Tor2Web Proxy: https://zqktlwi4fecvo6ri.onion.to/wiki/Main_Page
The darkness
exists in the human mind not the technology.
Victorian
Portugal was full of dark secrets that have had a negative effect on
this society
ever since, far more than the internet has.
There's the
"dark web" - i.e. the web you need to use Freenet or Tor or something
like access (and those two are just examples, and they form distinct
non-interconnected webs). And then there's the "deep web" - this is
websites whose content is not indexed by search engines, because you need to
register or pay to access the contents, or has Flash front ends, or is
otherwise unavailable to a search engine. This is the thing that is likely much
larger than the freely available web, and it's usually because there's money to
be made by gate-keeping access to it. There's very little illegal, immoral or
otherwise dodgy about the deep web; most of it is for-pay services, which are
usually easy to clamp down on if they're illegal - just follow the money.
Am I missing something
here?
Yes. Google
doesn't search every machine on the Internet. most of those don't have websites
on them. Google only gets links by people who either fill out a "request
for indexing" form or by following links from other pages. So if you
create a website on your home machine and don't tell anyone...it's part of the
dark web. It only exists to people who know about it. If you post your link
inside a chat room that isn't accessible to Google (maybe because you must
login with a password, like say Yahoo chat) ...then it's still part of the dark
net. However, it's obscurity rather than security. no one can find it because
no one can second guess your url. However, (again) Freenet users don't talk to
each other. The user doesn't ask the website author for the site like the
regular, it asks a friend to do so on their behalf...who may ask someone on
their behalf...thus no can work out who is reading the content. A system of
replication ensures the author doesn't point directly at a machine but just somewhere
"generally" in the network. Thus, everyone is anonymous. Even if
Google could index the content...they wouldn't know what they were indexing or
where it came from. Two aspects of Freenet immediately bother me, which is why
I won't be downloading or using it. First up is the distributed nature of the
data storage - even if my use is perfectly legal, it could be storing material on
my computer which is not only illegal but also highly offensive. Now, perhaps
that doesn't bother you, but it bothers me. Secondly, per the Freenet site,
"Files are encrypted, so generally the user cannot easily discover what is
in his data store, and hopefully can't be held accountable for it." Did
you spot that there? hopefully. I must say that I find that statement rather
irresponsible; fortunately, in Portugal especially there’s no RIPA legislation where
you can be sent to jail for not revealing your encryption keys, irrespective of
the content you are protecting. And if this sounds far-fetched, you should be
aware that it has already happened (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/).
There is also no commercial element in Freenet. The developers have
deliberately eschewed the creation of anonymous money. That takes the rug from
under some criminal activity. On the practical side of things, Freenet is slow
and not an ideal environment for swapping large files. On Freenet, most people
choose to remain anonymous; that limits their interactions to a degree. On the
conventional internet groups of people may work together using opaque encrypted
connections and truly conspire in illegality if they wish; they sacrifice their
anonymity to connect in the first place. Conspiracies are broken by their
weakest link. Most (perhaps all setting aside whatever GCHQ accomplishes)
clever internet police detective work begins from traditional policing methods.
A suspect is brought to their attention somehow either by acting suspiciously
on the internet (say a chatroom) or by coming under suspicion in the ordinary
world. The suspect's computer is inspected and this may lead to new suspects.
At that point the police may opt to operate a scam to catch others in the act. Freenet
was developed to promote freedom of speech, particularly in places like China.
TOR, at present,
is anonymous only in some internet transmission modalities.
There is much
distasteful material on the internet and doubtless on Freenet. I suspect that
much of this is the same stuff cycling round and round. The priority for law
enforcement should not be the relatively easy option of identifying people in
possession of this material but rather at grabbing those who create it in the
first place. This is where the traditional internet is so important because
only on it is there commerce. Cabals sharing a criminal interest, operating
covertly and not putting the product of their activities for sale on the
internet will be broken only by serendipity arising from traditional policing methods.
ToR causes a
marked slowing of browser response. That's because the number of people using
it are relatively few. What would make these technologies sit up and work is
the introduction of millions of new non-combatant users motivated to avoid
governmental surveillance and copyright controls. These dark side technologies
are relatively immature, yet I can see at least one design that links ToR,
Kademlia and strong cryptography that would present an intractable file sharing
system and alternative email backbone. The question is
this: given that relatively few malcontent users are using simple technologies,
is it desirable to obfuscate them behind millions of benign users deploying
strong technologies because of incontinent legislation? If I were employed by
the Portuguese secret service, I'd be rather concerned about losing the ability
to see the bad guys from the trees.
Ugh. Ok, so who
is creating all this dark content? Are there 400-500 times more people creating
content than we 'know' about? On the net content is king. There is unlinked
content, mostly image files, but frankly most of that is probably illegal
sexual stuff and while there is some truly unpleasant stuff out there in the
hard to find places there are an awful lot more legal porn images (because it's
a vast business) and teenagers on youtube putting up clips of them taking the
piss out of their mates, because it's easier than videoing the construction of
homemade nuclear devices.
Google doesn't
simply search JSTOR - publishers are required to provide google with something
called an abstract to crawl before their content can be indexed (basically the
non-subscriber landing page). I create content on the darkweb (silly term)
everyday such as hidden back content to support published websites, and none of
it is crawled by google or anyone else for that matter. And none of it is in
the least bit illegal or even morally dubious. Most of the unknown web is full
of boring web infrastructures, and certainly not child pornography.
Predictive
searches never show porn related stuff (or so I have read); I guess that would
conflict with Google's public image, but if you type rotten you get rotten.com
before you've typed tomatoes; some time ago Google courted some controversy by
refusing to take down a racist photoshopped pic of Michelle Obama - citing
rules that they only removed content when legally required to do so, all of
which makes their ethics seem a little patchy. The point I'm trying to make is
that I would gladly trade free albums for the loss of sites like rotten.
I'll probably
get criticised for this and I'm aware that there is no perfect solution. No-one
wants an internet with little free content and a big buy button on the top of
the screen, but I am concerned about the excesses of the internet (never mind
the dark web freenet thing) and its influence on peoples' morality and
behaviour. I think the idea of "public" content being in the minority
is a complete fantasy and the percentages plucked from the air, also I think it
should be made clearer that there is a big difference between actively hidden
content and activity for clandestine, political or paranoid reasons, and
content that is simply defunct, old outdated websites that no one links to any
more but aren't deleted, abandoned personal websites or free websites for
companies that have gone out of business. Hard drive space is cheap these days
and older websites don't take up much room. Also important is separating
traffic from actual useful available web content, files or communication; no
doubt a huge amount of traffic is taken up by spam and automated programs like
trojans and the like. The idea of a huge goldmine of interesting secret
information that dwarfs the public web makes no sense, the number of users and
content publishers in these "sub nets" are by their very nature
minuscule.
Virtually
everyone I know with a computer does or has at some point downloaded music or
films through Limewire or rapidshare or whatever, and those who haven't have at
the very least watched unlicensed rips of shows on youtube for example - and
none of those people would consider themselves criminal, even remotely. It's
one of the odd things I've always thought about the whole filesharing thing -
it's right there, hugely visible and you don't need to search far to get to it -
just post the name of a record in google and you're likely to get to a
rapidshare link or an equivalent within two or three pages of results. Google
will probably lead you to thousands more pirated works than I imagine you'd
ever find on freenet.
Johansen’s book
is not earth-shattering, but it gives all the basic necessary ingredients for
you to dip your toes in the water dark-web-wise.
