Dark Net: Anonymity, Whistleblowing, and Challenges - Essay Sample

Introduction

Dark Net aims at providing anonymity, whereby it collects many websites that are visible and hides their IP addresses (Greenberg et al., 2019). After that, it enables whistleblowing by protecting those using the site from censorship. The dark Net concept has been changing with time and characterization. Dark Net associated connotations have given sense to the society because they provide users with security as they continue browsing online. However, the website has recently been receiving negative connotations, which is attached to the Dark Net. For instance, the view of the website by Silk Road. As reported by Mayer and Bieler (2014), Dark Net is a black market website that has grown consciously and has increasingly been making monthly revenue of about $2. However, the notion for the “black market” comes from worldwide growing markets. The public and government from various countries cannot be able to access information from the website. For example, online statistics of drug selling on the website have exceeded the physical drug sales because Dark Net has to hide all the security transactions after carrying on any businesses. This is a clear indication that positive and negative notions of communication overlap one another concerning ultimate transcending value for the website to society. The research paper discusses the original Dark Net’s concept in providing a secure way of communication to the community that needs it. Further, the research explores various arguments for the Dark Net and arguments against.

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Arguments for the Dark Net

Dark Net ideally was started to allow operations like the exchange of package information to take place freely anonymously (Corera, 2019). The starting up of Dark Net provided a central point for access to domains referred to as “Tor” or, in other words, “The Onion Router.” The router provided a predetermined sense of continuous secure communication, which was a positive value for the Dark Net tool. Implementation of the idea begun in the 1990s with a simple logic that had few numbers of users who actively used the system. At this time, Dark Net’s order could not entirely separate white messages from those personal and government ones.

Dark Net activities are grouped into journalism and broadcasting, activism and cyber security threats. Rudesill et al. (2015) researched the effects of the introduction of the Dark Net on the world’s economy. The study concluded that policymaker, social and political systems are affected by the operations of the website. Dark Net changes conformities to laws, regulations, and government watchers. This, however, has supported those individuals who could not access freedom to speech as well as those who may be oppressed by their governments. Following this, the individual is likely to pose rogue threats by publishing anti-government slogans and messages publicly. The messages allow the protection of these people's freedoms and inform the state on social and political standings.

Therefore, Dark Net secures the identity of these individuals and guarantees them the freedom to speak without fear and insemination. Even if the government poses a fear of consequence and severe penalties, it is challenging to identify such individuals. Bruce Schneier supported this, a computer science expert noting that based on the internet, anonymity is essential for particular nations, especially for those arrested, tortured, and killed. It gives a good reason why the United States government has been an instrumental icon in developing technology. (Corera, 2019). The Dark Net allows “whistle-blowers” to give misleading information to suppress human beings struggling against oppressive governments.

According to Chertoff and Simon (2015), these kinds of information are categorized as needing to know what is essential. Besides, Dark Net allows the rise of a vigilante and other hacking activities because it will enable tracking down the pursuit of villains on hidden sites. The dark place has also positively contributed to society. For instance, it reinforced taking down children porn sites. The way Silk Road was brought down showed that the existence of the site was illegal and unethically showing wrong things to children. The type of hacking was well labeled as being a frontier to legal for cyber activities.

Arguments against the Dark Net

Since Dark Net has begun, it has been glowing. The acts of the Dark Net have been malicious because they provide to continued criminal activities and state-sponsored spies. It acts as a platform where unauthorized activities can happen because there are reduced risks of being detected. The belief of the dark web, providing security to convey data without threats has been reported to encourage many people to express the freedom of speech and transfer of specific documents (Finklea, 2017).

Besides, the origin of Dark Net technology led to the transformative nature of the cyberbullying activities. Many types of crimes emerged as a result of the platform. Operators engaging in criminal activities could protect they're identified by the end to end encryption. With this, no outsider can access or trace any information or any communication that happens on the Dark Net. The hidden IP address might appear often and reappear other times, and the chain cannot be traced, as it is not also easy to trace the origin of such activities. Furthermore, most of the criminal activities committed through the Dark Net include selling of weapons without identification of licenses, and the buyers would be willing to pay massive amounts to have the weapons (Davis, 2014).

Research has shown that selling these firearms usually pushes for professional assassinations. The weapons are available easily. The implication is that murder for hire servers are reinforced significantly (Davis, 2014). This has been so because not verification is done to the types of weapons that were used and whether the contracts are legit. The sight is also known to be very notorious for taking Silk Road down. Silk Road was created for virtual markets for so many drug dealers. Maras (2014) noted that the sites’ trade would consist of small substances to wholesales bulk.

Silk Road was first brought down by the (FBI), although Dark Net secured it, and business continued as usual. Dark Net was established for people to have a secure plan where they could communicate with those they need to. For many entrepreneurs, a sense of connection was misconducted.

Still, with the site, it provided an advantage, especially for delivering forged passports, birth certificates, providing stolen identities and other fabricated documents. Dark Net has a dark background that ensures anonymity for all activities taking place (Davis, 2014). The prices for the site are affordable, and so many customers can afford the services. Therefore, considerable security measure has ensured clear thriving for the criminal activities in Dark Net undetected (Davis, 2014).

Arguments Against the Dark Net and the Value It Has on Society

As a result, Dark Net has led to increasing of wrong items being discussed on such sites, According to Jardine (2016), many people accept and be able to live with the presence of the Dark Net. This negative perception created and spread by the media has developed a picture in that the Dark Net is of less importance. It does not add any significant value to society. According to a research by Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust (2016), “at least 70% of persons around 25 of the high developed countries are in a position of taking the Dark Net down.

These results make it clear that Dark Net does not add any critical value; instead, it destroys and misleads innocent souls. However, the Dark Net still has the energy and power of continuing to allow and host significant malicious activities and services done. Society and law enforcers, as a large, must pay close attention and be highly observant in the ways they can strategize and stop rising malicious servers, in a manner that is efficient and effective before it spreads and expands into a more significant catastrophe.

According to Stockley (2019), the manifest Dark Net existence will still attract certain people who can engage in various activities like spectrum, ranging from black market trading, human trafficking, terrorism, and distributing child pornography. The minimal restrictions include, the Dark Net has continued to open up a negative impression to society because many activities are conducted with a lot of fear and mistrust. Society tends to believe the Dark Net is like a place where there are no state rules, law, and regulatory measures, where the enactment is hardly imposed. Everyone’s identification is highly protected—making the site to be safe in conducting unpleasant activities. The Dark Net further carries dangerous malware in which the society is afraid off.

Ransomware is a virus that is highly suspected to be in connection with the Dark Net. An active professional hacker on the Dark Net can easily hack the account of an unsuspecting individual in their computer (Jardine, 2016). Finally, Dark Net can be categorized as a tool to provide rights of expression and communication to every individual despite the nature of data being posted.

The Dark Net can facilitate citizens’ communication among other regions in the world, irrespective of the harsh nature they encounter every day. The bright idea of the Dark Net merely is giving awareness of obscurity between people and governments while offering protection from morally justified violence in law execution, despite the law execution endeavor and advocacy of ensuring society safety from misuse of drugs, robbery and minor molestation, that is not often the case” (Jardine, 2016). Its present and later existence, as well as worth on community, is maintaining taboo fields within the cyber domain's depths, hampering the external world from being aware of suchlike realities. Its value to society is definite with the increase in speech liberty all through the 21st century besides warning of censoring a person’s reasoning.

Even though the majority of the states don’t possess constitutional powers to censor persons directly, well defined skillful means to curb an individual’s right to spoken and virtual speech, even so, the Dark Net is responsible for the provision of the most excellent platform for the bibliolatry of speech liberty. Farther away from the reach of bodies in regulation which would possess the right to effect censorship on the ordinary web, the Dark web is somewhere the society may communicate what almost everyone had in mind, honestly speaking of the strength of individuality together with anonymity (Friesland, 2019).

The merit the Dark Net owns for our community’s future would be a division of forbidden affairs by definition; nevertheless, the Dark Net is non-criminal. Advantageously, the Dark Net recently came to its society, instilling its different ideologies, absence of guidelines, besides lack of the most important authorities (Mirea et al., 2018). The platform can manipulate social rules hoping to provide a feeling of secure haven, strengthening essential values in real life, guaranteeing the right of expression of one's thoughts in the seen domain and the cyber domain.

The Dark Net bound to and having yielded its communal positions within the community,...