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Hacktivist | 51 from the next node in the network. This scrambling allows messages to exit the chain of Tor nodes without an easily discoverable IP. By doing so, it “anomizes” each user of the dark side. Because of the anonymity it provides, Tor became the software of choice for individuals and organizations who wanted to hide their identities. For example, Tor software made possible Silk Road, which acted as an exchange for drug dealers, assassins, safecrackers, and prostitutes until it was closed down by the FBI in 2013. It was cre- ated by Ross Ulbricht, a Libertarian who wore a Ron Paul T-shirt, as a website where “people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that led back to them.” (Ulbricht received a life sentence for running this criminal enterprise in May 2015.) Tor software was also employed by Private Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning) to transfer some fifty thousand diplomatic cables and military reports from his laptop to Assange’s WikiLeaks website. Eventually, Manning was identified by a fellow hacker, con- victed by a military court for violations of the Espionage Act, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison. Tor enabled WikiLeaks to ® publish other secret data, such as material acquired in the theft of © Sony’s files, allegedly by the North Korean intelligence service, in 2015. It was the means for guaranteeing anonymity to the IT work- ers who responded to Assange’s by now famous clarion call to unite. It allowed system administrators who opposed the “surveillance state,” as well as other disgruntled employees of government agen- cies or corporations, to send documents they copied to the WikiLeaks website without revealing their IP addresses. Because WikiLeaks did not know the identity of its sources, it could not be legally compelled to reveal them. “Tor’s importance to WikiLeaks cannot be overstated,” Assange said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2012. Indeed, without the anonymity provided by its Tor software, WikiLeaks could not have easily entered into a document-sharing arrangement with major newspapers, including The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El Pats. Through the magic of Tor, these newspapers simply attribute their sources to WikiLeaks, which, in turn, made Assange a major force in international journalism. Ironically, Tor was a creation of U.S. intelligence. In the early years | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 51 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019539