The Dark Web.

Since the beginning of this millennium, humans have constantly partaken in dialogs over the physical world and the virtual one. The insurgence of social media and e-commerce along with the growth of the global village has left a gaping question on how we engage with these entities. What started as a subject of tremendous interest and optimism at the start of this decade has now turned into horrid pessimism at the chemistry between man and tech.

We didn’t see the enrichment in our lives that technology promised us apart from convenience and ease of operating things. This has made life swifter than easier. As we now expect things to happen instantly with state-of-the-art technology around us. We are more networked, but equally disconnected from each other. Additionally, I need not quote examples of social unrest, political upheavals, Cambridge Analyticas and plethora of large and powerful corporations designing algorithms to tweak our social construct. What is our social construct? I shall leave you with some food for thought on that one.

While these two worlds battle it out in a race to decide what grabs our mindshare – privacy or advancing technology. There is a third lawless, anonymous and yet deeply penetrating world ringing on our doors waiting to knock us off. Presented in the form of an Amazon exclusive podcast, researched by Tech writer and broadcaster Geoff White, titled ‘The Dark Web’.

The series introduces us to the world of hidden URL’s harboring malicious social platforms, illegal marketplaces and networks that can be accessed only by a select group of users. A close-knit community with an access by invitation only from a known source. A community that has manifested a parallel world of organized crime and which are exponentially menacing than any of the known mafia across the world. The dark web was originally created for secret operatives of agencies to protect their identity. The sites they access, the places they stay cannot be tracked based on the hidden IP’s they use. Something that would seem straight out of a James Bond or CIA flick.

It makes absolute sense if the cause for which it has been used serves a nation and its people. However, what makes this a disturbing plot is that the technology of anonymity is equally if not more exploited by the criminal gangs to drive their operations as a legit business model. The USP being it keeps you anonymous.

The series exposes Amazon styled drug selling e-commerce platforms. Viruses been sold on a franchise model to hack into networks and share a royalty with its creators. An organized network of unethical hackers prying on your bank accounts with all your necessary information. A paedophile and child pornography ring posting horrendous photo-shopped videos and pictures of our children on sites, conspiracy theories and so on.

What’s interesting to note is how the series unmasks the meteoric rise of the digital currency namely Bitcoin which runs parallel to the growth of the dark web. Bitcoin became the currency of choice for all such underground transactions as it kept the recipient unidentified. This is totally in line with the ethos of the dark web to remain unknown and hidden to the regular world. 

Remember ‘Ransomware’ where the victims were demanded to pay through Bitcoin only. Yes, it belongs to the same trading marketplace and represents only a fraction of the economy on the dark web. This is a major dampener on the blockchain application for the promises it bought along for financial markets. It is dreadful to know the underlying reasons behind the skyrocketing prices of Bitcoin and the likes.

Your obvious question now would be on what is been done about all this? If this is already known, why are agencies unable to track and cease all such operations. Firstly, it is extremely difficult tracking these hidden URL’s. Since there isn’t any history or trace left behind. Although, there have been some embargoes on the dark web operations. For e.g. The series speaks of ‘Silk Route’ a full-blown online drug store with customer service and call center operations that was shut down.

The authorities even arrested some of the criminal hackers that made a fortune blackmailing their victims after sneaking into their computer systems. But this is hard. Imagine tracking a hidden spy with all the anonymity and cloak they operate under. Secondly, the dark web marketplace is still not considered that large a threat to compromise with the technology used by secret operatives. These groups are still considered a minuscule by-product in comparison to the benefits it offers.

Listening to the series left me with puzzled with a few questions:

1. How much of interactions or transactions should we be conducting on the internet?
2. Do we need to re-look deeply on the way we have dealt with internet and allied technology models to reshape the way the next gen would look at these platforms?
3. How do we humans act with those who are known to us vs having anonymity? Does being anonymous naturally drifts us towards immoral paths?

The answer to the above is something that I have been already following in the recent years now. Our online interactions, views and behavior should be at a very high self-discretion. The opinion of posting and doing whatever we want on a network might deceive us about the notion of a free-will world. But then are we really free when we leave our imprints on the web unabashedly. Humans stand at an extremely nascent stage of dealing with the prowess of technology. We should therefore call caution on our usage pattern and how this might be viewed by our children at home. For they are the ones who would be dealing at much complex networked systems created by robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and so on.

Finally, we need to re-look and ponder if being anonymous gives us the undue power which we are not able to handle at the moment. The miscreants and gangs operating on the dark web are all rooted firmly on the clause of anonymity that incites them into illicit activities. All normal humans like me writing this piece and you reading it, but change color assuming invincibility under the invisible cloak.

The Dark Web is a must hear podcast for all those who swear by technology and those who are alien to it. For these aren’t fictional sci-fi stories, but incidents narrated from our quotidian lives.