If you’re into online personal security and the likes (or in fact, buying illegal weaponry), you may have heard terms bandied about like “Deep Web” and “Dark Web”. The internet is like an iceberg with just 10 per cent floating above water. This is the 'surface web' like Google and Facebook, whilst the other 90 per cent is the deep web and it requires special servers to access it.

The terms can be confusing, so I fell back on the words of Daniel Miessler - an information security professional and writer based out of San Francisco, California – to help me out with a little summary of the basics:

The Internet: This is the easy one. It’s the user-friendly internet we all use to read news, visit Facebook, get angry about politicians and shop. Just consider this the “regular” Internet. It’s the bits you can access and see easily, and although some of it looks wildly offensive and gives a platform to utter bell ends, it’s all pretty much transparent.

If you’re into online personal security and the likes (or in fact, buying illegal weaponry), you may have heard terms bandied about like “Deep Web” and “Dark Web”. The internet is like an iceberg with just 10 per cent floating above water. This is the 'surface web' like Google and Facebook, whilst the other 90 per cent is the deep web and it requires special servers to access it.

The terms can be confusing, so I fell back on the words of Daniel Miessler - an information security professional and writer based out of San Francisco, California – to help me out with a little summary of the basics:

The Internet: This is the easy one. It’s the user-friendly internet we all use to read news, visit Facebook, get angry about politicians and shop. Just consider this the “regular” Internet. It’s the bits you can access and see easily, and although some of it looks wildly offensive and gives a platform to utter bell ends, it’s all pretty much transparent.

The Deep Web: The deep web is a subset of the Internet that is not indexed by the major search engines. This means that you have to visit those places directly instead of being able to search for them. So there aren’t directions to get there, but they’re ready and waiting for those that have an address. The Deep Web is largely there simply because the Internet is too large for search engines to cover completely. So the Deep Web is what’s left out. The Deep Web is the part of the Internet that isn’t necessarily malicious, but is simply too large and/or obscure to be indexed due to the limitations of crawling and indexing software. An estimated three-quarters of New Zealanders who use drugs often are buying and selling drugs on social media or encrypted websites. Drug trade on the so-called "deep web", it seems, has taken off.

The Dark Web: The Dark Web (also called Darknet) is a subset of the Deep Web that is not only not indexed, but that also requires something special to be able to access it, e.g., specific proxying software or authentication to gain access. The Dark Web often sits on top of additional sub-networks, such as TOR and Freenet, and is often associated with criminal activity of like buying and selling even more drugs, illegal pornography, big money gambling and the likes.

So, there you go. Which all brings me to tonight’s documentary, DEEP WEB. Within it, director and producer, Alex Winter has sought to unravel the tangled web of secrecy, accusations and criminal activity on the internet through an examination of the trial of one Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht created Silk Road, an online black market site that would use TOR and bitcoin to evade law enforcement. The FBI nabbed Ulbricht in time, saying the former science and engineering grad student was Silk Road’s mastermind, operating under the title Dread Pirate Roberts (a name taken from the novel and film “The Princess Bride”. Seriously.). He was charged with money laundering, computer hacking and drug trafficking and  - amazingly - attempting to procure murders, though the murder charges were later dropped.

The trial attracted Internet-freedom protesters and was avidly followed by bloggers and politicians both. Ulbricht’s defenders (including his parents) claimed the intelligent, former Eagle Scout was an idealist and a martyr who saw the creation of an almost unregulated Internet market as an act of freedom for the people from the tyranny of taxation and government control.

He was eventually convicted of money laundering,  hacking and conspiracy to traffic narcotics in February 2015 and is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Pretty harsh in the larger scheme of things, and his defenders are still fighting to get him out.

So is DEEP WEB a good watch? The documentary is weirdly narrated by Keanu Reeves, which for me gave it a “Bill & Ted’s Big Adventure” quality at times. Bizarrely, I discovered that director Winter is actually an actor-turned-filmmaker, and was Reeves’ co-star in those very movies – the Bill to his Ted, in fact.

But it is a nice watch, and compelling subject matter to be sure. I have to say thought that I agree with a few critics who have said that DEEP WEB tells only part of an ongoing story. However one-sided it is though, it’s a documentary worthy of scrutiny and will kick off a plethora of serious discussions.

Screening Times: