In my first part of this series you already found out what the Darknet is. Now I want to tell you more about the people you’ll meet there.
Firstly, there are of course the people whose actions in the Darknet led to the relatively negative reputation of the allegedly fertile ground for illegal activities. Those people indeed use the darknet for criminal purposes. You’ll find merchants selling illegal goods on trading websites like the Silkroad. There also are hackers, Botnet owners and unfortunately people who sell child pornography and even so-called snuff videos.
Two groups which are known for roaming the Darknet are LulzSec and Anonymous. These internet rights activists declare themselves as hackers and they make use of the Darknet in order to communicate and spread leaked information from hacked websites. These infos could be LogIn data, but also precise information about pedophiles in the Darknet. LulzSec and Anonymous regularly collect website information collected in the Darknet and show them to the public. One of these files could be a list of Facebook profiles and full names and addresses of pedophiles in an attempt to stop their disgusting deeds. Usually, they release their data on pastebin.com by the way. Maybe, at this point, your eyes were opened: Hacking which is again a rather negatively perceived practice sometimes serves as a mean to do something supposedly good.
However, there aren’t just self-declared hackers, dealers and pedos in the Darknet.
Let’s take a look at another case example which sheds a completely different surprisingly bright light on the Darknet. In Syria, Assad’s oppositions warned the public using the Darknet. These include rocket attack warnings and reports about Assad’s regime. The open internet is strictly regulated and monitored by the Syrian authorities.
“Before the civil war started it’s already been like that: The oppositionists that communicate in the open web, will get their door kicked in at night and they’ll disappear.” Says an anonymously interviewed Syrian lady with the alias Alexia Jade.
Moreover, the Darknet was and is still used to coordinate the Occupy Protests, which are particularly fought in Turkey with police brutality. In the Darknet, the citizens are one step ahead of the police, because they announce unapproved protests there and use it to warn each other from police operations.
As you can see, there aren’t just arm dealers, perverts and Berliner party techno junkies scanning Silkroad for high-quality Speed from the Netherlands. Sometimes, allegedly noble motivations cause individuals and collectives to make use of the advantages of the Darknet.
And now you can get all hyped for the next week: That’s where you’ll find out how to stay 99% anonymously in the Darknet!
Information Source: http://www.hdm-stuttgart.de/ and http://www.welt.de/
Image Source: http://www.welt.de/
