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unclear what, if anything, was on that machine. In one scenario the server could tell the FBI the who,
what, when, and where about the people who ran the site. But if the server was encrypted, which it
likely was, or even deleted by the time they reached it, the clue could amount to absolutely nothing.
It had taken several weeks, a quick trip overseas, some legal wrangling, and a few beers with
some Icelandic cops to get Iceland to hand over all of the information on the server. And then in mid-
June a copy had arrived by mail at the U.S. Attorney’s Office on a gray thumb drive (likely swimming
alongside some drugs that had been purchased on the Silk Road).
Tarbell, now holding that drive in his hand, swept past the security guards at the FBI building. He
clicked his key card and charged toward the twenty-third floor, looking for Thom Kiernan, the
computer scientist he worked with in the cybercrime group.
“I got it,” Tarbell said gleefully when he found Thom in lab 1A.
The computer station in the lab was a long bench with monitors, keyboards, and hard drives in
every direction. The two men pulled up chairs in front of one of the machines as Tarbell handed Thom
the drive, watching with rapt anticipation as he placed it in the computer. Thom’s fingers started
rapidly dancing on the keyboard, opening the folders and delving into its content. The two men were
anxiously excited at the possibility of what it might hold. And then Thom’s expression crumpled. He
turned to Tarbell despondently and said the last two words on earth that either of them wanted to hear:
“It’s encrypted.”
On the screen in front of them was an endless string of random characters, numbers, and letters
that looked like complete gobbledygook. Thousands of lines of unintelligible garbage.
Tarbell was deflated as he picked up the phone and called Serrin Turner at the U.S. Attorney’s
Office, the man who had just handed him the drive, leaving a voice mail that said to “call me back as
soon as possible; there’s a big problem.”
“Fuck!” Tarbell blurted out as he slammed the phone down. “It’s game over.”
After a few pointless attempts at unlocking the folders (which was akin to trying to break into
Fort Knox with a paperclip) Tarbell reluctantly wandered back to his desk, dejected. In the afternoon
Serrin called him back.
“What are we going to do now?” Serrin asked.
“I honestly have no idea,” Tarbell replied. “I’m not sure there is anything we can do.” As far as
they were concerned, it really was game over. He hung up, crushed.
A couple of days went by, and Tarbell called Serrin again to discuss something else. At the end
of the call, Serrin asked if they had made any headway on the Silk Road server.
“Nothing,” Tarbell said.
“And the pass code didn’t work?”
“What pass code?”
“The Iceland guys sent a pass code along with the thumb drive,” Serrin explained.
“You never gave me the pass code!” Tarbell responded, shocked that this was the first he was
hearing about this, as the excitement from days earlier returned.
“I’m pretty sure I did? Here, let me get it,” Serrin said, rustling some papers on his desk. “It’s
‘try to crack this NSA’ with no spaces.” It was a jab at the NSA from the Icelandic authorities after
Edward Snowden had leaked a slew of top secret information to the press a few months earlier. When
Thom typed the password into the files on the gray thumb drive, they opened like magic, and there, in
front of Tarbell’s eyes, was the entire Silk Road server, unencrypted and as plain as day.