of falling into

1066
01:01:03,640 --> 01:01:06,640
Speaker 4: all kinds of weird spaces online, you know, and we're

1067
01:01:06,680 --> 01:01:09,080
Speaker 4: all very anxious and some of the things that I

1068
01:01:09,120 --> 01:01:13,840
Speaker 4: thought were important behaviorally for us, all is number one

1069
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:18,280
Speaker 4: guard against outrage online. And I don't mean don't get

1070
01:01:18,320 --> 01:01:21,400
Speaker 4: angry about things that you should get angry about. That's fine.

1071
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:24,680
Speaker 4: But when I put apart these operations, these kind of

1072
01:01:24,720 --> 01:01:28,479
Speaker 4: influence operations like outrage activation is probably like the key

1073
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:32,160
Speaker 4: dynamic that they use in order to get people roped

1074
01:01:32,200 --> 01:01:35,280
Speaker 4: in and paying attention. It's almost always the use of

1075
01:01:35,320 --> 01:01:38,280
Speaker 4: some kind of grievance that they'll try and deploy and

1076
01:01:38,320 --> 01:01:43,959
Speaker 4: recontextualize in a certain way. Outrage thinks a hook into

1077
01:01:44,000 --> 01:01:47,560
Speaker 4: your primordial lizard brain to get you to act in

1078
01:01:47,640 --> 01:01:51,280
Speaker 4: ways that are much more automatic than any kind of

1079
01:01:51,360 --> 01:01:57,160
Speaker 4: more conscious thought or consideration. So guard against outrage, I

1080
01:01:57,160 --> 01:02:01,520
Speaker 4: think is quite key. Slow down, just simply slow down

1081
01:02:01,560 --> 01:02:04,800
Speaker 4: your online activities. Like so many of us, we share,

1082
01:02:04,920 --> 01:02:10,520
Speaker 4: we send, we reply, And when you're a scammer, fraudster,

1083
01:02:10,840 --> 01:02:14,040
Speaker 4: cyber criminal you are, or in a minuipulator, you're really

1084
01:02:14,080 --> 01:02:18,080
Speaker 4: relying on that kind of automatic response, whether that's to

1085
01:02:18,160 --> 01:02:20,040
Speaker 4: get you to change your behavior, whether that's a gain

1086
01:02:20,120 --> 01:02:22,480
Speaker 4: you send that email or kick that link. Slowing down

1087
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:25,320
Speaker 4: is a really great way of giving yourself a tiny

1088
01:02:25,320 --> 01:02:27,840
Speaker 4: bit of time for your brain to tick in. And

1089
01:02:27,880 --> 01:02:31,120
Speaker 4: then lastly, and I think this has become so much

1090
01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:34,560
Speaker 4: more important than even it was in twenty twenty, but

1091
01:02:34,680 --> 01:02:38,480
Speaker 4: where the infinite scroll, Beware the way in which information

1092
01:02:38,560 --> 01:02:42,960
Speaker 4: is created online like that it's so gainable, Like the

1093
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:46,560
Speaker 4: information's basically living that are fed and shaped by algorithms.

1094
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:49,040
Speaker 4: It's so gainable by all kinds of people, whether that's

1095
01:02:49,080 --> 01:02:52,200
Speaker 4: the platforms themselves, whether that's advertisers that want to get

1096
01:02:52,240 --> 01:02:56,000
Speaker 4: you to change your behavior, whether that's criminals and manipulators

1097
01:02:56,000 --> 01:02:59,360
Speaker 4: and others, and very rarely are the people shaping the

1098
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:02,000
Speaker 4: algorithm way that has your best interests to heart, I

1099
01:03:02,040 --> 01:03:02,840
Speaker 4: can assure you.

1100
01:03:03,240 --> 01:03:06,080
Speaker 3: So we call it, we call it the dopamine Casino

1101
01:03:06,520 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 3: of social media.

1102
01:03:07,800 --> 01:03:12,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you do? That's not heavy, Carl. Do

1103
01:03:12,400 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 2: you play video games or anything?

1104
01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:15,520
Speaker 4: Yeah?

1105
01:03:15,600 --> 01:03:17,080
Speaker 2: Okay, good, Oh that's good.

1106
01:03:17,560 --> 01:03:21,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. Something that's a great question. That's something to get

1107
01:03:21,160 --> 01:03:24,240
Speaker 3: you out of there, out of that headspace because we

1108
01:03:24,280 --> 01:03:28,800
Speaker 3: had We've talked about this, Matt and our co host

1109
01:03:28,840 --> 01:03:33,440
Speaker 3: Nola and I over several years. It's something that that

1110
01:03:33,480 --> 01:03:37,240
Speaker 3: comes up with cases of this magnitude of kill list.

1111
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:41,440
Speaker 3: The question we always ask, is we often ask, is

1112
01:03:41,560 --> 01:03:45,120
Speaker 3: did you or your team ever feel that you were

1113
01:03:45,200 --> 01:03:48,080
Speaker 3: personally in physical danger? And to add on to that,

1114
01:03:48,960 --> 01:03:52,800
Speaker 3: I would like to just in the spirit of Matt's question,

1115
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:57,280
Speaker 3: ask how did this affect your mental wellbeing? You know,

1116
01:03:57,400 --> 01:04:02,479
Speaker 3: how are you doing after after this heroine saga? Yeah?

1117
01:04:02,520 --> 01:04:04,640
Speaker 4: Well, that was another decision that we made, was to

1118
01:04:04,680 --> 01:04:09,040
Speaker 4: actually excavate that kind of psychological journey. We went through

1119
01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:12,280
Speaker 4: and put that into the podcast as well, because I

1120
01:04:12,600 --> 01:04:15,680
Speaker 4: didn't want us to come across like some kind of

1121
01:04:15,840 --> 01:04:19,640
Speaker 4: teflon action hero group like that can just do that

1122
01:04:19,680 --> 01:04:22,080
Speaker 4: sort of stuff and shrug it off and then go

1123
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:24,919
Speaker 4: to the next kind of you know, emergency that That's

1124
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:27,480
Speaker 4: not how any of this ever felt like. And I'm

1125
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:29,960
Speaker 4: not sure any normal human being can go through that

1126
01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:32,880
Speaker 4: sort of stuff and not you know, be affected by it,

1127
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:36,520
Speaker 4: but like psychologically very difficult. I mean, I was having

1128
01:04:36,560 --> 01:04:38,480
Speaker 4: recurring nightmares for quite a long time.

1129
01:04:39,080 --> 01:04:39,640
Speaker 3: It was.

1130
01:04:40,360 --> 01:04:42,960
Speaker 4: It's quite an invasive experience in the sense that it

1131
01:04:43,000 --> 01:04:46,280
Speaker 4: does stay in your thoughts the whole time. It's very hard,

1132
01:04:46,800 --> 01:04:50,880
Speaker 4: you know, it's very hard to switch off that. Plus COVID,

1133
01:04:51,160 --> 01:04:53,520
Speaker 4: it really meant that we were like living in this

1134
01:04:53,680 --> 01:04:57,560
Speaker 4: weird dark world for quite a long time. I'm doing

1135
01:04:57,640 --> 01:05:02,120
Speaker 4: much better now. We didn't by also because it was

1136
01:05:02,160 --> 01:05:04,920
Speaker 4: so unexpected, We didn't anticipate in it, and we went

1137
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:08,919
Speaker 4: from like we're just going about this, you know, retrospective,

1138
01:05:09,040 --> 01:05:11,080
Speaker 4: nice six week long podcast, and then suddenly we've got

1139
01:05:11,120 --> 01:05:13,960
Speaker 4: live kill orders. We had absolutely no time to really

1140
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:21,360
Speaker 4: spin up like any real welfare structures in retrospect. Now,

1141
01:05:21,400 --> 01:05:22,920
Speaker 4: if that were to ever happen again, or if this

1142
01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:25,439
Speaker 4: happens to anyone listening, like do that, like you need

1143
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:27,880
Speaker 4: to do that, and you would now if you were

1144
01:05:27,880 --> 01:05:29,760
Speaker 4: doing anything like this and you were actually planning to

1145
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:32,120
Speaker 4: do it, you would obviously have counseling, You would obviously

1146
01:05:32,360 --> 01:05:36,040
Speaker 4: have various kinds of processes in place to mean that

1147
01:05:36,080 --> 01:05:38,120
Speaker 4: you can talk to people and you can kind of

1148
01:05:38,120 --> 01:05:40,800
Speaker 4: step out of things and not feel like you're endangering

1149
01:05:40,800 --> 01:05:43,040
Speaker 4: someone's life by having a break. But we didn't have

1150
01:05:43,080 --> 01:05:46,320
Speaker 4: any of that, And so yeah, psychologically it was tough,

1151
01:05:46,520 --> 01:05:48,800
Speaker 4: physical danger. I mean, your guess is as good as mine.

1152
01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:49,280
Speaker 3: I don't know.

1153
01:05:49,520 --> 01:05:52,080
Speaker 4: I don't know whether I was. I don't know whether

1154
01:05:52,080 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 4: I am. I don't know whether I will be, And

1155
01:05:55,040 --> 01:05:56,600
Speaker 4: there's not really much to do about it.

1156
01:05:57,440 --> 01:05:59,320
Speaker 2: Six years still, Ronald dillg gets out.

1157
01:05:59,400 --> 01:06:03,320
Speaker 4: So yeah, that isn't lost on me. And all I

1158
01:06:03,360 --> 01:06:05,800
Speaker 4: would say is that we all felt like we had

1159
01:06:05,840 --> 01:06:09,440
Speaker 4: to do what we did. And I don't think that anyone,

1160
01:06:09,680 --> 01:06:12,959
Speaker 4: any normal human being would have behaved differently. I think

1161
01:06:13,920 --> 01:06:17,600
Speaker 4: people do try and help each other. And there's no

1162
01:06:17,640 --> 01:06:19,960
Speaker 4: way I could have looked myself in the mirror, you know,

1163
01:06:20,040 --> 01:06:22,640
Speaker 4: if I'd have like stepped away from it. And I

1164
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:25,640
Speaker 4: think that that just it was that decision that informed

1165
01:06:25,680 --> 01:06:26,280
Speaker 4: everything else.

1166
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:29,640
Speaker 2: I think. I think it's amazing what you did. I

1167
01:06:29,640 --> 01:06:31,040
Speaker 2: think anybody who listens to this.

1168
01:06:31,560 --> 01:06:34,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a majority of Yah.

1169
01:06:34,480 --> 01:06:38,560
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. Wow. So thank you so much Carl

1170
01:06:38,600 --> 01:06:42,280
Speaker 2: for chatting with us today. Has been incredible. Make sure

1171
01:06:42,320 --> 01:06:44,640
Speaker 2: you get out there and listen to kill list from

1172
01:06:44,680 --> 01:06:47,520
Speaker 2: Wondering and Novel right now. It's wherever you can find

1173
01:06:47,560 --> 01:06:48,240
Speaker 2: your podcast.

1174
01:06:48,920 --> 01:06:53,720
Speaker 3: And with that, there is so much more we haven't

1175
01:06:53,960 --> 01:06:57,640
Speaker 3: we haven't been able to explore with you today. Carl

1176
01:06:57,680 --> 01:07:00,720
Speaker 3: would love to have you back on the show in

1177
01:07:00,760 --> 01:07:02,280
Speaker 3: the future if you want to get the band back,

1178
01:07:02,320 --> 01:07:02,880
Speaker 3: to get me.

1179
01:07:02,880 --> 01:07:04,720
Speaker 4: Back always, yeah, I have to you too.

1180
01:07:05,560 --> 01:07:12,600
Speaker 2: So social media intelligence, I made up the word for it, Yes, exactly.

1181
01:07:13,360 --> 01:07:17,040
Speaker 3: So we also I want to give a huge tip

1182
01:07:17,080 --> 01:07:21,240
Speaker 3: of the cap to the larger context that you explore

1183
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 3: in depth. Could we end with this, could you tell

1184
01:07:26,320 --> 01:07:29,080
Speaker 3: us a bit about the Center for the Analysis of

1185
01:07:29,120 --> 01:07:30,280
Speaker 3: Social Media.

1186
01:07:30,520 --> 01:07:33,000
Speaker 4: Sure, So that's my that's the group that I set up,

1187
01:07:33,560 --> 01:07:35,640
Speaker 4: and it's always kind of existed as two things really,

1188
01:07:35,720 --> 01:07:39,080
Speaker 4: So it's been in a think tank called DEMOS, which

1189
01:07:39,160 --> 01:07:41,440
Speaker 4: is one of you know, half a dozen main political

1190
01:07:41,480 --> 01:07:44,400
Speaker 4: think tanks in Westminster in the UK. That's where I

1191
01:07:44,440 --> 01:07:47,440
Speaker 4: began all of this internet research and it's and then

1192
01:07:47,480 --> 01:07:50,800
Speaker 4: it's a standardone tach organization and it's kind of there

1193
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:54,640
Speaker 4: always been about trying to build better ways of basically

1194
01:07:54,680 --> 01:07:57,600
Speaker 4: trying to research the Internet and deal with online harms,

1195
01:07:57,600 --> 01:08:00,840
Speaker 4: whether that's kind of hate speech or terroristics, imitation online

1196
01:08:00,960 --> 01:08:04,080
Speaker 4: or other things like that. And that's kind of, by

1197
01:08:04,120 --> 01:08:06,200
Speaker 4: the way, I should say to anyone listening that neither

1198
01:08:06,240 --> 01:08:09,720
Speaker 4: Demos nor chasm Tech nor any in his organization had

1199
01:08:09,760 --> 01:08:12,360
Speaker 4: anything to do with kill lists, just just to not

1200
01:08:12,480 --> 01:08:16,200
Speaker 4: cross wires, because they made none of these decisions. And

1201
01:08:16,240 --> 01:08:18,400
Speaker 4: I don't want them to feel like they're being exposed

1202
01:08:18,439 --> 01:08:20,519
Speaker 4: to any of the things I've spoken about, so that

1203
01:08:20,680 --> 01:08:23,280
Speaker 4: they are separate, but they're both things that I've done

1204
01:08:23,960 --> 01:08:26,080
Speaker 4: and been part of and being so lucky to be

1205
01:08:26,200 --> 01:08:28,960
Speaker 4: part of, which I've always tried to fuse together these,

1206
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:33,080
Speaker 4: like I think, two different and equally important and sometimes

1207
01:08:33,439 --> 01:08:36,600
Speaker 4: kind of intention ways of trying to make sense of

1208
01:08:36,600 --> 01:08:39,320
Speaker 4: all this, you know, journalism investigations on the one hand,

1209
01:08:39,320 --> 01:08:41,120
Speaker 4: and learning about how to write about people and get

1210
01:08:41,120 --> 01:08:43,320
Speaker 4: to know people, and then the kind of numbers and

1211
01:08:43,600 --> 01:08:44,479
Speaker 4: technology on the other.

1212
01:08:46,360 --> 01:08:51,040
Speaker 3: Wow, thanks again to Carl Miller, thanks to our friends

1213
01:08:51,160 --> 01:08:55,960
Speaker 3: at Wondery and Novel that I always my spider sense

1214
01:08:56,000 --> 01:08:58,800
Speaker 3: always tells me we're cooking with gas. When we walk

1215
01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:01,040
Speaker 3: away and I look at all the questions I had

1216
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:03,599
Speaker 3: and I realized we didn't get to a bunch of them.

1217
01:09:03,840 --> 01:09:06,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh same. I felt the exact same way. We

1218
01:09:06,960 --> 01:09:10,479
Speaker 2: could have talked with Carl forever. And we're not joking

1219
01:09:10,520 --> 01:09:12,479
Speaker 2: when we're talking about listening to the show, it just

1220
01:09:12,640 --> 01:09:16,400
Speaker 2: captures you, dude, how about that theme song, Come on,

1221
01:09:16,600 --> 01:09:19,840
Speaker 2: come ons and theme songs let's go.

1222
01:09:21,200 --> 01:09:26,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Carl's research too. Outside of this, you know,

1223
01:09:26,040 --> 01:09:29,519
Speaker 3: we're we're talking primarily about kill List. We're not blowing smoke.

1224
01:09:29,600 --> 01:09:32,200
Speaker 3: Please do check it out. It is a phenomenal, timely

1225
01:09:32,240 --> 01:09:36,439
Speaker 3: and disturbing exploration should you should be aware of what

1226
01:09:36,479 --> 01:09:40,639
Speaker 3: can happen online, but also in the larger context of

1227
01:09:41,000 --> 01:09:45,320
Speaker 3: Carl's work. There's a lot going on, and one of

1228
01:09:45,320 --> 01:09:47,960
Speaker 3: the things that we like to do when we're figuring

1229
01:09:48,000 --> 01:09:50,360
Speaker 3: out what is going on is to go to the

1230
01:09:50,400 --> 01:09:53,559
Speaker 3: primary sources, of which Carl is is very much a

1231
01:09:53,680 --> 01:09:54,879
Speaker 3: pre eminent example.

1232
01:09:55,200 --> 01:09:57,320
Speaker 2: Yes, and in that book that you mentioned at the

1233
01:09:57,320 --> 01:09:59,320
Speaker 2: top of the episode, the Death of the Gods, the

1234
01:09:59,360 --> 01:10:02,519
Speaker 2: New Global Power Grab, that is one of the primary sources.

1235
01:10:02,560 --> 01:10:02,880
Speaker 3: For sure.

1236
01:10:02,960 --> 01:10:04,720
Speaker 2: Carl's got a website if you want to learn more

1237
01:10:04,760 --> 01:10:07,200
Speaker 2: about him and his work, go check that out. It's

1238
01:10:07,240 --> 01:10:09,760
Speaker 2: c A R L M I L L E R.

1239
01:10:10,280 --> 01:10:13,280
Speaker 3: And while you are on the internet, we would love

1240
01:10:13,400 --> 01:10:17,080
Speaker 3: to hear your thoughts. We have some ocent and opseca

1241
01:10:17,640 --> 01:10:21,960
Speaker 3: cybersecurity enthusiast, we'll say, and indeed we have some professionals

1242
01:10:22,000 --> 01:10:24,519
Speaker 3: in the crowd. Thank you for joining us. You can

1243
01:10:24,520 --> 01:10:27,599
Speaker 3: find us online all sorts of the social medias you've

1244
01:10:27,640 --> 01:10:30,479
Speaker 3: heard it all the time. You can also contact us

1245
01:10:30,600 --> 01:10:34,559
Speaker 3: via email and a telephonic device of your choice. We

1246
01:10:34,640 --> 01:10:36,559
Speaker 3: hope that you are in a point in life where

1247
01:10:36,840 --> 01:10:39,040
Speaker 3: you get to choose which telephones you.

1248
01:10:39,080 --> 01:10:44,200
Speaker 2: Use, and have multiple. You could choose from uh. You

1249
01:10:44,200 --> 01:10:48,160
Speaker 2: could call one eight three three std WYTK that is

1250
01:10:48,200 --> 01:10:50,519
Speaker 2: our voicemail system. When you call in, give yourself a

1251
01:10:50,520 --> 01:10:52,760
Speaker 2: cool nickname and let us know if we can use

1252
01:10:52,760 --> 01:10:54,760
Speaker 2: your name and message on the air. If you got

1253
01:10:54,760 --> 01:10:56,879
Speaker 2: more to say than can fit in a voicemail message,

1254
01:10:57,080 --> 01:10:59,840
Speaker 2: or you can't find conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show

1255
01:10:59,880 --> 01:11:02,479
Speaker 2: on line somewhere, why not instead send us a good

1256
01:11:02,479 --> 01:11:04,360
Speaker 2: old fashioned email. We are the.

1257
01:11:04,360 --> 01:11:07,799
Speaker 3: Entities that read every single piece of correspondence we receive.

1258
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:14,080
Speaker 3: Be well aware yet unafraid, particularly if you go by Griffin.

1259
01:11:14,520 --> 01:11:18,479
Speaker 3: Sometimes the Void writes back, is it true? Do you

1260
01:11:18,520 --> 01:11:22,600
Speaker 3: guys read every email? Do you sometimes respond? I don't know.

1261
01:11:22,680 --> 01:11:25,320
Speaker 3: That sounds like modern folklore. Well there's one way to

1262
01:11:25,360 --> 01:11:28,519
Speaker 3: find out for yourself. Join us here in the dark

1263
01:11:28,880 --> 01:11:50,760
Speaker 3: Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1264
01:11:50,960 --> 01:11:53,000
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production

1265
01:11:53,120 --> 01:11:57,639
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1266
01:11:57,760 --> 01:12:00,280
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your face favorite

1267
01:12:00,280 --> 01:12:01,000
Speaker 2: shows