Anonymity, Privacy & Dark Web vs ‘Surface Web’

I’ve focused this month on researching the fall of Bohemia/Cannabia, the notorious dark web markets. This led me to several Finnish investigations and of course, it was a good time to read again about the first dark web market that was cracked down more than a decade ago: The Silk Road.

Jumping from the anonymity area, a privacy topic has been an interesting one: Now that Telegram changed their privacy shift due to hard allegations that I guess everyone is familiar with, many people are wondering what’s next for the black hackers and wrongdoers. Where will they go?

And in this pursuit, news media has started to attack several privacy-focused applications. This includes Wired, The Guardian and what other outlets are just posting what the competitor posts.

This pushed me to write an article about the topic and further mention that we are asking the wrong questions though. Real threat actors do not even use our ‘surface level’ tools and applications, and presented some ideas, because that’s what we have so far, only ideas.

Cracking down on privacy-focused applications without even considering their use-case in journalism, communicating in authoritarian states without the risk of being persecuted for your thoughts, can be as valuable as pursuing criminals. And all tabloids and news articles are starting to point fingers now from Telegram to Signal, or SimpleX, without considering to make a minimum of due diligence, and just label those applications as the next ‘safe-haven for extremists and criminals’.

Tough times ahead, in a free world where information is at our fingertips, media outlets seem to prioritize clicks over thought-out research.

Photo by Etienne Boulanger on Unsplash