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Dark Web Mapping Reveals That Half of the Content Is Legal (helpnetsecurity.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Cyber threat intelligence firm Intelliagg and dark net indexing company Darksum have released the results of their efforts to map the dark web (actually, only the Tor network). They discovered that Tor network is much smaller than commonly thought, and that around 68% of the sites analyzed can be classified as illegal under UK and US law. In related news, a recent poll found that the vast majority of people want a ban on the dark net.

12 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Article says 68%, not 48% by Sowelu · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Of those that have been accessed and analyzed with the companies’ “machine-learning” classification method, less than half (48%) can be classified as illegal under UK and US law. A separate manual classification of 1,000 sites found about 68% of the content to be illegal under those same laws."

    Seriously, guys? The only place the 48% number comes from is from the same sentence saying that a more careful count said 68%.

    1. Re:Article says 68%, not 48% by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Shouldn't it be UK OR US law? Since no person is going to be under both jurisdictions at the same time?

      --
      Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
    2. Re:Article says 68%, not 48% by Sowelu · · Score: 4, Informative

      Okay wow! Thank you editors! The summary got changed and I appreciate that. Seemed like that never happened on old Slashdot.

  2. Squiddie by Squiddie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My guess is that a large part of that is simple copyright infringement or other such things. The "illegal content problem" is not really a problem. It's just people afraid of free speech and sharing of information.

  3. "oh, yeah, leave it partway on, baby" by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 3, Funny

    Dark Web Mapping Reveals That Half of the Content Is Legal

    Yes, sir, certainly she was old enough, that's not the issue. The problem is that a llama can't legally consent to anything, even if she's over 21.

  4. Re:Dark web needs some rebranding by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well that's part of the problem. As with the bigger issues of encryption, e.g. Apple vs. FBI, if one "good guy" government can crack it, then so can the bad guys, whom it was designed to fight.

    Does anybody think Russia and China, at a minimum, can't muster the technological and financial oomph to get the same job done as the NSA/FBI?

    This on top of things they also do, like the US, like phone metadata and Eye in the Sky. Sometimes they even buy the software for analysis from western companies.

    If we can do it for good guy reasons, so can they, and as far as I am concerned, this is all about stopping the building of these tools to begin with, to avoid the 1984 "Imagine a boot stepping on a human face...forever."

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    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  5. Not really accurate. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Al they're saying is half the content that they could find is legal ... it's called the dark web for a reason. If they could find it all, it wouldn't be the dark web. And what they did find couldn't be all that dark - after all, they found it.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  6. Re:Who cares? by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They don't want to ban it for YOUR safety, they want to ban it for THEIRS.

    I'm just sayin'...

    --
    Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
  7. Re:Dark web needs some rebranding by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

    Call it "Freedom Web" and watch Fox News explode in a puff of logic as it tries to find out what side to take.

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. 'Banning' the 'dark web' by kheldan · · Score: 4, Informative

    This 'vast majority' of people, like most non-technical people, don't understand how things actually work. You can't ban the so-called 'dark web' because you really can't identify where it is. Even making Tor illegal (yeah, and good luck with that, too) would only get rid of part of the Dark Web.

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  9. Re: Who cares? We care. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    About 68% of criminal activity goes unprosecuted because criminals invoke their constitutional rights. It would be so much easier if they didn't have those rights. So lets let the 32% of people who are saved by constitutional rights hang in the wind.
    That's effectively what you are saying when you want to prevent the 32% of sites that are used by whistleblowers, journalists, resistance fighters and dissidents from having a platform that is safe to communicate.

  10. W/o copyright, people would trade disassemblies by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If copyright didn't apply to computer programs, and this applied to both Sony Computer Entertainment and the free software community, there would be no need for copyleft. Instead, people could just make and share commented disassemblies of proprietary software. This already happens underground.