The Truth about the Dark Web

• Author: Aditi Kumar - Eric Rosenbach
• Position: ADITI KUMAR is the executive director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. ERIC ROSENBACH is codirector at the Belfer Center and was previously US assistant secretary of defense for global security.
• Pages: 22-25

22 FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT | September 2019

I

n the late 1990s, two research orga nizations in

the US Department of Defense drove eort s

to develop an anonymized and encrypted

network that would protect the sensitive com-

munications of US spies. is secret net work

would not be known or accessible to ordinar y

internet surfers. And while t he original clan-

destine intention was never fully realized, some

of the researchers saw a dierent value proposi-

tion at hand—launchin g a nonprot focused on

anonymity for human rights a nd privacy activists.

Enter the Tor network, short for “e Onion

Router,” given the many layers of encryption

that guard pa ssing information. Tor lives on the

fringe of the internet and ser ves as the underly-

ing technology of the da rk web—a collection of

hidden sites inaccessible via a regu lar browser and

not indexed by search engines such a s Google.

e Tor browser—a free down load—is all you

need to unlock this hidden corner of the web

where privacy is paramount. R adical anonymity,

however, casts a long shadow.

e truth about the dark web is t hat in addition

to oering extreme privacy a nd protection from

the surveilla nce of authoritarian governments, it

facilitates a growing u nderground marketplace

that sophisticated crim inals use to tra c drugs,

stolen identities, child pornography, and other

illicit products and serv ices. And with untraceable

cryptocurrency a s the primary means of payment,

close cooperation between law enforcement, n an-

cial institutions, a nd regulators around the world is

required to tighten the screws on nefa rious activity.

The gray areas

Today, over 65,000 unique UR Ls ending w ith

.onion exist on the Tor network. A 2018 s tudy by

computer security rm Hyperion Gray cata logued

about 10 percent of these sites and found that the

most prevalent functions faci litate communication

via forums, chat rooms, a nd le and image hosts,

as well as commerce via m arketplaces. ese func-

tional roles, particu larly related to communication,

support many uses that a re considered legal and

legitimate in free societies. Fur thermore, a 2016

study by research rm Terbium Labs analy zing 400

randomly selected .onion sites suggests t hat over

half of all doma ins on the dark web are in fact legal.

For individuals living u nder oppressive regimes

that block large par ts of the internet or punish

Intended to protect dissidents, it has also cloaked illegal activity

Aditi Kumar and Eric Rosenbach

THE TRUTH ABOUT

THE DARK WEB