The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1

“I imagine that someday I may have a story written about my life and it would be good to have a detailed account of it.” —home/frosty/documents/journal/2012/q1/january/week1

“我想有一天我可能会写一个关于我的生活的故事，如果能详细描述它就好了。” —home/frosty/documents/journal/2012/q1/january/week1

The postman only rang once.

邮递员只按了一次铃。

Curtis Green was at home, greeting the morning with 64 ounces of Coca-Cola and powdered mini doughnuts.

柯蒂斯·格林 (Curtis Green) 在家，用 64 盎司可口可乐和迷你甜甜圈粉迎接早晨。

Fingers frosted synthetic white, he was startled to hear someone at the door.

手指磨成了人造白色，听到有人敲门的声音，他吃了一惊。

It was 11 am, and surprise visits were uncommon at his modest house in Spanish Fork, Utah, a high-desert hamlet in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains.

当时是上午 11 点，他位于犹他州西班牙福克 (Spanish Fork) 的简陋房子里很少有人突然造访，那是瓦萨奇山脉 (Wasatch Mountains) 下的一个高沙漠小村庄。

Green ambled over, adjusting his camouflage fanny pack.

格林慢悠悠地走过来，整理着他的迷彩腰包。

At 47 his body was already failing him: He was overweight, with four herniated discs, a bum knee, and gleaming white dental implants.

47 岁时，他的身体已经让他失望了：他超重，有四个椎间盘突出，膝盖受伤，还有闪闪发光的白色种植牙。

To get around he sometimes borrowed his wife’s pink cane.

为了出行，他有时会借用妻子的粉红色手杖。

Green waddled to the door, his two Chihuahuas, Max and Sammy, following attentively.

格林摇摇晃晃地走到门口，他的两只吉娃娃马克斯和萨米聚精会神地跟在后面。

He peeked through the front window and caught a glimpse of the postman hurrying off.

他从前窗往外看，看到邮递员正匆匆离去。

The guy was wearing a US Postal Service jacket, but with sneakers and jeans.

该男子穿着美国邮政服务夹克，但穿着运动鞋和牛仔裤。

Weird , Green thought.

奇怪，格林想。

Also odd was a van Green noticed across the street, one he’d never seen before: white, with no logos or rear windows.

同样奇怪的是格林注意到街对面有一辆货车，他以前从未见过：白色，没有标志，也没有后窗。

Green opened the door.

格林打开了门。

It was winter, a day of high clouds and low sun.

那是冬天，云层高，阳光低。

A pale haze washed out the white-tipped Spanish Fork Peak rising above the valley.

苍白的薄雾冲刷了山谷上方拔地而起的白顶西班牙叉峰。

Green looked down.

格林低下头。

On the porch sat a Priority box—about Bible-sized.

门廊上有一个优先包厢——大约有《圣经》那么大。

His little dogs watched him pick up the mystery package.

他的小狗看着他拿起神秘包裹。

It was heavy, had no return address, and bore a postmark from Maryland.

它很重，没有回信地址，并盖有马里兰州的邮戳。

Green considered the package and then took it into his kitchen, where he tore it open with scissors, sending up a plume of white powder that covered his face and numbed his tongue.

格林仔细考虑了这个包裹，然后把它带进厨房，用剪刀把它撕开，喷出一缕白色粉末，覆盖了他的脸，麻痹了他的舌头。

Just then the front door burst open, knocked off its hinges by a SWAT team wielding a battering ram.

就在这时，前门突然打开，被挥舞着攻城槌的特警队撞断了铰链。

Quickly the house was flooded by cops in riot gear and black masks, weapons at the ready.

很快，房子里就挤满了身穿防暴装备、戴着黑色面具、准备好了武器的警察。

There was Green, covered in cocaine and flanked by two Chihuahuas.

格林全身沾满可卡因，两侧是两只吉娃娃狗。

“On the floor!” someone yelled.

“在地板上！”有人喊道。

Green dropped the package where he stood.

格林把包裹扔在了他站着的地方。

When he tried to comfort his pups, a dozen guns took aim: “Keep your hands where we can see them!”

当他试图安慰他的小狗时，十几把枪瞄准了他：“把手放在我们能看到的地方！”

Officers cuffed Green on the floor while fending off Max, the older Chihuahua, who bared his tiny fangs and bit at their shoelaces.

警察将格林铐在地板上，同时挡开年长的吉娃娃马克斯，后者露出了小尖牙，咬着他们的鞋带。

Splayed out on the carpet, Green was eye level with dozens of boots: A large tactical team—SWAT and DEA agents—fanned out through the house.

格林摊开在地毯上，与几十只靴子齐平：一支大型战术小组——特警和缉毒局特工——在房子里呈扇形散开。

He could hear things crashing, some officers yelling, others whispering to each other.

他能听到物体碰撞的声音，一些警官大喊大叫，另一些则互相窃窃私语。

He looked at the busted door and thought, Man, that thing was unlocked .

他看着那扇破了的门，心想，伙计，那东西没锁。

On the living room wall hung family photos—his wife, Tonya, their two daughters, and a grandson—smiling brightly above Green, lying amid $27,000 worth of premium flake.

客厅墙上挂着全家福——他的妻子托尼娅、两个女儿和一个孙子——在格林上方灿烂地微笑着，躺在价值 27,000 美元的优质薄片中。

(The package was stamped with a red dragon, the symbol for high-quality Peruvian.) Over the whole scene was a needlepoint that said: if i had known you were coming, i would have cleaned up!

（包装上印着一条红龙，这是高品质秘鲁菜的象征。）整个场景上有一幅绣花，上面写着：如果我知道你要来，我就收拾干净了！

Excited by the company, little Max stopped shaking just long enough to crap right in the living room.

受到大家的陪伴，小麦克斯兴奋不已，很快就停止了颤抖，直接在客厅里拉屎了。

The fact was, Green wasn’t just your average Mormon grandpa.

事实上，格林不仅仅是普通的摩门教爷爷。

Over the past few months he had been handling customer service for the massive online enterprise called Silk Road.

在过去的几个月里，他一直在为名为“丝绸之路”的大型在线企业处理客户服务。

It was like a clandestine eBay, a digital marketplace for illicit trade, mostly drugs.

它就像一个秘密的 eBay，一个非法贸易（主要是毒品）的数字市场。

Green, under the handle Chronicpain, had parlayed his extensive personal narcotics knowledge—he’d been on pain meds for years—into a paying gig working for the site.

格林以“Chronicpain”为名，利用自己丰富的个人麻醉知识（多年来一直服用止痛药）为该网站提供了一份付费工作。

Silk Road was hidden in the so-called dark web, a part of the Internet that’s invisible to search engines like Google.

丝绸之路隐藏在所谓的暗网中，暗网是互联网的一部分，对于谷歌等搜索引擎来说是看不见的。

To access Silk Road you needed special cryptographic software.

要访问丝绸之路，您需要特殊的加密软件。

Combining an anonymous interface with traceless payments in the digital currency bitcoin, the site allowed thousands of drug dealers and nearly 1 million eager worldwide customers to find each other—and their drugs of choice—in the familiar realm of ecommerce.

该网站将匿名界面与数字货币比特币的无痕支付相结合，让数千名毒贩和全球近 100 万热切的客户在熟悉的电子商务领域找到彼此以及他们选择的药物。

For a brief time, from 2011 to 2013, it was a wild success.

在2011年到2013年的短暂时间内，它取得了巨大的成功。

In that relatively short span, Silk Road managed to rack up (depending on how you count) more than $1 billion in sales.

在相对较短的时间内，Silk Road 的销售额（具体取决于您的计算方式）超过了 10 亿美元。

Which is why Green found himself surrounded by an interagency task force.

这就是为什么格林发现自己被跨部门工作组包围。

He had been hired by Dread Pirate Roberts, the mysterious figure at the center of Silk Road.

他受雇于恐惧海盗罗伯茨，丝绸之路中心的神秘人物。

DPR, as he was often called, was the proprietor of the site and the visionary leader of its growing community.

DPR，正如他经常被称为的那样，是该网站的所有者，也是其不断发展的社区的有远见的领导者。

His relatively frictionless drug market was a serious challenge to law enforcement, who still had no idea who he or she was—or even if DPR was a single person at all.

他相对顺畅的毒品市场对执法部门来说是一个严峻的挑战，执法部门仍然不知道他或她是谁，甚至不知道 DPR 是否是一个人。

For over a year, agents from the DEA, the FBI, Homeland Security, the IRS, the Secret Service, and US Postal Inspection had been trying to infiltrate the organization’s inner circle.

一年多来，缉毒署、联邦调查局、国土安全部、国税局、特勤局和美国邮政检查局的特工一直试图渗透到该组织的核心圈子。

This bust of Green and his Chihuahuas in the frozen Utah desert was their first notable success.

格林和他的吉娃娃犬在冰冻的犹他州沙漠中的这尊半身像是他们第一次取得显着的成功。

The Feds got Green on his feet.

美联储让格林站了起来。

They had a lot of questions, starting with why he had $23,000 cash in his fanny pack and who was on the other end of the encrypted chat dialogs on his computer.

他们有很多问题，首先是为什么他的腰包里有 23,000 美元现金，以及他电脑上加密聊天对话框的另一端是谁。

Green said, improbably, that the money was his tax return.

格林难以置信地表示，这笔钱是他的纳税申报单。

He also asked for his pain medication.

他还索要止痛药。

Instead they escorted him to the door and into a squad car, informing him that he’d be booked for possession of 1,092 grams of cocaine with intent to distribute.

相反，他们护送他到门口并进入一辆警车，并告知他，他将因持有 1,092 克可卡因并意图分发而被记录在案。

“Don’t take me to jail,” Green pleaded.

“不要把我送进监狱，”格林恳求道。

“He knows everything about me.”

“他知道我的一切。”

Later, under interrogation, Green told the skeptical agents that to charge him and make his name public was a potential death sentence.

后来，在审讯中，格林告诉持怀疑态度的特工，指控他并公开他的名字可能会被判处死刑。

Dread Pirate Roberts was dangerous, he said: “This guy’s got millions.

可怕的海盗罗伯茨很危险，他说：“这家伙有数百万美元。

He could have me killed.”

他可以杀了我。”

Ross Ulbricht was deep into his regular drum circle when he spotted her.

当罗斯·乌布利希（Ross Ulbricht）发现她时，他正深入他的常规鼓圈。

As Ross slapped the hide on his djembe, a West African drum, Julia Vie sat across the circle.

当罗斯在他的非洲鼓（一种西非鼓）上敲击皮革时，朱莉娅·维坐在圆圈对面。

She had a head full of curls, light brown skin, and dark brown eyes.

她有一头卷发、浅棕色的皮肤和深棕色的眼睛。

The drum circle was assembled on a lawn at Penn State, where in 2008 Ross was working toward a master’s degree in materials science and engineering.

鼓圈是在宾夕法尼亚州立大学的草坪上组装的，2008 年罗斯正在该校攻读材料科学与工程硕士学位。

Julia was 18, a free-spirited freshman, and when she noticed Ross she felt a powerful attraction.

朱莉娅 18 岁，是一名自由奔放的新生，当她注意到罗斯时，她感受到了一种强大的吸引力。

Not long after, Julia visited Ross’ campus office, where they couldn’t help but kiss and fall into a carnal heap on the floor.

不久之后，朱莉娅参观了罗斯的校园办公室，在那里他们情不自禁地接吻，并在地板上肉欲地倒在了一起。

Both were smitten.

两人都被迷住了。

Ross studied crystallography, working on thin-film growth.

罗斯研究晶体学，致力于薄膜生长。

One day he made a large, flat blue crystal, affixed it to a ring, and gave it to Julia.

有一天，他制作了一颗又大又扁平的蓝色水晶，把它贴在一枚戒指上，然后送给了朱莉娅。

She had no idea how her boyfriend could make a crystal, but she knew she was in love.

她不知道她的男朋友是如何制作水晶的，但她知道她恋爱了。

Ross had grown up in Austin, Texas, and had always been smart and charming.

罗斯在德克萨斯州奥斯汀长大，一直聪明而迷人。

He’d been the kind of kid who was an Eagle Scout—and let his friends give him a mohawk on a whim.

他是那种当过老鹰童子军的孩子，他的朋友们一时兴起就给他留了莫霍克发型。

He was raised in a tight family.

他在一个紧密的家庭中长大。

They’d spend summers in Costa Rica; Ross’ parents had built a series of rustic, solar-powered bamboo houses there, near an isolated point break where Ross learned to surf.

他们会在哥斯达黎加度过夏天；罗斯的父母在那里建造了一系列乡村风格的太阳能竹屋，靠近罗斯学习冲浪的一个孤立的冲浪点。

In high school, “Rossman,” as friends called him, drove an old Volvo, smoked plenty of pot, and still got a 1460 on his SATs.

高中时，朋友们称呼他为“罗斯曼”，他开着一辆旧沃尔沃，吸了很多大麻，SAT 考试仍然拿到了 1460 分。

To friends, Ross was carefree but also caring.

对朋友来说，罗斯无忧无虑，但也很关心。

Ross earned a scholarship to the University of Texas at Dallas and majored in physics.

罗斯获得了德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校的奖学金，主修物理学。

From there he landed a graduate scholarship at Penn State, where he excelled as usual.

从那时起，他获得了宾夕法尼亚州立大学的研究生奖学金，在那里他一如既往地表现出色。

But he wasn’t happy with the drudgery of lab research.

但他对实验室研究的苦差事并不满意。

Since college he’d been exploring psychedelics and reading Eastern philosophy.

自大学以来，他一直在探索迷幻药并阅读东方哲学。

At Penn State, Ross talked openly about switching fields.

在宾夕法尼亚州立大学，罗斯公开谈论了转换领域的事情。

He posted online about his disenchantment with science—and his new interest in economics.

他在网上发帖表达了他对科学的失望，以及他对经济学的新兴趣。

He’d come to see taxation and government as a form of coercion, enforced by the state’s monopoly on violence.

他开始将税收和政府视为一种强制形式，通过国家对暴力的垄断来强制执行。

His thinking was heavily influenced by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, a totem of the modern American libertarian orthodoxy.

他的思想深受奥地利经济学家路德维希·冯·米塞斯的影响，米塞斯是现代美国自由主义正统思想的图腾。

According to von Mises, a citizen must have economic freedom to be politically or morally free.

根据冯·米塞斯的观点，公民必须拥有经济自由才能获得政治或道德自由。

And Ross wanted to be free.

罗斯想要自由。

When he finished his master’s in 2009, he moved back to Austin and bought Julia a plane ticket to join him.

2009 年，当他完成硕士学位后，他搬回奥斯汀，并给朱莉娅买了一张与他团聚的机票。

She left school, and they got a cheap apartment together.

她离开了学校，他们一起租了一套便宜的公寓。

It was cramped, but they were young and dreamy.

那里很拥挤，但他们年轻而有梦想。

Both imagined they might get married.

两人都想象着他们可能会结婚。

Ross tried day trading, but it didn’t go well.

罗斯尝试过日内交易，但进展并不顺利。

He started a videogame company.

他创办了一家视频游戏公司。

That failed too.

那也失败了。

The setbacks were devastating.

这些挫折是毁灭性的。

He didn’t want to be trying; he wanted to be doing .

他不想尝试；他不想尝试。他想做的事。

During this time, his downstairs neighbor, Donny Palmertree, invited Ross to work with him on Good Wagon Books, a business that collected used books and sold them in digital storefronts like Amazon and Books-A-Million.

在此期间，他楼下的邻居唐尼·帕默特里 (Donny Palmertree) 邀请罗斯与他一起创办 Good Wagon Books，该公司收集旧书并在亚马逊和 Books-A-Million 等数字店面出售。

Ross built Good Wagon’s website, learned inventory management, and wrote a custom script that determined a book’s price based on its Amazon ranking.

罗斯建立了 Good Wagon 的网站，学习了库存管理，并编写了一个自定义脚本，根据亚马逊排名确定一本书的价格。

In his spare time Ross read, hiked, improved his yoga, and, as Julia fondly recalls, had “lots and lots of great sex.” But they also argued, about politics (she was a Democrat), money (what he called “frugal,” she called “cheap”), and their social life (she partied more than he did).

在业余时间，罗斯读书、徒步旅行、改进瑜伽，而且正如朱莉娅深情回忆的那样，他还享受了“很多很多美妙的性爱”。但他们也争论政治（她是民主党人）、金钱（他称之为“节俭”，她称之为“廉价”）和社交生活（她比他参加派对更多）。

Their relationship turned stormy, with frequent breakups.

他们的关系变得风雨飘摇，经常分手。

In the summer of 2010, they split up yet again.

2010年夏天，他们再次分手。

He was heartbroken, later telling a woman he met on OkCupid how he’d recently been in love and was trying to get over it.

他心碎了，后来告诉他在 OkCupid 上认识的一位女士，他最近恋爱了，并试图摆脱它。

Ross was adrift.

罗斯随波逐流。

“I went through a lot over the year in my personal relationships,” he wrote in a journal on his computer, a kind of self-assessment of life goals.

“这一年里我在人际关系上经历了很多，”他在电脑上的日记中写道，这是一种对人生目标的自我评估。

“I had left my promising career as a scientist to be an investment adviser and entrepreneur and came up empty-handed.” Ross felt ashamed, but not long afterward Palmertree got a job in Dallas, leaving Good Wagon to Ross.

“我放弃了前途光明的科学家职业，转而成为一名投资顾问和企业家，却两手空空。”罗斯感到羞愧，但不久之后，帕默特里在达拉斯找到了一份工作，把好马车留给了罗斯。

For years, all he’d wanted was to be in charge of something.

多年来，他只想负责某件事。

Now he was.

现在他是了。

In the Good Wagon warehouse, Ross oversaw five part-time college students sorting, logging, and organizing the 50,000 books on shelves he built himself.

在 Good Wagon 仓库里，罗斯负责监督 5 名兼职大学生对他自己搭建的书架上的 50,000 本书进行分类、记录和整理。

That December was Good Wagon’s best month, clearing 10 grand.

那年 12 月是 Good Wagon 表现最好的一个月，净赚了 10 英镑。

But by the end of 2010, the new CEO of Good Wagon was looking beyond the book business.

但到 2010 年底，Good Wagon 新任首席执行官的目光不再局限于图书业务。

During his forays into trading, Ross had discovered bitcoin, the digital cryptocurrency.

在涉足交易期间，罗斯发现了比特币，即数字加密货币。

The value of bitcoin—based only on market factors, unattached to any central bank—aligned with his advancing libertarian philosophy.

比特币的价值——仅基于市场因素，不依赖于任何央行——与他推进的自由主义哲学相一致。

On his LinkedIn page, Ross wrote that he wanted to “use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind.”

罗斯在他的 LinkedIn 页面上写道，他希望“利用经济理论作为废除人类之间使用胁迫和侵略的手段。”

To that end Ross had a flash of insight.

为此，罗斯灵光一现。

“The idea,” he wrote in his journal, “was to create a website where people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them.” He wrote that he’d “been studying the technology for a while but needed a business model and strategy.”

他在日记中写道：“我们的想法是创建一个网站，人们可以匿名购买任何东西，而且没有任何线索可以找到他们。”他写道，他“研究这项技术已经有一段时间了，但需要一个商业模式和战略。”

Like most libertarians, Ross believed that drug use was a personal choice.

像大多数自由主义者一样，罗斯认为吸毒是个人选择。

And like all people paying attention, he observed that the war on drugs was a complete failure.

和所有关注的人一样，他观察到禁毒战争彻底失败了。

The natural merchandise for his new enterprise would be drugs.

他的新企业的天然商品就是毒品。

“I was calling it Underground Brokers,” Ross wrote, “but eventually settled on Silk Road.”

“我把它称为地下经纪人，”罗斯写道，“但最终选择了丝绸之路。”

Ever the capable scientist, Ross decided to cultivate his own psilocybin mushrooms as a starter product.

作为一名有能力的科学家，罗斯决定种植自己的裸盖菇素蘑菇作为起始产品。

He was spending time with Julia again, while struggling with programming his site and still running Good Wagon.

他再次与朱莉娅共度时光，同时努力编写自己的网站并仍在运营 Good Wagon。

Then, one night in early 2011, Good Wagon collapsed.

然后，2011 年初的一个晚上，Good Wagon 倒塌了。

In the literal sense.

从字面意义上来说。

Ross was working late, alone in the warehouse, when he heard an enormous crash—the sound of the library falling apart.

罗斯独自在仓库工作到很晚，突然听到一声巨响——图书馆倒塌的声音。

He’d carefully designed the entire system but had somehow forgotten two vital screws, the ones that held it all together; the shelves came down, every single one, like dominoes.

他精心设计了整个系统，但不知何故忘记了两个至关重要的螺丝，它们将所有系统固定在一起；架子像多米诺骨牌一样倒塌了，一个个都倒了。

When Ross broke the news to Palmertree, he also admitted that his heart wasn’t in Good Wagon anymore.

当罗斯向帕默特里透露这个消息时，他也承认自己的心已经不在Good Wagon上了。

They agreed to close the company, with no hard feelings.

他们同意关闭公司，没有任何怨恨。

He told Palmertree that he already had a new business idea—“something really big.”

他告诉帕默特里，他已经有了一个新的商业想法——“一些非常大的事情。”

Silk Road went live in mid-January 2011.

丝绸之路于 2011 年 1 月中旬上线。

A few days later came the first sale.

几天后，第一笔销售出现了。

Then more.

然后更多。

Ross eventually sold all 10 pounds of his mushrooms, but other vendors started joining.

罗斯最终卖掉了所有 10 磅蘑菇，但其他供应商也开始加入。

He was handling all the transactions by hand, which was time-consuming but exhilarating.

他所有的交易都是手工处理，这很耗时，但令人兴奋。

It wasn’t long before enough vendors and users made it a functioning, growing marketplace.

不久之后，就有足够的供应商和用户使其成为一个运转良好、不断增长的市场。

Just before the launch, facing a new year and a blank slate, Ross had resolved to change his life.

就在发布之前，面对新的一年和一片空白，罗斯决心改变自己的生活。

“In 2011,” he wrote to himself, “I am creating a year of prosperity and power beyond what I have ever experienced before.

“2011年，”他在心里写道，“我将创造一个我从未经历过的繁荣和力量的一年。

Silk Road is going to become a phenomenon and at least one person will tell me about it, unknowing that I was its creator.”

丝绸之路将成为一种现象，至少会有人告诉我它，而不知道我是它的创造者。”

Special agent Carl Mark Force IV was half-asleep when the postal inspector started talking about something weird in the parcel sorters.

当邮政检查员开始谈论包裹分拣机中的一些奇怪的东西时，特工卡尔·马克·福斯四世正在半睡半醒中。

“Just wanna let everybody know about this,” the inspector said, delivering his brief to a conference room full of bored law enforcement personnel.

“只是想让每个人都知道这件事，”检查员向满是无聊执法人员的会议室介绍了他的简报。

“We are having problems with drugs coming through the mail.”

“我们在邮寄毒品方面遇到了问题。”

Force was a Baltimore-based DEA agent, and he was at a regional interagency meeting, a periodic intel show-and-tell with analysts from the FBI, the DEA, the IRS, and Homeland Security.

福斯是驻巴尔的摩的缉毒局特工，他参加了一次区域机构间会议，定期与联邦调查局、缉毒局、国税局和国土安全部的分析师进行情报展示和讲述。

“It’s coming from an underground drug site,” the inspector said, “called Silk Road.”

“它来自一个地下毒品站点，”检查员说，“叫做丝绸之路。”

Force sat up.

力坐了起来。

This was the kind of thing he was looking for.

这就是他正在寻找的东西。

He had burned out on the grind of arresting street dealers.

他因逮捕街头小贩的苦差事而精疲力尽。

At 6 feet and 200 pounds, Force was an athletic guy, and coming up through the agency he’d loved the physical thrill of bursting through a door at 6 am in Doc Martens and a tactical vest, clearing some broke-down row house on some broke-down block and catching some dealer in the bathroom, cuffing the guy before he could wipe his ass.

福斯身高 6 英尺，体重 200 磅，是个运动型的家伙，从经纪公司出来后，他喜欢早上 6 点穿着 Doc Martens 和战术背心冲进大门，清理某个破旧街区的破旧排屋，在浴室里抓住一个毒贩，在那个家伙擦屁股之前给他戴上手铐。

But after countless raids, the adrenaline had worn off.

但经过无数次突袭后，肾上腺素已经消退。

And in the grand scheme of things, who cared about confiscating a few grams?

从长远来看，谁会在乎没收几克呢？

He was pushing 50 and still on the federal payroll in a regional office.

他已经 50 岁了，但仍在地区办事处的联邦工资单上。

That’s when you want to find a big case and get out.

这时候你就想找到一个大案子然后全身而退。

And so he went looking for leads in meetings like this, which were mostly yawners—until now.

因此，他开始在这样的会议中寻找线索，但到目前为止，这些会议大多都是打哈欠的人。

By the time Force heard about Silk Road, it had been around nearly a year.

当福斯听说丝绸之路时，已经过去了将近一年的时间。

The site was modeled, sensibly, on Amazon and eBay.

该网站明智地以亚马逊和 eBay 为蓝本。

And that’s what it looked like: a well-organized community marketplace, complete with profiles, listings, and transaction reviews.

这就是它的样子：一个组织良好的社区市场，配有个人资料、列表和交易评论。

Everything was anonymous, and shipments often went through the regular old postal service.

一切都是匿名的，货物通常通过常规的旧邮政服务进行。

No need for fake names—you put your real address, and if any one asks, you just say you didn’t order all that heroin!

不需要假名——你输入你的真实地址，如果有人问起，你就说你没有订购所有的海洛因！

Silk Road’s “Seller’s Guide” had helpful instructions on how to vacuum-seal or otherwise hide drugs to evade electronic sensors or canine olfactories.

丝绸之路的“卖家指南”提供了有关如何真空密封或以其他方式隐藏毒品以逃避电子传感器或犬类嗅觉的有用说明。

Most shipments made it to happy customers.

大多数货物都送到了满意的客户手中。

That the small percentage of intercepted Silk Road packages represented an uptick spoke to the quickly rising volume of the site’s trade, a vast pharmacopeia covering dozens of categories with 13,000 listings.

被截获的丝绸之路包裹的一小部分数量有所增加，这说明该网站交易量的迅速增长，这是一个涵盖数十个类别、13,000 个列表的庞大药典。

It was a colorful smorgasbord for every type of connoisseur: fish­scale Colombian cocaine, Afghan No. 4 heroin, strawberry LSD, Caramello hash, Mercury’s Famous uncut cocaine flakes, Mario Invincibility Star XTC, white Mitsubishi MDMA, a black tar heroin called the Devil’s Licorice.

这是适合各种鉴赏家的多彩大餐：哥伦比亚鱼鳞可卡因、阿富汗第四号海洛因、草莓LSD、卡拉梅洛哈希、水星著名的未切割可卡因片、马里奥无敌之星XTC、白色三菱摇头丸、一种名为“魔鬼甘草”的黑色焦油海洛因。

Then there were the prescription meds, everything from Oxycontin and Xanax to Fentanyl and Dilaudid.

然后是处方药，从奥施康定和阿普唑仑到芬太尼和地洛迪。

Silk Road’s product descriptions and user ratings amounted to an encyclopedic information source.

丝绸之路的产品描述和用户评分相当于百科全书式的信息来源。

Cantfeelmyface said one product “has a nice shine” and provides “a rush of euphoria and confidence.” Ivory’s review of some crystal MDMA observed that it had “a nice fizz and wisp of smoke =].” The reviews and community standards enforced excellent value and customer service on Silk Road, which brought more users, increasing its reputation further—until Silk Road became the premier destination for digital drug sales.

Cantfeelmyface 表示，一种产品“具有良好的光泽”，并提供“一种欣快感和信心”。 Ivory 对一些水晶 MDMA 的评论发现，它具有“美妙的嘶嘶声和一缕烟雾=]。”这些评论和社区标准强化了 Silk Road 的卓越价值和客户服务，从而带来了更多用户，进一步提高了其声誉，直到 Silk Road 成为数字药品销售的首要目的地。

Law enforcement was caught with its tactical pants down.

执法部门被抓到了战术裤。

Various agencies had sniffed around Silk Road in the summer of 2011 but gotten nowhere.

2011年夏天，多家机构曾对丝绸之路进行过嗅探，但一无所获。

Force saw potential but didn’t even know where to begin.

Force看到了潜力，但甚至不知道从哪里开始。

Months later, in January 2012, he got some good news from his supervisor.

几个月后，即 2012 年 1 月，他从主管那里得到了一些好消息。

Homeland Security was assembling a task force for a full-on Silk Road case.

国土安全部正在组建一个特别工作组来处理全面的丝绸之路案件。

“You want in?” his boss asked.

“你想进去吗？”他的老板问道。

Before he knew it, Force was at a Silk Road summit, where he and 40 other agents picked through doughnut boxes and watched PowerPoint presentations filled with technical information about nodes and TCP/IP layers.

不知不觉中，Force 已经参加了丝绸之路峰会，他和其他 40 名特工在甜甜圈盒中挑选，并观看了充满有关节点和 TCP/IP 层技术信息的 PowerPoint 演示文稿。

Most of the agents’ eyes glazed over, but, yes, Force wanted in.

大多数特工目光呆滞，但是，是的，原力想要加入。

The task force that formed to take on Silk Road—Operation Marco Polo—was based out of the Baltimore Homeland Security Investigations office.

为打击丝绸之路而成立的特别工作组——马可波罗行动——总部设在巴尔的摩国土安全调查办公室。

Another agent showed Force how to navigate Silk Road.

另一位特工向福斯展示了如何驾驭丝绸之路。

He quickly saw that it had a vocal mastermind, the revered figure known as Dread Pirate Roberts.

他很快发现这件事有一个主谋，即令人尊敬的恐怖海盗罗伯茨。

It was a clever touch, borrowing the name from The Princess Bride , in which the pirate was a mythical character, inhabited by the wearer of the mask.

这是一个巧妙的做法，借用了《公主新娘》的名字，其中海盗是一个神话人物，由面具的佩戴者居住。

The idea of a malleable but enduring identity only added to Silk Road’s enigmatic appeal.

具有可塑性但持久的身份的想法只会增加丝绸之路神秘的吸引力。

Force was intrigued.

武力很感兴趣。

Whoever wore this digital mask sat atop a burgeoning empire.

无论谁戴上这个数字面具，都将坐在一个新兴帝国的顶峰。

Force told his boss that Silk Road was a “target of opportunity.” But he was unskilled at computers, and he didn’t know anything about bitcoin.

福斯告诉他的老板，丝绸之路是一个“机会目标”。但他对电脑不熟练，对比特币一无所知。

So he decided to learn.

于是他决定学习。

Hector Xavier Monsegur was an unusual visitor to the New York FBI office.

赫克托·泽维尔·蒙塞古尔 (Hector Xavier Monsegur) 是纽约联邦调查局办公室的一位不寻常的访客。

Then again, Monsegur was not really a visitor.

话又说回来，蒙塞古尔并不是真正的访客。

It was past 1 am one night in the spring of 2011, and he was being led to the back of the empty bullpen by Chris Tarbell, a young agent who had arrested Monsegur earlier that night in the Jacob Riis Houses on the Lower East Side.

2011 年春天的一个晚上，凌晨 1 点多，他被克里斯·塔贝尔 (Chris Tarbell) 带到空牛棚的后面，克里斯·塔贝尔是一名年轻特工，当晚早些时候，他在下东区的雅各布·里斯住宅 (Jacob Riis Houses) 逮捕了蒙塞古尔。

Monsegur was an enormous Puerto Rican, ears studded with diamonds, who grew up in the projects.

蒙塞古尔是一位身材魁梧的波多黎各人，耳朵上镶满了钻石，他是在这些项目中长大的。

He was also Sabu, a cofounder of LulzSec, the elite group of hackers responsible for electronically attacking dozens of corporate and government targets like News Corp.

他也是 LulzSec 的联合创始人 Sabu，LulzSec 是一个精英黑客组织，负责对新闻集团等数十家企业和政府目标进行电子攻击。

and the CIA.

和中央情报局。

Sabu was the most high-profile member of Anonymous, the “hacktivist” political collective.

萨布是“匿名者”政治团体中最引人注目的成员。

Tarbell had managed to follow a blind lead from the FBI’s public hotline to Sabu and reel him into the FBI as an informant.

塔贝尔成功地通过联邦调查局公共热线的线索找到了萨布，并将他以线人的身份卷入联邦调查局。

It was a remarkable score for Tarbell, especially since he was still a rookie.

对于塔贝尔来说，这是一个了不起的得分，特别是因为他还是一个新秀。

Tarbell had always had the cop in him, even when his parents thought he was going to be a doctor.

塔贝尔身上一直有警察的影子，即使他的父母认为他会成为一名医生。

In college he was a powerlifter, an unusual sight at James Madison University, a preppy school in the Shenandoah Valley.

在大学里，他是一名举重运动员，这在詹姆斯·麦迪逊大学（谢南多厄山谷的一所预科学校）中是一个不寻常的景象。

He already looked like a cop: big, with a short coif on top of that baby face.

他看起来已经像个警察了：身材魁梧，娃娃脸上戴着短头巾。

By the time Tarbell finished college, he sensed where policing was headed and got a master’s in computer science.

当塔贝尔大学毕业时，他意识到了警务的发展方向，并获得了计算机科学硕士学位。

He didn’t understand programming at first.

起初他不懂编程。

But he did understand that this was the future, so he paced himself, stuck with it, and came out the other side as a computer forensics expert, working as a civilian for the FBI.

但他确实明白这就是未来，所以他调整自己的节奏，坚持下去，最终成为一名计算机取证专家，为联邦调查局 (FBI) 工作。

Tarbell spent four years traveling the world with global forensics, tracking down terrorists, child pornographers, and botnets.

塔贝尔花了四年时间周游世界，进行全球取证，追查恐怖分子、儿童色情制品制作者和僵尸网络。

He showed a talent for uncovering digital trails.

他表现出了发现数字踪迹的天赋。

He thought about how the virtual realm seemed like magic, a secret world, poorly understood; and like all magical realms, it was full of charlatans and practitioners of dark arts.

他觉得虚拟世界就像魔法一样，是一个神秘的世界，人们对其知之甚少；和所有魔法领域一样，这里充满了江湖骗子和黑暗魔法的实践者。

Few could decipher those secrets, and Tarbell liked being one of them.

很少有人能破译这些秘密，而塔贝尔喜欢成为其中的一员。

After a few years in forensics, Tarbell told his wife, Sabrina, he wanted to officially join the Bureau.

在法医工作了几年后，塔贝尔告诉他的妻子萨布丽娜，他想正式加入该局。

Sabrina, eight months pregnant, approved, even though it meant uprooting their lives.

怀孕八个月的萨布丽娜同意了，尽管这意味着要彻底改变他们的生活。

After Quantico, Tarbell was assigned to the New York office, home to the FBI’s nascent cybercrime division.

匡蒂科事件后，塔贝尔被分配到纽约办事处，这里是联邦调查局新生网络犯罪部门的所在地。

By this time he was 31, a little old to be the new guy.

此时他已经31岁了，对于新人来说有点老了。

But catching the elusive Sabu made Tarbell’s name at the Bureau.

但抓住难以捉摸的萨布让塔贝尔在局里名声大噪。

Online, Sabu’s credibility among hackers was unassailable.

在网上，萨布在黑客中的信誉是无懈可击的。

The FBI set him up with a new laptop in their office, where he gathered evidence against his LulzSec friends.

联邦调查局在办公室给他配备了一台新笔记本电脑，他在那里收集了对他的 LulzSec 朋友不利的证据。

Nine months later dozens of arrests were made, severely disabling two of the world’s biggest hacker groups.

九个月后，数十人被捕，严重削弱了世界上最大的两个黑客组织。

After LulzSec, Tarbell looked for a new big case.

LulzSec 之后，Tarbell 寻找新的大案子。

He took an interest in Tor, the encryption software that allowed users to visit sites such as Silk Road.

他对 Tor 很感兴趣，这是一种允许用户访问丝绸之路等网站的加密软件。

Tor’s protocol is a kind of digital invisibility cloak, hiding users and the sites they visit.

Tor 的协议是一种数字隐形斗篷，隐藏用户及其访问的网站。

Tor stands for “the Onion Router” and was launched by the Navy in 2002.

Tor 代表“洋葱路由器”，由海军于 2002 年推出。

It has since become a tool for all manner of clandestine communications, licit and illicit, from circumventing censorship in countries like China to powering contraband sites like Silk Road.

从那时起，它已成为各种合法和非法秘密通信的工具，从规避中国等国家的审查制度到为丝绸之路等走私网站提供动力。

Tor’s encryption is so layered, agents thought it was unbreakable.

Tor 的加密是如此分层，特工们认为它是牢不可破的。

When cybercrime investigations hit a Tor IP, they would give up.

当网络犯罪调查触及 Tor IP 时，他们就会放弃。

The supposed impossibility only attracted Tarbell.

这种所谓的不可能只吸引了塔贝尔。

I’m gonna take on Tor , he thought.

我要挑战 Tor，他想。

Tarbell briefed his supervisor, who briefed his supervisor, and so on, until they wound up in the office of the SAC, or special agent in charge.

塔贝尔向他的上司汇报情况，上司又向他的上司汇报情况，依此类推，直到他们最终进入 SAC 或负责的特工办公室。

Above the SAC is the assistant director in charge—yes, an endless source of amusement when complaining about red tape in the FBI is to talk about how the SAC is just below ADIC.

SAC 之上是负责的助理局长——是的，抱怨 FBI 的繁文缛节时，一个无尽的乐趣就是谈论 SAC 为何略低于 ADIC。

It took a couple of sales pitches to soften up the SAC, but in February 2013, Tarbell opened the FBI’s first Tor case: Operation Onion Peeler.

经过几次推销才软化了 SAC，但在 2013 年 2 月，Tarbell 立案了 FBI 的第一个 Tor 案件：洋葱剥皮者行动。

By now Silk Road was a juicy target.

到目前为止，丝绸之路已成为一个诱人的目标。

Many agencies were working on it, but with no success.

许多机构都在努力，但没有成功。

Homeland Security Investigations had a case open.

国土安全调查局正在审理此案。

The IRS had looked into it.

美国国税局已经对此进行了调查。

There was Force’s DEA case in Baltimore.

巴尔的摩发生了福斯缉毒局案件。

And the New York DEA, which asked Tarbell for technical advice.

纽约缉毒局向塔贝尔寻求技术建议。

They were using traditional drug investigation techniques, but Tarbell knew this wasn’t an operation where you could flip people up the chain, because there was no chain.

他们使用的是传统的毒品调查技术，但塔贝尔知道这不是一个可以将人推上链条的行动，因为没有链条。

You had to go straight to the top.

你必须直奔山顶。

Ross was paddling through the break, lining up for a set.

罗斯在中场休息时划着桨，准备拿下一盘。

The beach at Bondi, just south of Sydney, sloped down to a gorgeous waterline.

悉尼南部的邦迪海滩倾斜至美丽的水线。

For Ross, the waves were among the many advantages of leaving Austin in late 2011 to spend some time in Australia with his older sister, Cally.

对于 Ross 来说，海浪是他在 2011 年底离开奥斯汀并与姐姐 Cally 一起去澳大利亚度过一段时光的诸多好处之一。

He quickly made friends there, a lively group that went out drinking, invited him to warehouse parties, and met up to go surfing.

他很快在那里交了朋友，一群热闹的人出去喝酒，邀请他参加仓库聚会，并一起去冲浪。

Ross had worked that morning but was in the water by afternoon.

罗斯那天早上工作了，但下午就下水了。

It was nice, the portable life.

便携式生活真好。

And it was made possible by his flourishing online drug bazaar.

他蓬勃发展的在线毒品集市使这一切成为可能。

Silk Road’s usage had exploded in June of that year, after a story on Gawker brought the site mainstream attention.

同年 6 月，Gawker 上的一篇报道引起了该网站主流关注后，Silk Road 的使用量出现了爆炸式增长。

After that, traffic grew so fast that Ross needed technical support to maintain the site, deal with transactions, and add features like automatic payments and a better feedback system.

此后，流量增长如此之快，以至于罗斯需要技术支持来维护网站、处理交易以及添加自动付款和更好的反馈系统等功能。

He’d been doing it all himself, learning on the fly, programming automated transactions and using CodeIgniter to write and rewrite the site after a benevolent hacker alerted him to some major flaws.

他一直在自己做这一切，即时学习，编程自动交易，并在一位仁慈的黑客提醒他一些重大缺陷后，使用 CodeIgniter 编写和重写该网站。

(“This is amateur shit,” the hacker had said.) His homespun efforts worked (miraculously), but Ross lost sleep over it.

（“这是业余的狗屎，”黑客说。）他的朴素努力（奇迹般地）奏效了，但罗斯却为此失眠了。

To outsiders he seemed his normal genial self, but in his digital domain he was frazzled, trying to keep Silk Road running.

在外人看来，他看起来很和蔼可亲，但在他的数字领域，他却疲惫不堪，试图维持丝绸之路的运转。

All the while he recorded in his journal the pitfalls of running a seat-of-the-pants startup:

他一直在日记中记录了经营一家凭感觉创业的陷阱：

And yeah, that was yet another learning curve, configuring and running a LAMP server, oh joy!

是的，这又是一个学习曲线，配置和运行 LAMP 服务器，哦，太高兴了！

…

……

But I was loving it.

但我很喜欢它。

Sure it was a little crude, but it worked!

当然，这有点粗糙，但它确实有效！

Rewriting the site was the most stressful couple of months I’ve ever experienced.

重写网站是我经历过的压力最大的几个月。

Early on, Ross had turned to Richard Bates, a college friend who was now a software engineer in Austin.

早些时候，罗斯向大学好友理查德·贝茨求助，后者现在是奥斯汀的一名软件工程师。

Bates helped Ross with basic programming and tended to crises like the site’s first major outage.

贝茨帮助罗斯进行基本编程，并处理诸如网站第一次重大故障之类的危机。

When Silk Road took off, Ross tried to hire Bates, but Bates already had a programming job.

当丝绸之路起飞时，罗斯试图雇用贝茨，但贝茨已经有了一份编程工作。

“Have you ever thought about doing something legitimate,” Bates asked Ross, “something legal?”

“你有没有想过做一些合法的事情，”贝茨问罗斯，“合法的事情？”

Ross wasn’t really interested.

罗斯并不是很感兴趣。

Driven by the failure of his previous businesses, he was determined to make Silk Road succeed.

在之前生意失败的推动下，他决心让丝绸之路取得成功。

He disappeared into his work and started professionalizing his organization.

他投入到工作中并开始使他的组织专业化。

He and Julia broke up again that summer.

那年夏天他和朱莉娅再次分手。

With Silk Road in his computer, there was little to keep Ross in Austin.

电脑里有丝绸之路，罗斯就没有什么理由留在奥斯汀了。

By the time he got to Australia, he had banked $100,000 and was earning $25,000 a month in commissions.

当他到达澳大利亚时，他已经存有 100,000 美元的存款，每月赚取 25,000 美元的佣金。

“It was time to bring in some hired guns,” he wrote, “to …

“是时候引进一些雇佣兵了，”他写道，“去……

take the site to the next level.”

将网站提升到一个新的水平。”

Part of the problem was that Ross was grappling with what hackers call operational security, or opsec.

部分问题在于罗斯正在努力解决黑客所说的操作安全（opsec）问题。

To completely seal his two identities from one another, Ross realized, would require a kind of ruthless and elaborate secrecy.

罗斯意识到，要完全封锁他的两个身份，需要一种无情且精心设计的秘密。

He appealed to Bates to stay quiet.

他呼吁贝茨保持安静。

Later, Ross told his friend that he’d sold Silk Road to a mysterious buyer.

后来，罗斯告诉他的朋友，他已将丝绸之路卖给了一位神秘买家。

He also struggled with learning how to lie.

他还努力学习如何撒谎。

Just before New Year’s he went on a date with a woman named Jessica; he told her, like everyone else, that he was working on a bitcoin exchange.

新年之前，他和一位名叫杰西卡的女人约会。他像其他人一样告诉她，他正在一家比特币交易所工作。

This alone constituted a security leak.

仅此一点就构成了安全漏洞。

I’m so stupid , he thought.

我真傻，他想。

But Ross got “deep” with Jessica and felt an urge to reveal himself.

但罗斯与杰西卡的关系“很深”，并有一种暴露自己的冲动。

He lamented this feeling, the divide between intimacy and deceit.

他哀叹这种感觉，即亲密与欺骗之间的鸿沟。

The Eagle Scout in him agonized over telling half-truths.

他身上的鹰童子军因说出半真半假的话而感到痛苦。

Sitting across from Jessica, he wished he could be honest; he also wished he’d started with a better lie.

坐在杰西卡对面的他希望自己能够诚实。他还希望一开始就撒一个更好的谎言。

But Ross did divulge the most important truth.

但罗斯确实透露了最重要的真相。

He told her: “I have secrets.”

他告诉她：“我有秘密。”

When Silk Road started, its leader was something of a cipher.

当丝绸之路开始时，它的领导者在某种程度上是一个默默无闻的人。

Users and vendors only knew that there was a system administrator who’d established the site’s conceptual framework as both a drug marketplace and libertarian experiment.

用户和供应商只知道有一位系统管理员建立了该网站的概念框架，既作为毒品市场，又作为自由主义实验。

¶ There was a basic ethics for that experiment.

¶ 该实验有基本的伦理道德。

Some of Silk Road’s users were purists who advocated for full transactional autonomy—if heroin, why not howitzers and human hearts?—but the administrator pronounced “a strict code of conduct.” No child porn, stolen goods, or fake degrees.

丝绸之路的一些用户是纯粹主义者，他们主张完全的交易自主权——如果是海洛因，为什么不是榴弹炮和人心呢？——但管理员宣布了“严格的行为准则”。禁止儿童色情、赃物或假学位。

He summed it up like so: “Our basic rules are to treat others as you would wish to be treated and don’t do anything to hurt or scam someone else.”

他这样总结：“我们的基本规则是己所不欲，勿施于人，不要做任何伤害或欺骗别人的事情。”

As time went on, the administrator became an important voice, the site’s theorist and advocate for individual liberty.

随着时间的推移，管理员成为重要的声音、网站的理论家和个人自由的倡导者。

But ideas need a true leader.

但想法需要一个真正的领导者。

This role, Ross decided, was too important to go unnamed.

罗斯认为，这个角色太重要了，不能不点名。

“Who is Silk Road?” posted the administrator in February 2012 to the community.

“丝绸之路是谁？” 2012 年 2 月将管理员发布到社区。

“I am Silk Road, the market, the person, the enterprise, everything …

“我是丝路，是市场，是人，是企业，是一切……

I need a name.”

我需要一个名字。”

“Drum roll please …

“请击鼓……

,” came the dramatic announcement.

”，这是一个戏剧性的宣布。

“My new name is Dread Pirate Roberts.”

“我的新名字是恐惧海盗罗伯茨。”

Everyone loves The Princess Bride , and the reference was clear immediately.

每个人都喜欢《公主新娘》，而且参考资料很快就很清楚。

(Force and Tarbell, who had both seen the movie many times, got the implication as well: plausible deniability.) The mask, worn by successive generations of pirates, obfuscates the relationship between the name and the man.

（福斯和塔贝尔都看过这部电影很多次，他们也明白了其中的含义：似是而非的否认。）一代又一代的海盗都戴着这个面具，混淆了这个名字和这个人之间的关系。

The christening of DPR was emblematic of Silk Road’s secrecy.

DPR 的命名象征着丝绸之路的保密性。

It also ignited a true cult of personality.

它还点燃了真正的个人崇拜。

DPR was thoughtful and at times eloquent.

DPR 深思熟虑，有时雄辩。

For believers, Silk Road was more than a black market; it was a sanctuary.

对于信徒来说，丝绸之路不仅仅是一个黑市，更是一个黑市。这是一个避难所。

For DPR, the site was a political polemic in practice.

对于 DPR 来说，该网站实际上是一场政治争论。

“Stop funding the state with your tax dollars,” DPR wrote, “and direct your productive energies into the black market.” DPR got more grandiose over time, writing that every transaction on Silk Road was a step toward universal freedom.

DPR 写道：“停止用你的税款为国家提供资金，并将你的生产能量投入黑市。”随着时间的推移，DPR 变得更加宏大，写道丝绸之路上的每一笔交易都是迈向普遍自由的一步。

In a way, Silk Road was the logical extension of the libertarian view that animates much of the Internet (not to mention the rising political tide in Washington).

在某种程度上，丝绸之路是自由主义观点的逻辑延伸，这种观点为互联网的大部分内容注入了活力（更不用说华盛顿不断上升的政治浪潮了）。

It was Silicon Valley in extremis, a disruptive technology wrapped in political rhetoric.

这是处于绝境的硅谷，一种被政治言论包裹着的颠覆性技术。

DPR was its philosopher-king, envisioning a post-state digital economy, with Silk Road as the first step toward a libertarian paradise.

DPR 是它的哲学家国王，设想了一个后国家数字经济，而丝绸之路是迈向自由主义天堂的第一步。

Not only was Silk Road a slap in the face to law enforcement, it was a direct challenge, as DPR wrote, to the very structure of power.

正如 DPR 所写，丝绸之路不仅是对执法部门的一记耳光，也是对权力结构的直接挑战。

All the more reason, of course, why the government wanted to shut it down.

当然，更重要的是政府想要关闭它。

Ross had been flattered by the sudden media attention in June 2011, but when US senator Charles Schumer called a press conference to denounce Silk Road, he was alarmed.

2011年6月，罗斯对媒体的突然关注感到受宠若惊，但当美国参议员查尔斯·舒默召开新闻发布会谴责丝绸之路时，他感到震惊。

“The US govt, my main enemy,” he wrote, “was aware of me and …

“美国政府，我的主要敌人，”他写道，“了解我并且……

calling for my destruction.”

呼唤我的毁灭。”

I am a great admirer of your work.

我非常欣赏你的工作。

Brilliant, utterly brilliant!

太棒了，太棒了！

I will keep this short and to the point.

我会保持简短并切中要点。

I want to buy the site.

我想购买该网站。

I’ve been in the business for over 20 years.

我从事这个行业已有 20 多年了。

SILK ROAD is the future of trafficking.

丝绸之路是贩运的未来。

Force wrote this message from one of two government laptops he was issued for his undercover mission on Silk Road.

福斯是用他为丝绸之路卧底任务配发的两台政府笔记本电脑中的一台写下这条信息的。

They were Dells, silver and clunky with shitty batteries, so the DEA agent had to keep them plugged in, usually in the seclusion of the guest room of his house in the Baltimore suburbs.

它们是戴尔的，银色的，笨重的，电池很差，所以缉毒局特工必须让它们保持接通状态，通常是在他位于巴尔的摩郊区的房子的僻静的客房里。

That was also the favorite room of Pablo, Force’s cat, who would sit on the bed watching him, in his chair and ottoman, as he took to the keys posing as a high-rolling international drug smuggler.

这也是福斯的猫巴勃罗最喜欢的房间，福斯会坐在床上看着福斯坐在椅子和脚凳上，看着他假装成一个财大气粗的国际毒品走私犯。

He had constructed an elaborate identity: Eladio Guzman, a cartel operative based in the Dominican Republic whose bread and butter was moving midsize shipments of heroin and cocaine.

他精心设计了一个身份：埃拉迪奥·古兹曼 (Eladio Guzman)，一名驻多米尼加共和国的贩毒集团特工，靠运送中型海洛因和可卡因为生。

For Guzman’s Silk Road screen name, Force chose Nob, after the biblical city where David obtains the sword of Goliath.

对于古兹曼的丝绸之路网名，福斯选择了诺布（Nob），以圣经中大卫获得歌利亚之剑的城市命名。

Oh, and the Guzman character was blind in one eye.

哦，古兹曼这个角色的一只眼睛是瞎的。

So Force put on a hoodie and an eye patch and had his 10-year-old daughter take his profile picture.

于是福斯穿上连帽衫，戴上眼罩，并让他 10 岁的女儿给他拍了个人资料照片。

In the photo, Force, aka Guzman, aka Nob, held up a sign: all hail nob.

照片中，Force，又名古兹曼，又名诺布，举着一个牌子：万岁，诺布。

Force knew how to put together a backstory from his years in undercover.

福斯知道如何将他多年的卧底经历整理成一个背景故事。

As a young agent, he’d been on the front lines of the drug war.

作为一名年轻特工，他一直站在毒品战争的前线。

He grew out his hair, put bronze hoops in his ear, and inked a huge tribal piece on his back.

他留起了头发，把青铜箍戴在耳朵上，还在背上画了一块巨大的部落图案。

He said he worked in construction while looking for leads in down-and-out bars, like the Purple Pig Pub in Alamosa, Colorado, the “gateway to the great sand dunes”—and also the gateway to the Rocky Mountain route for Mexican meth.

他说，他一边做建筑工，一边在穷困的酒吧里寻找线索，比如科罗拉多州阿拉莫萨的 Purple Pig Pub，这里是“通往大沙丘的门户”，也是通往墨西哥冰毒落基山路线的门户。

Putting himself in the mindset of a smuggler, Force saw Silk Road’s strength as communications and distribution.

福斯将自己置于走私者的心态中，将丝绸之路的优势视为通讯和分销。

Hence his big opening gambit: For Guzman, Silk Road offered the opportunity for covert vertical integration from wholesale to retail.

因此，他的大开局策略是：对于古兹曼来说，丝绸之路提供了从批发到零售的隐蔽垂直整合的机会。

Force hoped he’d get a quick response, and he did.

福斯希望他能尽快得到回应，他做到了。

The day after Nob’s proposal, Dread Pirate Roberts wrote, “I’m open to the idea.

诺布提议的第二天，恐怖海盗罗伯茨写道：“我对这个想法持开放态度。

What did you have in mind?”

你到底有什么想法？”

Tarbell was at work, on the 23rd floor of the New York FBI office, early as usual.

塔贝尔像往常一样早在纽约 FBI 办公室 23 楼上班。

He was the kind of guy who wanted to be first in the office.

他是那种想成为办公室第一人的人。

Always had been, ever since college, when he started organizing his whole life on spreadsheets.

从大学起，他就开始在电子表格上组织自己的一生。

Tarbell and Sabrina’s first date is still on an Excel worksheet somewhere, as is everything that’s happened since: calendar, bills, weight goals, daily run.

Tarbell 和 Sabrina 的第一次约会仍然在 Excel 工作表的某个地方，以及此后发生的一切：日历、账单、体重目标、每日跑步。

Tarbell’s father-in-law, a longtime marine, thought Tarbell was the most regimented person he’d ever met.

塔贝尔的岳父是一名长期的海军陆战队员，他认为塔贝尔是他见过的最严格的人。

Tarbell set his alarm for 4:30 am, hit the gym by 5, and was showered and seated at his desk by 7 am sharp.

塔贝尔把闹钟定在凌晨 4 点 30 分，五点钟就去健身房，早上 7 点整洗完澡坐在办公桌前。

Tarbell and his fellow cybercops occupied a couple of dozen spots toward the back of the bullpen, fanned out around a core group of desks called the Pit.

塔贝尔和他的网络警察同事占据了牛棚后面的几十个位置，围绕着一组被称为“坑”的核心办公桌呈扇形分布。

This was prime real estate, where the cool kids among the FBI’s computer clique sat.

这是黄金地段，联邦调查局计算机集团中的酷孩子们都坐在那里。

When Tarbell started he was sitting two desks and an aisle away, way over by the windows.

当塔贝尔开始时，他坐在两张桌子和一条过道之外，距离窗户很远。

But during the LulzSec investigation, a coveted desk opened up and he leapfrogged right into the center of the Pit.

但在 LulzSec 调查期间，一张令人垂涎的桌子打开了，他直接跳进了坑的中心。

Tarbell liked his new colleagues, especially Ilwhan Yum.

塔贝尔喜欢他的新同事，尤其是伊尔万·尤姆 (Ilwhan Yum)。

As a kid, Yum moved from Korea to Long Island, where he got into videogames and later learned about networking and packets from playing competitively in college.

小时候，百胜从韩国搬到了长岛，在那里他迷上了电子游戏，后来在大学里通过竞技比赛了解了网络和数据包。

Yum would become vital to the Silk Road case because he was the squad’s bitcoin specialist.

百胜将成为丝绸之路案件的关键人物，因为他是该队的比特币专家。

He’d gone to the first bitcoin conference, in August 2011 in New York.

他参加了 2011 年 8 月在纽约举行的第一届比特币会议。

From a law enforcement perspective, bitcoin screamed money laundering.

从执法角度来看，比特币涉嫌洗钱。

But technologically, Yum thought the protocol “was, simply, beautiful.”

但从技术上讲，百胜认为该协议“简单而美丽”。

Across from Yum was Tom Kiernan.

百胜餐厅对面是汤姆·基尔南。

He’d been in the Pit the longest, 17 years, nearly since the DOS era, when he started at the Bureau as a civilian tech support guy, responding when agents’ printers stopped working.

他在坑里呆的时间最长，有 17 年，几乎是从 DOS 时代开始的，当时他在局里担任文职技术支持人员，在特工的打印机停止工作时做出响应。

Kiernan just understood machines, backward and forward, and became the spine of the cybersquad.

基尔南只是了解机器，无论是向前还是向后，并成为网络小队的骨干。

He’d seen every case and knew all, like the Pit’s very own oracle—just the guy Tarbell needed to help probe Silk Road’s defenses.

他见过每一个案件并且知道一切，就像深渊自己的神谕一样——正是塔贝尔需要帮助探测丝绸之路防御的人。

Tor was a vexing problem.

Tor 是一个令人烦恼的问题。

Tarbell thought it had benefits, but he also believed that all technologies could have their purposes corrupted.

塔贝尔认为它有好处，但他也相信所有技术的目的都可能被破坏。

In a criminal context, as with Silk Road, Tor made classic law enforcement—knocking on doors, interviewing witnesses, making deals—nearly useless.

在犯罪环境中，就像丝绸之路一样，Tor 使传统的执法——敲门、采访证人、达成交易——几乎毫无用处。

Sure, you might start to piece together the network or get closer to DPR, but you’d still have only usernames.

当然，您可能会开始拼凑网络或接近 DPR，但您仍然只有用户名。

This was not a people case, Tarbell thought.

塔贝尔想，这不是一个人的案件。

This was a computer case.

这是一个电脑机箱。

The path to DPR was through his server.

通往 DPR 的路径是通过他的服务器。

Finding it was a fearsome technical challenge.

找到它是一项可怕的技术挑战。

Out of 1.5 billion computers in the world, Tarbell started to think about just one machine, day after day.

在世界上 15 亿台计算机中，塔贝尔开始日复一日地只考虑一台机器。

It could be anywhere.

它可以在任何地方。

He was looking for a nanowire in a haystack.

他正在大海捞针中寻找纳米线。

Back in Baltimore , Force was fluffing pillows.

回到巴尔的摩，福斯正在抖松枕头。

This was his habit in the evening, a way to clear his mind before getting on Silk Road as Nob.

这是他晚上的习惯，是在以 Nob 的身份踏上丝绸之路之前理清思绪的一种方式。

For the first couple of weeks, Nob pushed his big Silk Road investment scheme.

在最初的几周里，诺布推动了他的丝绸之路投资计划。

But DPR declined, saying essentially: This operation is bigger than you think.

但 DPR 拒绝了，主要是说：这次行动比你想象的要大。

¶ And it was, because Silk Road worked extremely well.

¶ 确实如此，因为丝绸之路运作得非常好。

DPR’s robust stewardship was paying off.

DPR 强有力的管理正在得到回报。

To protect against scammers he created a Silk Road escrow, where all transactions would be held until settled.

为了防止诈骗，他创建了一个丝绸之路托管机构，所有交易都将被保存到结算为止。

DPR wanted to create what he called a “center of trust,” and it was this centralized payment structure that enabled Silk Road to really take off.

DPR 希望创建一个他所说的“信任中心”，正是这种中心化的支付结构使丝绸之路真正腾飞。

So when Nob offered to buy the operation, DPR countered with quite a price: $1 billion.

因此，当 Nob 提出购买该业务时，DPR 给出了相当高的价格：10 亿美元。

Nob scoffed.

诺布嘲笑道。

But in fact, DPR’s number might have been low; the scale of Silk Road commissions over the next year would in fact qualify DPR as one of the biggest entrepreneurs of the second Internet boom.

但事实上，DPR 的数量可能很低；事实上，明年丝绸之路委员会的规模将使 DPR 成为第二次互联网热潮中最大的企业家之一。

Besides, he told Nob, “this is more than a business to me.

此外，他告诉诺布：“这对我来说不仅仅是一桩生意。

It’s a revolution and is becoming my life’s work.” In essence, DPR faced a classic founder’s dilemma.

这是一场革命，正在成为我一生的工作。”从本质上讲，DPR 面临着典型的创始人困境。

“It would not be easy to pass the baton without hurting the enterprise,” he messaged Nob.

“在不伤害企业的情况下传递接力棒并不容易，”他给诺布发了信息。

“And right now that is more important to me than the money.”

“现在对我来说，这比钱更重要。”

Force kept communication with DPR alive by talking about creating a parallel site for cartels, a pro version called Masters of Silk Road.

Force 与 DPR 保持着沟通，讨论为卡特尔创建一个平行网站，这是一个名为“丝绸之路大师”的专业版本。

He spent many nights in his guest room, Pablo purring by his side, forging a camaraderie with DPR through the intimacy of late-night TorChat.

他在客房里度过了很多个夜晚，Pablo 在他身边咕噜咕噜地叫着，通过深夜 TorChat 的亲密关系与 DPR 建立了友情。

At times they sounded like college kids getting to know each other in the freshman dorm.

有时他们听起来就像大学生在新生宿舍里互相认识。

“The food pyramid is bullshit,” DPR said, encouraging Nob to go paleo.

“食物金字塔是胡说八道，”DPR 说道，并鼓励 Nob 去尝试旧石器时代。

Nob advised DPR against seeing the latest Batman , invited him to LA for tacos, and talked about how much Latinos like the Smiths.

诺布建议 DPR 不要看最新的《蝙蝠侠》，邀请他去洛杉矶吃炸玉米饼，并谈到拉丁裔有多么喜欢史密斯一家。

DPR had never heard of the Smiths.

DPR 从未听说过史密斯一家。

But otherwise, Force’s mysterious new pen pal was appropriately cagey.

但除此之外，福斯这位神秘的新笔友却相当谨慎。

He didn’t want to meet up for tacos.

他不想见面吃炸玉米饼。

For some reason, Force always imagined DPR as a skinny white kid, probably on the West Coast based on his active hours.

出于某种原因，Force 总是把 DPR 想象成一个骨瘦如柴的白人孩子，根据他的活跃时间，可能是在西海岸。

Force liked him, this kid he had in mind as DPR.

Force 喜欢他，这个他心目中的 DPR 孩子。

He enjoyed getting deep into the culture of Silk Road.

他喜欢深入了解丝绸之路文化。

It reminded him of his undercover days.

这让他想起了自己卧底的日子。

He thought about DPR, living a double life, and the allure—and danger—of taking on a new identity.

他想到了 DPR，过着双重生活，以及接受新身份的诱惑和危险。

Force had seen it firsthand in his years in undercover.

福斯在卧底生涯中亲眼目睹了这一点。

He came to love being that criminal operator big shot.

他开始喜欢上犯罪分子大佬的角色。

But a new self comes with a price.

但新的自我是有代价的。

The more Force pretended and partied, the easier it was to inhabit the part.

原力假装越多、参加派对越多，就越容易扮演这个角色。

At home he was the clean-cut, churchgoing dad.

在家里，他是一个干净利落、常去教堂的父亲。

But when he was at some nightclub hunting for drug deals, liquor flowing, surrounded by girls, it was hard to believe just how comfortable he felt.

但当他在一家夜总会寻找毒品交易、酒水四溢、周围都是女孩时，很难相信他的感觉有多么舒服。

Eventually Force stopped drinking and recommitted himself to church.

最终福斯戒了酒，并重新投入教会。

He’d been a hot undercover agent, but he left behind the double life that nearly destroyed him.

他曾是一名炙手可热的卧底特工，但他却摆脱了几乎毁了他的双重生活。

That’s how he wound up in the Baltimore office, living in a suburban two-story with a big, solid oak tree in the backyard.

就这样，他来到了巴尔的摩的办公室，住在郊区的一栋两层楼里，后院有一棵又大又坚固的橡树。

But now here he was, within sight of that oak, his family in the next room, venturing again into the drug world as someone else.

但现在他就在这里，在这棵橡树的视野范围内，他的家人在隔壁房间，以另一个人的身份再次冒险进入毒品世界。

Force recognized it was all a dangerous game.

福斯意识到这完全是一场危险的游戏。

He knew how you could change.

他知道你可以如何改变。

He could see it in DPR already.

他已经可以在 DPR 中看到它了。

The thing about taking on a new identity is that it is fundamentally a lie.

接受新身份的问题在于，它从根本上来说是一个谎言。

To the world at first.

初见世间。

And then to yourself.

然后对你自己。

“ The world is in flux,” Ross tells the camera.

“世界在不断变化，”罗斯对着镜头说道。

He sits across from his friend René Pinnell, recording for StoryCorps, a nonprofit that invites anyone to share their life experiences.

他坐在朋友 René Pinnell 对面，为 StoryCorps 录音，StoryCorps 是一家邀请任何人分享生活经历的非​​营利组织。

Ross and René thought the world should know more about them, so they entered the StoryCorps booth, closed the door, and spent half an hour with each other and the camera.

罗斯和雷内认为世界应该更多地了解他们，因此他们进入 StoryCorps 展位，关上门，彼此和相机度过了半个小时。

In this recording, Ross is contemplative.

在这段录音中，罗斯正在沉思。

He lives in San Francisco now.

他现在住在旧金山。

It has been a revelation.

这是一个启示。

He is awed by the beauty and the entrepreneurial energy.

他对美丽和创业能量感到敬畏。

He came at the invitation of René, whom he’d known since seventh grade.

他是应雷内的邀请而来的，他从七年级就认识雷内了。

René had been an aspiring filmmaker who instead wound up in technology in San Francisco, and one day he phoned Ross, intoning the great American clarion call of opportunity out West.

雷内曾是一位有抱负的电影制片人，后来在旧金山从事科技行业，有一天他给罗斯打电话，吟诵着美国西部的伟大机遇号角。

Two weeks later, Ross showed up on his friend’s doorstep.

两周后，罗斯出现在他朋友的家门口。

In the video, they get nostalgic about childhood.

视频中，他们怀念童年。

There was the time the two of them tried to steal extra Tater Tots in the lunch room at West Ridge Middle School.

有一次，他们两个试图在西岭中学的午餐室里偷更多的土豆泥。

The way Ross would eat his peanut butter chocolate wafers, precisely, by nibbling down the layers.

罗斯吃花生酱巧克力威化饼的方式，准确地说，就是啃掉一层层的花生酱巧克力威化饼。

How uncool it was when Ross had a sleepover and some bad kids stole a year’s worth of change he’d saved.

当罗斯去过夜时，一些坏孩子偷走了他存了一年的零钱，这真是太不酷了。

Of course, they talk about love, as young men do.

当然，他们像年轻人一样谈论爱情。

Ross reminisces about Ashley, his first, and her great tits.

罗斯回忆起他的第一个孩子阿什利和她的巨乳。

The first time they’d hung out, they did psychedelics, something called AMT.

他们第一次出去玩时，服用了迷幻药，一种叫做 AMT 的药物。

They got it from his neighbor Brandon, a “super-brilliant physics student who was into all of these research chemicals.” Ross was still a teenager then, lying on the floor, expanding his mind next to a beautiful girl for eight hours.

他们从他的邻居布兰登那里得到了它，布兰登是一位“非常出色的物理系学生，对所有这些研究化学品都很感兴趣”。罗斯当时还是个十几岁的孩子，躺在地板上，在一个美丽的女孩旁边展开了八个小时的思考。

Life is a fluctuating value, René says, like currency.

勒内说，生命是一种波动的价值，就像货币一样。

René thinks his friend is a trader.

雷内认为他的朋友是一名交易员。

René talks about how Austin is “the meh of startups,” whereas San Francisco is “the Mecca.” It’s late 2012, a time of fever dreams in the Bay Area, full of people wanting to “change the world” and make a lot of money in the process.

René 谈到奥斯汀是“初创公司的聚集地”，而旧金山则是“麦加”。 2012 年末，湾区正值狂热梦想时期，人们都想“改变世界”并在此过程中赚大钱。

René may not know it, but he is sitting next to someone doing just that.

雷内可能不知道，但他坐在旁边有人正在这样做。

Ross and René wonder: What will happen in 200 years?

罗斯和雷内想知道：200 年后会发生什么？

“I want to have a substantial positive impact on the future of humanity by the time I die,” Ross says.

“我希望在我死时对人类的未来产生实质性的积极影响，”罗斯说。

René asks Ross if he thinks he’ll live forever.

雷内问罗斯是否认为自己会永远活着。

Ross looks up, breaks into a tiny smile.

罗斯抬起头，露出一丝微笑。

“Yes,” he says.

“是的，”他说。

“I think I might.”

“我想我可能会。”

As Silk Road became a true global market, DPR reveled in his role as leader and libertarian evangelist.

随着丝绸之路成为真正的全球市场，DPR 沉迷于自己作为领导者和自由主义传播者的角色。

He created a book club, where users could polish their dogma from the sacred texts of von Mises himself.

他创建了一个读书俱乐部，用户可以在其中从冯·米塞斯本人的神圣文本中完善他们的教条。

He talked more about a near future when our current governments would seem like ancient history, along with “the pharaohs” and their “armies of slaves.” He extolled the Silk Road faithful for being on the front lines of revolution.

他更多地谈论了不久的将来，届时我们的现任政府将与“法老”和他们的“奴隶军队”一起看起来像古老的历史。他称赞丝绸之路信徒处于革命前线。

“Thank you,” DPR said, “for your trust, faith, camaraderie and love.” He offered them “hugs not drugs,” then amended it: “wait, hugs AND drugs!”

DPR 说：“谢谢你们的信任、信念、友情和爱。”他向他们提出“拥抱而不是毒品”，然后修改为：“等等，拥抱和毒品！”

The community responded in kind, likening DPR to Che Guevara, calling him a “job creator” and declaring that his name would live on “among the greatest men and women in history.” Silk Road had become a brand cult, with tens of thousands of fanatical users.

社区做出了同样的回应，将 DPR 比作切·格瓦拉，称他为“就业创造者”，并宣称他的名字将永垂不朽，“与历史上最伟大的男人和女人一起”。丝绸之路已经成为一种品牌崇拜，拥有数以万计的狂热用户。

And DPR was their very own Steve Jobs.

DPR 就是他们自己的史蒂夫·乔布斯。

Force sensed DPR’s swelling confidence.

Force 感受到了 DPR 日益增强的信心。

He’d been talking to him for a year, taking in DPR’s personality and passion.

他已经和他交谈了一年，了解 DPR 的个性和热情。

Force could appreciate the appeal.

武力可能会欣赏这一呼吁。

It must be intoxicating, bringing an idea to life, projecting your will into the world through encrypted code and transactions.

它一定是令人陶醉的，将一个想法变成现实，通过加密代码和交易将你的意志投射到世界上。

Sometimes DPR said that he sensed the scale of this achievement and would hear the theme to Tron playing in his head.

有时 DPR 表示，他感受到了这一成就的规模，并且会听到脑海中响起的 Tron 主题曲。

This was the new spirit of DPR: a self-created beacon in the darkness, spreading the good word through libertarian jubilee, holding aloft his lantern of truth.

这就是 DPR 的新精神：黑暗中自建的灯塔，通过自由主义的禧年传播美好的话语，高举真理的灯笼。

It was a lonely outpost, however.

然而，这是一个孤独的前哨基地。

DPR said so to Nob.

DPR 对 Nob 如此说道。

He called himself a person “who hides behind computers.” At times DPR wished they could meet.

他称自己是“躲在电脑后面的人”。有时 DPR 希望他们能够见面。

Instead they shared a mix of truth and fiction about their lives.

相反，他们分享了关于他们生活的真实与虚构的混合体。

They talked shop: site fixes, the odd “holiday slump” in drug sales, the human resources problems of a clandestine telecommuting workplace.

他们谈论了商店：网站修复、药品销售奇怪的“假期低迷”、秘密远程办公工作场所的人力资源问题。

This was a big problem.

这是一个大问题。

To grow, DPR said, he had to build a strong workforce.

DPR 表示，为了发展，他必须建立一支强大的员工队伍。

A leader needs support so he can focus on the future.

领导者需要支持，这样他才能专注于未来。

“ I just want to let you know that your work hasn’t gone unnoticed,” DPR wrote to Chronicpain, aka Curtis Green, the Mormon grandpa in Spanish Fork, Utah.

“我只是想让你知道，你的工作并没有被忽视，”DPR 写信给 Chronicpain（又名柯蒂斯·格林），他是犹他州西班牙福克的摩门教爷爷。

“I’d like to offer you a position.”

“我想给你提供一个职位。”

Green had been on Silk Road for some time, and he’d chosen that screen name because of his own chronic pain, caused by a back injury he’d sustained while working as an EMT.

格林在丝绸之路上已经有一段时间了，他选择这个网名是因为他自己在担任急救医生时背部受伤，导致了自己的慢性疼痛。

On disability, Green had become an amateur pharmacologist, learning the ins and outs of opiates.

由于残疾，格林已成为一名业余药理学家，了解阿片类药物的来龙去脉。

Green had always been the hobbyist type, ever since his high school obsession with ham radios, which he used to talk to strangers all over the world, including astronauts on the International Space Station.

格林一直是个业余爱好者，从高中起他就痴迷于业余无线电，他用业余无线电与世界各地的陌生人交谈，包括国际空间站上的宇航员。

Silk Road fulfilled his yearning for community and technical intricacy, combining computers with his interest in “safe drug use.” With DPR’s approval, Green started Silk Road’s Health and Wellness forum, where he advised people on how to snort ephedrine, cautioned against Fentanyl for the uninitiated, and explained to someone that it’s not a good idea to inject peanut butter or shoot heroin into your eyeball.

丝绸之路满足了他对社区和技术复杂性的渴望，将计算机与他对“安全用药”的兴趣结合起来。在 DPR 的批准下，格林创办了丝绸之路健康与保健论坛，在那里他建议人们如何吸食麻黄碱，警告外行不要使用芬太尼，并向某人解释向眼球注射花生酱或海洛因不是一个好主意。

When Green’s diligent forum-moderating turned into a job offer from DPR, he was thrilled.

当 Green 勤奋的论坛主持变成了 DPR 的工作机会时，他感到非常兴奋。

DPR sent a job description, which included customer service and resetting passwords.

DPR 发送了一份工作描述，其中包括客户服务和重置密码。

Green (taking on a new admin handle, Flush) worked 80 hours a week, mediating drug sale disputes from his lounger, Fox News running in the background.

格林（担任新的管理职务，Flush）每周工作 80 个小时，在他的躺椅上调解药品销售纠纷，福克斯新闻在后台运行。

DPR was a complicated boss.

DPR 是一个复杂的老板。

He could be a hard taskmaster, haranguing Green for being even one minute late to an appointed time on TorChat.

他可能是一个严厉的监工，在 TorChat 上因为格林迟到一分钟而大声斥责他。

Green was chagrined when he got no Christmas greeting.

当格林没有收到圣诞祝福时，他感到很懊恼。

But other times DPR was full of generosity, staking Green in a poker tournament (and being unfazed when Green lost it all).

但其他时候，DPR 却非常慷慨，在一场扑克锦标赛中押注 Green（当 Green 输掉一切时却泰然处之）。

Like a digital-era don, he could be affectionate and magnanimous in public but decidedly less humane behind the scenes.

就像数字时代的教授一样，他在公共场合可能充满感情、大度，但在幕后却明显缺乏人性。

He gave audience to loyal users seeking favors—one guy got help buying a wedding ring—but was decidedly unsympathetic to the real consequences of his business.

他向寻求帮助的忠实用户提供了观众——一个人得到了购买结婚戒指的帮助——但对他的业务的真正后果却毫无同情心。

Green forwarded one troubling customer service complaint from a woman whose brother overdosed on heroin from Silk Road and noted that under the current system, children could use the site.

格林转发了一名妇女提出的令人不安的客户服务投诉，她的兄弟服用了丝绸之路海洛因过量，并指出在当前系统下，儿童可以使用该网站。

Perhaps that was a hair too much freedom, Green said.

格林说，也许这自由度太大了。

DPR erupted: “THAT’S MY WHOLE IDEA!” Any constraints would destroy the fundamental concept, he said, and refused any assistance for the grieving sister.

DPR 爆发了：“这就是我的全部想法！”他说，任何限制都会破坏基本概念，并拒绝为悲伤的姐妹提供任何帮助。

And yet Green stayed on, despite the insensitivity and ethical contradictions, becoming one of Silk Road’s most trusted employees.

然而，尽管存在麻木不仁和道德矛盾，格林仍然留下来，成为丝绸之路最值得信赖的员工之一。

On Silk Road, however, trust only went so far.

然而，在丝绸之路上，信任仅止于此。

DPR demanded a scan of Green’s driver’s license.

DPR 要求扫描格林的驾驶执照。

It was a loyalty test.

这是一次忠诚度测试。

Green obliged, even though it exposed him while allowing DPR to remain in the shadows.

格林答应了，尽管这暴露了他，同时让 DPR 留在阴影中。

Like Force, Green felt like he’d established quite a bond with DPR—partners in a secret world.

和 Force 一样，Green 感觉自己与 DPR 建立了深厚的联系——他们是秘密世界中的合作伙伴。

But not all secrets are partnerships.

但并非所有秘密都是伙伴关系。

No matter how close Green or Force or anyone else got to DPR, no one had any idea who he was.

无论格林、福斯或其他任何人与 DPR 关系有多密切，没有人知道他是谁。

Tarbell had three computers on his desk, as did Kiernan and Yum.

塔贝尔的办公桌上有三台电脑，基尔南和百胜也是如此。

The cybersquad crew looked for any flicker of information that would crack open the dark web.

网络小队的工作人员寻找任何可能打开暗网的信息。

But their investigation was moving slowly.

但他们的调查进展缓慢。

They explored the site, read the forums, and crawled Reddit, looking for Silk Road community members talking to each other or to DPR about cryptographic weaknesses they’d discovered.

他们探索了该网站，阅读了论坛，并爬行了 Reddit，寻找 Silk Road 社区成员互相交谈或与 DPR 讨论他们发现的加密漏洞。

But a month went by with no traction.

但一个月过去了，毫无进展。

The crew ate lunch together every day at 11:30 on the nose like the habit-happy cops they were.

工作人员每天 11:30 一起吃午饭，就像那些习惯快乐的警察一样。

Most of the time they picked up sandwiches downstairs at the deli, where the guy behind the counter knew them all by their order.

大多数时候，他们在楼下的熟食店买三明治，柜台后面的人根据他们的订单认识了所有三明治。

Kiernan would be happy with chicken cordon bleu forever, and Tarbell was such a fan of the chicken parmesan that when he’d occasionally get a salad the deli guy would say, “Awww, what’s the matter, Mr. CIA?

基尔南会永远对蓝带鸡肉感到满意，而塔贝尔非常喜欢帕尔马干酪鸡肉，以至于当他偶尔吃沙拉时，熟食店的伙计会说：“噢，怎么了，中央情报局先生？

No chicken parm today?”

今天没有鸡肉吗？”

Tarbell called Yum his “work wife.” They were a good team, he thought: the thinker and the talker.

塔贝尔称百胜为他的“工作妻子”。他想，他们是一支优秀的团队：善于思考、善于言谈。

Tarbell was the talker; he had by now emerged as the dominant personality in the Pit.

塔贝尔是说话者。他现在已经成为坑中的主导人物。

The dues-paying rookie of the previous year had given way to a raucous, confident alpha type who bristled when he heard rumblings from Washington about ownership of the Silk Road investigation.

前一年的缴纳会费的新秀已经让位给了一个喧闹、自信的阿尔法类型，当他听到华盛顿关于丝绸之路调查所有权的传言时，他感到愤怒。

The case had become an enormous bureaucratic battle, as every agency tried to plant its flag.

此案已成为一场巨大的官僚斗争，每个机构都试图树立自己的旗帜。

The Baltimore task force—where Force’s case operated—was the most aggressive, claiming complete ownership and bad-mouthing the FBI cybersquad in particular.

巴尔的摩特遣部队——福斯案件的处理地——是最具攻击性的，声称拥有完全的所有权，尤其是对联邦调查局网络小组的坏话。

“They think we’re a joke, poking around on the Internet,” Tarbell told Yum.

“他们认为我们是个笑话，在互联网上闲逛，”塔贝尔告诉百胜餐饮集团。

“But we’re going to prove them wrong.” The other agencies, he noted, had been at it for a while, “and they don’t have fuck-all.”

“但我们会证明他们错了。”他指出，其他机构已经这样做了一段时间，“但他们没有他妈的一切。”

But in the bureaucratic muddle that is the United States government, there is no clear jurisdiction for cybercrime.

但在官僚混乱的美国政府中，网络犯罪没有明确的管辖权。

It’s a growing field that’s fueling law enforcement funding, which attracts egos and politics.

这是一个不断发展的领域，不断增加执法资金，吸引自负和政治。

Silk Road represented the new frontier of crime, a digital-era Wild West.

丝绸之路代表了犯罪的新前沿，数字时代的狂野西部。

As with the original frontier, Washington wanted to fence it in—and whoever brought law to the lawless would be a hero.

与最初的边界一样，华盛顿想用栅栏围起来——无论谁为无法无天的人伸张正义，谁都会成为英雄。

Subdue the digital frontier and there was a star waiting for you, which was why the Silk Road case had become the largest online manhunt in history.

征服数字前沿，就有一颗明星在等你，这也是丝路案成为史上最大网络追捕案的原因。

Green wouldn’t stop talking, even covered in cocaine.

格林不停地说着话，即使身上沾满了可卡因。

That was how Force found him when the SWAT team finished ransacking his house.

当特警队搜查完他的房子后，原力就是这样找到他的。

Force was running that show; as Nob, he’d orchestrated the shipment of coke, and the whole raid was part of the growing Marco Polo task force investigating Silk Road.

力量正在主导这场演出；作为诺布，他策划了可乐的运输，整个突袭行动是不断壮大的马可波罗特别工作组调查丝绸之路的一部分。

He’d watched Green take the bait from a command post across the street, and when he walked in a few minutes later, Green was cuffed on the floor, blabbing already.

他看到格林在街对面的一个指挥所上当了诱饵，几分钟后当他走进去时，格林被铐在地板上，已经在胡言乱语了。

Green had more answers than Force had questions.

格林的答案比福斯的问题还要多。

He talked and talked and talked until Force couldn’t stand it.

他一直说啊说啊说啊，直到福斯无法忍受为止。

Said he was a former EMT; he was just trying to help people; they could have just knocked; he thought the package was something else, a totally legal drug called N-Bombe.

说他是一名前急救人员；他只是想帮助别人；他们本来可以敲门；他认为这个包裹是别的东西，一种完全合法的药物，名为 N-Bombe。

Nevertheless, Green was a tangible lead in the Silk Road case, a corporeal asset rather than just letters on a screen.

尽管如此，格林在丝绸之路案件中确实是一个有形的领导者，是一种有形的资产，而不仅仅是屏幕上的字母。

As Green was led to the squad car to be booked on possession by the local cops, Force put his number in Green’s phone and said, “When you get out, call me.”

当格林被带到警车接受当地警察的占有登记时，福斯将他的电话号码存入格林的手机中，并说：“你出来后，给我打电话。”

In jail, Green jawboned for hours to anyone who would listen, even declaring that he had been asked to cooperate with the DEA, at which point his tattooed cell mates told him to stop talking.

在监狱里，格林对任何愿意听的人喋喋不休几个小时，甚至宣称他被要求与缉毒局合作，此时他的纹身狱友告诉他不要再说了。

When Green was released on bail, he went home and found his door still broken.

当格林被保释后，他回到家，发现门仍然是坏的。

His daughter had cleaned up some.

他的女儿已经清理了一些。

In his bedroom the cops had apparently discovered that this particular Mormon grandpa owned a dildo, which they left for him standing straight up on the bed.

在他的卧室里，警察显然发现了这位摩门教爷爷拥有一个假阳具，他们把它留给了他，让他笔直地站在床上。

Home alone with his two Chihuahuas, Green cried like a baby.

格林独自带着两只吉娃娃回家，哭得像个婴儿。

“I’m a good little Mormon boy,” he said to himself.

“我是一个好摩门教小男孩，”他对自己说。

His thoughts grew dark.

他的思绪变得阴暗起来。

He loaded his dad’s .32.

他装载了他父亲的 0.32。

Then he looked down the barrel and threw it across the room.

然后他低头看了一眼木桶，把它扔到了房间的另一边。

Green would be the first to admit that he was too chickenshit for suicide.

格林会是第一个承认自己太胆怯，不适合自杀的人。

He ran into the living room and threw himself onto the couch, where his Chihuahuas joined him, licking his face while he fell to his knees to pray.

他跑进客厅，扑倒在沙发上，他的吉娃娃狗也跟着他，一边舔着他的脸，一边跪下祈祷。

Eventually Green decided to get up, get his phone, and call DEA special agent Carl Force.

最终格林决定站起来，拿起手机，给缉毒局特工卡尔·福斯打电话。

It wasn’t until Force spent some time on Green’s computer and saw DPR’s messages—“Why aren’t you clearing out your accounts?” “Get back to me ASAP”—that he realized they’d caught a big fish in their net.

直到Force在Green的电脑上呆了一段时间，看到了DPR的消息——“你为什么不清理你的账户？” “尽快回复我”——他意识到他们在网中捕获了一条大鱼。

This guy was a DPR lieutenant.

这家伙是一名 DPR 中尉。

Force mobilized quickly, working with the task force to put Green up in a Salt Lake City Marriott and debrief him.

部队迅速动员起来，与特别工作组合作，将格林安置在盐湖城万豪酒店并向他汇报情况。

But DPR was jittery, and he’d noticed that his trusted admin had been offline for a few days.

但 DPR 很紧张，他注意到他信任的管理员已经离线几天了。

A Google search revealed that Green had been arrested, and DPR suspected he would flip.

谷歌搜索显示格林已被捕，DPR 怀疑他会翻转。

Moreover, he got a message from another employee, Inigo, that $350,000 in bitcoins had just disappeared from various accounts.

此外，他还收到另一名员工 Inigo 的消息，称 35 万美元的比特币刚刚从各个账户中消失。

Inigo quickly traced the theft to Green’s admin identity.

伊尼戈很快就将盗窃案追溯到了格林的管理员身份。

DPR went into crisis mode, communicating with his confidants, scrambling for a solution.

DPR 进入危机模式，与他的心腹沟通，争先恐后地寻求解决方案。

“This will be the first time I have had to call on my muscle,” he told Inigo.

“这将是我第一次需要动用我的肌肉，”他告诉伊尼戈。

“Fucking sucks.”

“真他妈糟糕。”

Moments later, DPR messaged Nob that he had a “problem” in Utah that required violence.

片刻之后，DPR 向诺布发送消息，称他在犹他州遇到了需要暴力的“问题”。

According to the backstory Force had created for Nob, his criminal repertoire included enforcement and collection talents, so he acted the part.

根据原力为诺布创造的背景故事，他的犯罪技能包括执法和收集才能，所以他扮演了这个角色。

Sitting in the Marriott, Force received a PDF of the target, opened it, and discovered a scan of Green’s driver’s license photo.

坐在万豪酒店里，福斯收到了目标的 PDF 文件，打开它，发现了格林驾驶执照照片的扫描件。

Then he looked across the table, where at that very moment Green was half-asleep.

然后他看了看桌子对面，此时格林正处于半睡半醒的状态。

Well, this sure is an opportunity !

嗯，这确实是一个机会！

Force thought.

力念。

Green claimed he hadn’t stolen any bitcoins and protested that the task force had had his computer when the money went missing.

格林声称他没有偷任何比特币，并抗议说，当钱失踪时，特别工作组已经拿到了他的电脑。

But Force didn’t want to talk about the money.

但福斯不想谈论钱的事。

He used DPR’s request to construct an elaborate plan.

他根据 DPR 的要求制定了一份详尽的计划。

Force got Green to sign a waiver, thereby commencing his role in an impromptu staged torture sting against DPR.

福斯让格林签署了一份弃权书，从而开始了他在针对 DPR 的即兴上演的酷刑刺杀中的角色。

Soon Green was being dunked in the bathtub of a Marriott suite by phony thugs who were in fact a Secret Service agent and a Baltimore postal inspector.

很快，格林就被假冒的暴徒浸泡在万豪套房的浴缸里，这些暴徒实际上是特勤局特工和巴尔的摩邮政检查员。

Force recorded the action on a camera.

Force用摄像机记录了这一动作。

“Did you get it?” Green asked, wet and wheezing on the floor.

“你收到了吗？”格林问道，他浑身湿透，躺在地板上喘息着。

He’d felt like their simulation was a little too accurate.

他觉得他们的模拟有点太准确了。

They dunked him four more times to get a convincing shot.

他们又给他扣了四次扣篮，以获得令人信服的投篮机会。

While waiting for news from Nob, DPR considered his options.

在等待 Nob 消息的同时，DPR 考虑了他的选择。

A Silk Road user named Cimon, a trusted adviser who had guided DPR on opsec, programming, and leadership, asked DPR when a transgression against Silk Road requires a lethal response.

一位名叫 Cimon 的丝绸之路用户是一位值得信赖的顾问，曾在操作安全、编程和领导力方面为 DPR 提供指导，他询问 DPR 何时对丝绸之路的侵犯需要做出致命反应。

“If this was the wild west,” DPR said, “and it kinda is, you’d get hung just for stealing a horse.” A few minutes later, Inigo chimed in, “I don’t condone murder but that’s almost worthy of assassinating him over lol.”

“如果这是狂野的西部，”DPR 说，“确实如此，你会因为偷一匹马而被绞死。”几分钟后，伊尼戈插话道：“我不容忍谋杀，但这几乎值得刺杀他，哈哈。”

Of course, DPR was right that Green had been flipped—by the very same man he’d just hired as an assassin.

当然，DPR 说格林被他刚刚雇佣的刺客所背叛的说法是正确的。

It was a surprising escalation.

这是一个令人惊讶的升级。

The Silk Road leader, who waxed lyrical about “respecting” the Silk Road community, was now pondering pricing for murder.

这位丝绸之路领导人曾大肆宣扬“尊重”丝绸之路社区，现在却在考虑对谋杀案进行定价。

It was like Scarface on fast-forward, Force thought.

这就像快进中的疤面煞星，福斯想。

But he played right along.

但他一直在配合。

Over a week or so, Force conspired with his team to complete the fake death of Green.

大约一周多的时间里，福斯与他的团队合谋完成了格林的假死。

Force sent DPR photos of the staged torture, followed by photos of Green, facedown on the floor, pallid, smeared with Campbell’s Chicken & Stars soup—the supposed aftermath of asphyxiation.

福斯向 DPR 发送了上演酷刑的照片，随后又发了格林脸朝下躺在地板上的照片，脸色苍白，身上沾满了金宝鸡明星汤——这被认为是窒息的后果。

Green holed up in his house (he had to stay out of sight as part of the ruse) in a kind of self-imposed witness protection, and Force went back to Baltimore.

格林躲在自己的房子里（作为诡计的一部分，他必须远离人们的视线），以一种自我强加的证人保护，而福斯则回到了巴尔的摩。

DPR sent $40,000 to a Capital One account controlled by the government as an advance.

DPR 向政府控制的第一资本账户发送了 40,000 美元作为预付款。

DPR never got back the stolen bitcoins, but once in receipt of the putative proof of death, he sent another $40,000 for a job well done.

DPR 从未拿回被盗的比特币，但在收到假定的死亡证明后，他又寄了 4 万美元，以表彰他的出色工作。

DPR had momentarily wrestled with his decision.

DPR 曾短暂地考虑过他的决定。

He had talked to Inigo about how he just wishes the best for people, and loves them in the libertarian spirit—even Green, in flagrante delicto—but ultimately concluded that his AWOL employee had become too much of a liability.

他曾与伊尼戈谈论过，他只是希望人们过得更好，并以自由主义精神爱他们——甚至是在现行犯罪中爱他们的格林——但最终得出的结论是，他擅离职守的员工已经成为了太多的负担。

And so, DPR’s principled, technological stand against the war on drugs slid into murder.

因此，DPR 反对毒品战争的原则和技术立场演变成了谋杀。

Like so many revolutionaries before him, the idealist became an ideologue, willing to kill for his beloved vision.

就像他之前的许多革命者一样，这位理想主义者成为了一名理论家，愿意为他心爱的愿景而杀人。

At one point, DPR corrected Inigo that this action was not revenge; it was justice—a new justice, according to the law of the Silk Road.

DPR 有一次纠正 Inigo，这一行为不是报复；这就是正义——根据丝绸之路法律的新正义。

Back in Baltimore, sitting in his guest room with Pablo, Force thought about DPR’s shift.

回到巴尔的摩，福斯和巴勃罗坐在他的客房里，思考着 DPR 的轮班情况。

He wondered: What changed?

他想知道：什么改变了？

DPR was asking himself the same question.

DPR 也在问自己同样的问题。

Moral choices blur when your identity is shifting.

当你的身份发生转变时，道德选择就会变得模糊。

This was the irony behind the very idea of the Dread Pirate Roberts moniker—an inherent danger that the wearer would become the mask.

这就是“恐惧海盗罗伯茨”这个绰号背后的讽刺之处——佩戴者会成为面具的固有危险。

Unmoored, DPR sensed that he was in a state of becoming:

解脱后，DPR 感觉到自己正处于以下状态：

As if seeking a makeshift moral compass among murderers, DPR asked Nob to let him know if he was abusing his authority.

就像在杀人犯中寻找临时道德指南针一样，DPR 要求诺布让他知道自己是否滥用权力。

“That is what friends are for!” Nob replied.

“这就是朋友的意义！”诺布回答道。

DPR confided to Inigo that one of his deepest fears was “being wildly successful” and “being corrupted by that power.” Nob also warned his online comrade about that power, how it could consume you.

DPR 向伊尼戈吐露，他最深的恐惧之一是“获得巨大成功”和“被这种权力腐蚀”。诺布还警告他的在线同志有关这种力量，它会如何消耗你。

In his office, Force himself had put up a picture of Jesús Malverde, the Mexican narco-saint, as inspiration for Nob, and felt the pull of the folk hero bandit.

在他的办公室里，福斯本人贴了一张墨西哥缉毒圣人赫苏斯·马尔维德的照片，作为《诺布》的灵感来源，并感受到了这位民间英雄强盗的吸引力。

He reminded DPR not to “lose yourself.”

他提醒DPR不要“迷失自己”。

How could he not?

他怎么可能不呢？

Now astride a multimillion-dollar drug operation that he’d built in less than two years, Ross was no longer the tenderhearted soul who agonized over telling one lie to a young woman over a glass of wine.

现在，罗斯跨入了他在不到两年的时间里建立的耗资数百万美元的毒品生意，他不再是那个因一杯酒而向年轻女子撒谎而痛苦不堪的心软的人了。

His diary had changed from a story about doubts and hopes to a catalog of hard-nosed empire-building.

他的日记已经从一个关于怀疑和希望的故事变成了一本顽固的帝国建设目录。

The triumph of Silk Road confirmed its creator’s belief in his own myth.

丝绸之路的胜利证实了其创造者对其神话的信念。

“What we are doing,” DPR wrote to his followers, “will have rippling effects for generations to come.” In June 2013 the site reached nearly 1 million registered accounts.

DPR 在给他的追随者的信中写道：“我们正在做的事情将对子孙后代产生连锁反应。” 2013年6月，该网站注册账户达到近100万。

And the Feds were nowhere in sight.

而美联储却不见踪影。

Until one afternoon just around that same time, back in the New York FBI cybercrime office, when Tarbell and Kiernan leaned forward and finally saw something interesting on one of their screens.

直到大约同一时间的一天下午，回到纽约联邦调查局网络犯罪办公室，塔贝尔和基尔南向前倾身，终于在其中一个屏幕上看到了一些有趣的东西。

They’d been at it for weeks, farting into the same chair cushions in the Pit, running the Tor bundle on one monitor, staring at lists of numbers on another, when one of those numbers surprised them: 62.75.246.20.

他们已经花了好几个星期的时间，在 Pit 的同一个椅垫上放屁，在一台显示器上运行 Tor 包，盯着另一台显示器上的数字列表，这时其中一个数字让他们感到惊讶：62.75.246.20。

They looked at each other in disbelief—and then back at the terminal, which was displaying the true IP address of the Silk Road server.

他们难以置信地互相看了一眼——然后又回到终端，终端上显示的是丝绸之路服务器的真实IP地址。

This article includes reporting by Nick Bilton, whose book on the Silk Road case will appear in 2016.

本文包括 Nick Bilton 的报道，他关于丝绸之路案件的书将于 2016 年出版。