A Fast Explainer Of The Dark Web
At least this quick primer lists a few of the legitimate uses of the Dark Web, but as usual sex trafficking (which barely even exists) gets thrown in there to spice things up.
Little is known about how U.S. and European law enforcement shut down more than 400 websites, including Silk Road 2.0, which used technology that hides their true IP addresses. The criminal complaint filed against Benthall doesn’t reveal much other than saying that in May the FBI “identified a server located in a foreign country that was believed to be hosting the Silk Road 2.0.”
Tor is an encrypted system that facilitates anonymous communication. It has plenty of legitimate uses, particularly for evading surveillance in countries with authoritarian governments. Police have increasingly been targeting underground websites on Tor, and Thursday’s raids are the latest in that work.
Last week’s takedown of Silk Road 2.0 wasn’t the only law enforcement strike on "darknet" illicit websites being concealed by the Tor Project’s network of anonymizing routers. A total of 410 .onion pages on at least 27 different sites were shut down as part of Operation Onymous—a joint operation between16 member nations of Europol, the FBI, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Tor is most interested in understanding how these services were located, and if this indicates a security weakness in Tor hidden services that could be exploited by criminals or secret police repressing dissents. We are also interested in learning why the authorities seized Tor relays even though their operation was targetting hidden services. Were these two events related?
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