are journalists jamie bartlett talks about his book sub for sub five -- "the dark net" sub type. illegal arms dealers extremists pornographers and hackers operate. he was interviewed at melville house publishing in brooklyn new york. wa >> welcome to melville house and thank you for coming out tonight. i am denniss johnson theut publisher and i'm particularly happy to welcome you to what is event in our brand-new office/bookstore located in the brooklyn neighborhood unfortunately known as gumbo.g tonight's talk will focus on her newest book marion mollegen mcfadden by jamie bartlett. the event is being filmed via a

c-span booktv for later broadcast. in case you are wondering about the equipment and at the end of the conversation we will have al question-and-answer. map where you can ask to speak or anything you would like although please wait for thean microphone went to have been called upon by one of the speakers so the audience at home can hear you. also to help us out please turnn off your cell phones and really do it. it will ring otherwise i promise you. tonight are just are the enchanting new york-based writer whose work has appeared in the wired new york mag is seen in "the new york times" reviews written extensively in many of the issues under discussion tonight such as virtual communities. he may have first come to your attention for his brilliant exposé and i should also note he has an amazing article called the agency about an army of trolls in russia. a

he is in addition to contributing editor to one of my favorite literary journals and the founder of the irr club a regular gathering for people from the internet to want toand meet in real life. it took me a long time to figure out what that might stand for because i didn't read all thek e way to the end of the sentence. the jamie bartlett is the s director of the center for thedl analysis of social media at the thin tk tank demos and that journalists are writes regularly for many publications. graduate of the london school of economics erased a weekly column on technology for the telegraph and he appears often as a commentator on bbcof television and radio and other international broadcast media outlets.and he has traveled the world both as a journalist working for humanitarian agencies in places like angola -- pakistan but for his first book he traveled to a

place many of us have heard about but don't really know much about, place known as the "the dark net" the title of the book which we will talk about tonight. would you please welcome the jamie bartlett. [applause] >> thank you for that great introduction. i guess we can just start by how did you get interested in such a weird and disturbing subject? >> i weiss been adjusted. i a vice been fascinated by the general idea of pariahs of society are often the most interesting. i'm very often harping at the things that make him ahead of us

nobody imagine what it would become. my work as a journalist and think tank at demos i have been into political extremism radical social movements religious movements tried to understand what drives them but over the last three or four years i've really have the sense that a growing number of stories about bad things happening on the internet. whether it was illegal pornography or neon nazis or warring in the islamic state but ours felt we always had something of a -- of communities and cultures and i wanted to understand the extremities to which people put no plan at all believe themselves to be operating under conditions of anonymity on line and i want to immerse myself to really understand how people behaved on line but i also

wanted to try to meet the people that were the protagonists of the subcultures because every time i read something about an internet troll for someone taking home a per knock her faith i wanted to know who they were in real life, what they did during the day, where they went for coffee, were they nice people in the flesh and radically different than you or or i am the only way to do that was to try to find them. it was the idea that i would try to meet the people behind the screen if you like. >> when you started to look into those how difficult was it tracks the chinese people because you talk talked also to people who are involved in questionable morally and legally things. how hard was it to find these people and get them to talk to you?

>> i don't have a lot of unanswered e-mails floating around somewhere in cyberspace. there's a strange thing about this. when you approach people who are doing morally questionable things on line they are inevitably off-line rather hesitant to talk and rather hesitant to be open and i was with you. so the first six months of the 12 months trying to contact people and get me to let them into their digital world are there real world. want to do that you know the techniques. they aren't dubious techniques but just demonstrating that you can be trusted giving them various types of assurances about how you treat the information spoken with them and essentially making sure for sample he would not try to identify who they really were.

some of them believe you and some of them down and those that do believe you tend to be incredibly open. one of the things i found want to get these people to start talking they won't shut up. anybody that has an ax to grind, anybody who feels like they are treated unfairly or suppose their culture is not being given a fair hearing in the mainstream media which is what most of these people think they are basically found somebody that might talk to them and report what they do objectively they won't leave you alone. so i was sort rising -- it was surprisingly easy once i got to that point. a light went off in my head. surprisingly easy to get incredibly personal detailed information about them including for example going into somebody's bedroom and sitting next to them as they perform an arch in front of 5000 people watching at home on television.

i didn't expect that to happen but it was incredible the ease with which i was welcomed and summer like that. >> you kind of explore a number of different worlds. you talk to a cam girl who is basically doing sex acts on camera and you talk to people who are dealing and buying drugs and you talk to some anguished defense league people who are basically rallying for their cause. what was it to you that joined all these things because you know the dark net is also a technical term i think that some people think of when they think of a specific technology but i think you went broader with that. >> honestly the most important thing that joins us together is the fact that they are all in my book. i could have chosen