You Can Use the Dark Web for Good
by Djilpmh Pi
One of my earliest memories of trying to figure out how things work and what makes them tick is when I was nine or 10 years old and my parents left me alone in the house.
I took a dinner knife and disassembled the Big Ben mechanical alarm clock. It had two windup handles, one to wind the spring to keep the clock running, and the other for the bell clapper.
Very cleverly the "quiet alarm" mode had a lever that slipped a thin piece of leather between the clapper and the bell housing so it was not as annoying as a full on alarm. I could see the gears and levers spin and slide; it was wonderful.
It kept working even though I had a few parts left over which I could not remember where they were supposed to go back. I only got into trouble the second time I took the clock apart into more pieces, and it no longer tick-tocked. No matter, figuring out how things worked was in my blood, and this hacker never looked back even after my spanking.
Today my Big Ben is to figure out and explain to people how the "Dark Web" can be put to legitimate and beneficial uses.
For too long, it has been yielded to the "dark side" for evil purposes. It is, after all, only a technology and, on its own, tech is not inherently good or evil. Whether something is good or bad should be judged by the motivation of our actions and the harmful or helpful outcomes.
Everybody Knows the Dark Web is a Bad Place
The Dark Web is well known as a playground and hiding place for criminals including drug dealers, sex traffickers, and every kind of bad people.
It is painted by popular media as the dark alley everyone should avoid because you will get mugged and worse if you go there. Taking a closer look, it is a powerful tool that can be used for good in spite of its evil reputation.
The U.S. Navy created the technology behind the Dark Web initially to protect American spies in hostile locations. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network) for its origins.
Power Tools Have Two Sharp Edges
Power tools and power concepts are two-edged swords: free speech protects hateful speech, anonymity protects privacy but encourages trolls, and airplanes can be used by terrorists to take down high rise buildings. Unintended consequences and uses are the second sharp edge of powerful ideas.
If we say that "good honest people" should stay away from that dirty Dark Web because icky bad people use it, we could also say that criminals use guns, cash, and cars, so honest folk should not use those icky things - who knows where it's been!
You have to decide whether the good honest police should use guns or just stick to the billy clubs for law enforcement. Oh wait, criminals use sticks too. As with any power tool, the Dark Web can be used for both good and evil. Unfortunately, its legitimate use by honest people has been overshadowed by its icky reputation.
Good Honest People Can Benefit
Good honest people who don't want their network activity to be tracked, victims of domestic violence, and whistleblowers can all benefit from using the Dark Web.
Anyone who is interested in privacy can use the Dark Web to protect their personal information. These uses will be explained below. Having a basic understanding of the Dark Web, or Tor (the technical name is "the onion router") can be helpful to understand how and why it works. Recognizing the imitations of the Tor software is as important as understanding its power. For an explanation and resources see torproject.org.
Use Cases for Dark Web (Tor)
These are my hacks of the Dark Web, figuring out how to use it for the benefit of honest people in these ways:
- Avoiding tracking: protecting the privacy of your Internet use.
- Protecting the location of victims of domestic violence.
- Protecting anonymous whistleblowers.
Standard Disclaimer
Seek professional advice and talk with people you trust. You are responsible for your own actions. Be skeptical and verify anything important.
Tracking and Privacy
Tracking collects information about your Internet use, what you search for, what you buy, and what time of day or night you use the Internet. That information is sold to advertisers who pay very well for that information. If you don't already think it's creepy and invasive, you've missed something basic about intrusions into your privacy.
What Google Knows About You
We've all observed that a random Google search for vacations in Glacier National Park will shortly generate advertisements for tour packages and hotels in the area. The simple explanation is that your free use of the search engine has tagged you as someone who is interested in the area, and that information is sold to the hotels and tour providers around Glacier. Early in the use of tracking and advertising, a parent discovered their daughter was pregnant because diaper and maternity ads started to appear in the browser and computer used by the family.
Defeating tracking of your every action can feel insurmountable.
Corporations already know every intimate detail of your life: what ice cream flavors and brands you like, whether you use ice cream as a celebration or consolation. It's creepy to know that complete strangers - not even limited to your country of citizenship or residence - know everything you buy and read, and at what time of night and which days you like to shop. It should be annoying to people that a website already knows your "consumer score" to set your place in the help desk queue and probably to decide what deals to offer you, individually. See sift.com and nextroll.com for examples.
Private Browsing
To remove tracking of your web searches, it's possible to use a private search engine such as DuckDuckGo or StartPage.
Both proxy your search request, so your IP address is initially protected and cookies are not passed through. But if you click on the search result directly, your computer can become visible to both the service provider and the website unless you are careful to use the "Anonymous View" link in StartPage.
Without using "Anonymous View", DuckDuckGo or other search engines connect you directly to a website and your IP address, cookies, and other tracking mechanisms kick right back into action.
If you use a VPN, your real IP address is masked by the VPN provider, but you have to trust them to keep that information private, and VPNs don't do anything to protect you against cookies and other tracking methods.
What If You Had Some Friends...
Defeating tracking can actually be easy.
What if you had a group of friends help each other by randomly mixing the traffic up among the members of the group, so it's no longer clear who was shopping for cars, a particular medication, or pregnancy tests? Those searches and connections would be randomly changed and no longer linked to your individual identity. You still have to deal with cookies and other tracking, but your location information is no longer usable to track you.
If your group of friends were distributed all over the world in many countries, that would fool some websites nicely.
Randomizing Internet Connections to Defeat Tracking by IP Address
That group of cooperating friends who allowed you to use their shared Internet connections could make the IP address detected by the Internet web server or store different for each visit.
If there were hundreds, or even thousands of these friends, that would confuse the tracking tools to the point they wouldn't know your real IP address or location.
Your New Friends
This is my first hack of the Dark Web.
Let me introduce you to your new friends: a group of people who volunteer to do just that for you, for free, because they all believe in and support privacy. Surprise! They operate the Tor (the onion router) relay computers that make up the Dark Web.
Tor is the technical name of the Dark Web, and its only purpose is to hide your real location by passing your traffic through a series of friendly relay routers between your computer and the website you are accessing. Tor does nothing else. But even that little help from your new friends can do a lot to defeat tracking.
Protecting Victims of Domestic Abuse
Some victims of domestic abuse leave town for fear of their safety and for their lives. It is most important to keep their location secret from their abuser.
Finding Someone's Location
If the attacker finds an email that was sent by the victim to family or friends telling them all is well, it is trivially simple to find the IP address from which that email is sent.
As explained in www.lifewire.com/how-to-find-email-server-ip-address-818402, this method can be used to check the authenticity of an email message, or flag it as suspicious in origin. If your cousin lives across town, why are they sending email from Norway?
Sadly, the same method can be used by an attacker to find the location of their victim.
Geographic location is used by website and online store owners to validate the physical location of a potential visitor or buyer, so if an order is connecting from France, it would be inconsistent to have the item sent to Iowa, or vice versa. At least it would be worth getting additional verification that the purchase is legitimate. A diligent website owner could use geolocation to reduce fraud. Another example would be comments on a political activity website of users claiming to be local residents that are traced to geolocations in Eastern Europe or Far East. www.iplocation.net and en.utrace.de are examples of many free online services providing the physical location of an IP address.
Protect Victims From Real Harm
If a victim left town to escape an abuser, revealing even the town or suburb of their current location has made all the effort a waste of money, time, and energy. Such exposure puts victims in real harm's way.
My second hack of the Dark Web is this: using Tails or at least a Tor browser can keep the IP address of the sender private and protect the real location of the victim. Of course, if the email contents describe an address, no technical solutions will protect against sloppiness of their security.
The best strategy would be to completely isolate from previous contact with family and friends, but that discipline can be hard to keep forever, particularly during significant times such as holidays, family births and deaths, or birthdays. If communications were attempted, at least try to avoid leaking the location of the victim.
Protecting Whistleblowers
Whistleblowers protect our democratic society by shining a spotlight on evil.
They are an essential part of revealing abuse of power, avoidance of responsibility, and other things that destroy the civilized part of our modern society. By revealing information about such abuses, they put themselves at great risk of reprisal ("snitches get stitches," "rats get bats"), so it can be helpful if a whistleblower can remain anonymous. Any accusation has to be proven to be true or false by investigation and other information and testimony: that is the responsible action of a conscientious citizen.
If you came into possession of some documents or information that proved illegal, immoral, or unethical behavior of powerful people, what would you do? Many people think twice about being identified as the source because they correctly fear the anger and reprisal of those powerful people and their unthinking followers. This is the case whether the issue is in your neighborhood, in government, or in a large corporation.
It's Hard to Be Anonymous
It is very hard to be an anonymous whistleblower.
Conventional email contains the IP address (and thus location) of the sender's computer. What would you have to do? First, get a wad of cash: credit cards and checks will be traced back to you. Pay someone - preferably a stranger or homeless person - to buy a smartphone or laptop from a pawn shop or used computer store. If you enter the store yourself, you will be on the surveillance video for the store. Use your device outside the library and use their Wi-Fi out of view of the surveillance cameras.
Is that enough? Probably not. But it's a good start. What is a better way? Use the Dark Web, in the same way American spies communicated with their home team.
Better to Use Tor (the Dark Web)
If you use the Dark Web and avoid the known pitfalls, you can be as anonymous as it is possible to be today.
Tails is a USB-based operating system that boots from the USB drive and does not touch the host computer's hard drive, and leaves no footprint revealing that you were even on the computer. Tails can be obtained through tails.boum.org and is free. It is the method recommended by news organizations worldwide for submitting tip information anonymously.
This is my third hack of the Dark Web: helping whistleblowers stay anonymous if they wish.
Media Outlets Use SecureDrop
SecureDrop is dark web software that allows whistleblowers to send information to news outlets and exchange messages between the whistleblower and the journalist.
Many global news and other organizations use it - the list is found at securedrop.org.
Thorns and Roses
The sweet smell of roses in the world of privacy comes with its own thorns.
Removing tracking from your Internet use by using Tor does give you better privacy.
But it can be inconvenient. Because Tor relays are spread out over the world, you might see a French language landing page because the last relay was in a French speaking country. Web pages take more time to load because all the traffic is passing through several additional routers instead of going straight between your browser and the web server.
Loss of discipline in correctly using Tor can leak your anonymity; for example, if you give your real identity to a website.
It's Still Worth It
In spite of these drawbacks, it is necessary and important to support the use of Tor in the protection of everyone's privacy.
Private communications are essential for resistors under oppressive regimes. Syrians fighting Assad cannot use ordinary email systems; they would be found out in no time. Iranians organizing resistance to their government would be wise not to use conventional messaging tools offered by local companies.
Just as free speech is important to a free society, it allows some to express hateful ideas. In the same way, privacy can be used by good people and abused by bad ones.
But in the end, the value of free speech is higher than what it allows, and the value of privacy is higher than what the abusers can make of it.
