[PRESS RELEASE] Dark Web: What Do We Need To Know? | Difussion #15

Yogyakarta, 30^th August 2019 – The internet that is accessed by most people using standard search engine, turns out to be only the limited part of its surface. On the World Wide Web, there are three layers of the internet, namely the surface web that can be accessed with a normal browser, the deep web that requires authorization access such as websites that require login feature, and the dark web that requires a special browser. Of the three layers, the dark web which is the most hidden layer became the topic of discussion in the 15^th series of Difussion, that was held by Center for Digital Society (CfDS) in Antologi Collaborative Space.

Felice Valeria as CfDS research assistant explained that anonymity is one of the main features of the dark web provided by TOR (The Onion Router). This feature is usually used by political activists to communicate with each other in secret and not detected. This anonymity feature can hide the identity and location of users, so internet service providers cannot detect the user’s activities. Usually, the dark web is used to plan and mobilize various political actions or movements, especially for those who live in countries with oppressive regimes, who implement the internet censorship policies. Therefore, the use of dark web is very beneficial in this regard. Felice also gave an example of the use of TOR in the Black Lives Matter campaign in the United States to avoid government control.

Ariq Dmitri Andrei opened the next session by giving explanations about cybercrimes that occur in the dark web. “As the name suggests, dark web is used for illegal activities that cannot be carried out on the surface of the web. For example, buying or selling drugs, firearms, personal data, even assassins or paid hackers, and human trafficking. Transactions on the dark web use bitcoin that is encrypted and makes the transaction relatively anonymous and difficult to be tracked. According to the data from Dr. Gareth Owen (University of Portsmouth UK), the largest percentage of the dark web usage is used for buying and selling drugs. It is then followed by the illegal market and fraud cases.” said Ariq Dmitri.

According to Theodore Great (CfDS research assistant), there are two factors that make the dark web as law enforcement target. First, it is targeted because of its stability that can be seen from the dark web user and server itself. For example, when the FBI captured Ross Ulbrich who created the ‘Silk Road’ (famous illegal marketplace in the dark web) network, not long after 1 month, the Silk Road 2.0 appeared. The second one is the anonymity feature is that can trigger positive and negative things. Positive is when it triggers a revolution towards better change in countries where people have minimal freedom, and negative when it is used for crime. Eventually, with those two factors, the most strategic way to regulate the dark web is to make regulations based on the context of the existing problems.

Author: Laili R.