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The Dark Web Still Thrives After Silk Road
HughPickens.com writes: Russell Berman writes at The Atlantic that the government may have won its case against Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht, but the high-profile trial gave a lot of publicity to the dark web. Both the number of sites and the volume of people using them have increased since Silk Road was shuttered. "Just as on the rest of the internet, users on the dark net are very quick to move on to new things and move away from those products and websites that seem stale and old," says Adam Benson. The cat-and-mouse game between users of the dark web and law enforcement appears to be shifting as well. Newer dark sites (two major ones are Agora and Evolution) are likely to protect their servers by basing them in countries "hostile to U.S. law enforcement," says Nicholas Weaver. "The markets will keep moving overseas, but law enforcement will keep going after the dealers," Weaver says, referring to the people who actually ship and deliver the drugs sold online.
Evolution Marketplace is a much different animal than Silk Road, according to Dan Palumbo. Evolution sells "weapons, stolen credit cards, and more nefarious items that were forbidden on both versions of Silk Road. Silk Road sold a lot of dangerous things, but operators drew the line at their version of 'victimless crimes,' i.e. no child pornography, weapons, or identity theft. Now, four of the top five DarkNet Marketplaces sell weapons while three of the top five sell stolen financial data." This is a darker DarkNet and it speaks to the challenge facing law enforcement as they knock one set of bad actors offline, another comes along with bigger and bolder intentions.
Evolution Marketplace is a much different animal than Silk Road, according to Dan Palumbo. Evolution sells "weapons, stolen credit cards, and more nefarious items that were forbidden on both versions of Silk Road. Silk Road sold a lot of dangerous things, but operators drew the line at their version of 'victimless crimes,' i.e. no child pornography, weapons, or identity theft. Now, four of the top five DarkNet Marketplaces sell weapons while three of the top five sell stolen financial data." This is a darker DarkNet and it speaks to the challenge facing law enforcement as they knock one set of bad actors offline, another comes along with bigger and bolder intentions.
When did Dark Web become Evil Web?
It used to be the the Dark Web was simply those sites that were not being indexed by major search engines. Nothing more, nothing less, just those sites that were not being shown to the average search engine users.
It did not indicate that the sites were doing something "dodgy" but they were bad at SEO or just had no links going to them. They were undiscoverable.
Why not blame ISPs and other network operators?
They are enabling all the criminal activity on the Internet, with or without some sort of VPN to hide behind.
Next thing you know, people are prosecuted for what they say because it caused someone else to go nuts .... ohh wait a minute ....
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Ulbricht set up a sister site called The Armory at some point which did sell a range of weapons including very dangerous ones like RPG launchers. Silk Road also sold forged IDs and malware (e.g. that could be used to empty bank accounts). His definition of "victimless crime" was a very poorly thought out and inconsistent one.
seems to be the delivery channel . I mean seriously, who would like to recieve a package of contraband delivered !! to an address !!! ... True blue anonymity is still far away ... ( resistance is futile kinda situation for now )
Anonymity in all its forms can be used for nefarious purposes. Isn't that right, Mr. Anonymous Coward?
Dan is part of the Digital Citizens group, a United States non-profit organization focused on Internet safety issues. In 2014 in response to leaked Sony emails, former attorney general Peggy Lautenschlager said the DCA had inappropriately influenced politician Jim Hood. The organization hired lobbyist Mike Moore, who also served Hood as a consultant on a pro-bono basis. The article alleged he used his relationship to serve the agenda of private industry, such as Microsoft and the movie industry. Basically, theyre a collaborative shill for the industry designed to influence government policy.
as for the darknet, its almost as though a small segment predicated up on the subversion of 50 years of failed americian drug policy is a trivial part of what is becoming a vast, collaborative response to an illegal government surveillance program that citizens do not want, and politicians are uninterested in stopping. Its as though the more corrupt governments become, the more inequality is manifest and expressed in the criminalization of speech and knowledge, then the larger this entity grows until it becomes necessary to caricaturize it. That the darknet is universally revered by our media institutions for piracy, spam, theft, and drugs instead of as a safe haven for speech and collaboration is telling to say the least.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Some say that anonymity is a fundamental right, like free speech. Free speech allows people to say bad things, and anonymity allows them do do bad things online, but in both cases, curtailing those rights is not an option, and does more harm than good besides. For some, running a TOR node or contributing to such projects is their way of asserting the right to anonymity, which is indeed for the greater good.
In addition, making providers of a platform (be it TOR, and ISP, or a discussion board) responsible for the content being moved over that platform is rather impractical. If such responsibility is legally enforced, it'll be the end of the open Internet. And of privacy and encryption, by the way (though I see a new market for steganography)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Some say that anonymity is a fundamental right, like free speech.
Some say that there's no such thing, but that free speech is necessary if you want a free society, and that anonymity is necessary for free speech, thus it should be protected.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"