Critical Analysis of Pros and Cons of the Dark Net Silk Road for Society

Topic-

“The original concept behind the Dark Net was to provide a secure form of communication to those who need it. Compare the pros and cons that the Dark Net provide and evaluate their value to society.”

According to (Reiff, 2020), “The 'dark net,' also known as the 'dark web,' is part of the greater 'deep web,' a network of secret websites that exist on an encrypted network.” Again, The Dark Net is an overlay system to the internet that must be gotten to by particular programming, designs and extraordinary approvals, and regularly utilizes non-standard communication protocols with the goal for it to be purposely difficult to reach by the internet. Dark Net is the hidden and inaccessible side of the internet world. Dark Net consist of mostly illegal contents which we can’t browse through surface web. No one really knows the size of the dark web but it’s estimated that it’s about 5% of the total internet. Through dark net a person’s identity remains hidden as it creates an anonymous environment. To browse Dark Net it requires a special web browser name Tor which routes web page request to multiple nodes before reaching the final destination and makes the user’s IP address quite untraceable. So if a person is browsing the Dark Net it’s very difficult to trace him/her which makes it a secure place for communication. For example, a person wants to send a hidden message to another person and so to secure his/her identity he can easily use Dark Net to communicate with the other person using Dark Net which will help to stay anonymous. So Dark Net is the haven for free speech and expression for the people around the world. But it’s anonymity has created a secure environment for doing all the criminal activities around the world. As a result, the impact of Dark Net in the modern world is huge. In this research essay we will have a clear view of the pros and cons of the Dark Net, it’s value to our society and how it affecting our society in various ways. According to Anthony T. Hincks - “The dark of the web is illuminated from within.”

The biggest advantage of dark net is that it allows you to browse anonymously and it’s really difficult to monitor. Most of the people thinks that dark net is only about criminal activities, but it’s totally wrong. Dark net creates a secure environment for the people who can share their thoughts by staying anonymous, it gives freedom of speech to people which it’s quite difficult to have in the surface web. Suppose someone wants to share a blog which might offend lots of people, dark net is the place where you can share your thoughts without the fear of exposing your identity. A person can even revolt against their dictator leadership in the dark net which you can’t do in the surface web. Thus we can say it enables transparent governance. Dark net can also be a huge source of information. Lots of journalist and scholars use dark net as the source of their information. High sensitive information flow around the dark web and sometimes it helps investigators even solving various crime through the information from dark web. The biggest benefit from is the dark net is it’s market place and it creates a huge business opportunities for the entrepreneurs all around the globe. To summarize the huge business going through the dark web Silk Road is the best way to start. Silk Road can be said as the ebay of the dark web. It was the biggest and most well-known market place in the dark net. It was launched by Ross Ulbricht (“Dread Pirate Roberts”) in February 2011. “n 2013, Silk Road founder and dark net drug emperor Ross Ulbricht, AKA Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), seemed convinced that his website was destined to become the catalyst for a revolution. After all, his site linked nearly 4,000 drug dealers around the world to sell their wares to more than 100,000 buyers, and could you get you anything from falsified documents to heroin — even a rocket launcher. (Harnfenist, 2019)” The most impressive thing about the Silk Road is it very trustworthy. In road they buyer and seller can review each other and the buyer can even get refund money if he/she didn’t receive the product. Silk road took the business to another level in dark net and showed the world how real business is done. Although in October 2013, the FBI shut down Silk Road and arrested Ross Ulbricht. But it gave hope for many struggling entrepreneurs and people started doing business in dark net and earning a huge amount of money through it. People can buy stuffs from dark web which are illegal to sell in surface web and lots of people got benefitted from it though it’s illegal. Dark net took cryptocurrencies to another level. “According to the study, total market sales in crypto grew 70% in 2019 to account for more than $790 million worth of cryptocurrency after seeing a small decline in 2018. This was the first time when sales surpassed $600 million, Chainalysis says. (Partz, 2020)” This statistics clearly shows the rise of cryptocurrencies as dark net only uses cryptocurrencies people are getting more influenced to use it. Again dark net help us to interact with group of people who has same mentality. Another bright side of dark net are the hacktivist group who plays vigilante roles in destroying the harmful content of the dark sides and help to catch criminals. For example “Hacktivist group Anonymous has briefly taken offline 40 sites it claims traded in images of child sexual abuse. (BBC, 2011)” So we can say Dark Net doesn’t only have dark sides it has bright sides too. According to Jamie Bartlett - “The dark net is a world of power and freedom: of expression, of creativity, of information, of ideas. Power and freedom endow our creative and our destructive faculties. The dark net magnifies both, making it easier to explore every desire, to act on every dark impulse, to indulge every neurosis.”

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Dark net can be safe haven for criminals as it help criminals to stay anonymous which makes dark net a very dangerous place. Dark net creates the perfect environment for trading drugs. Drug traders earning huge money via dark net. Again Silk Road used to be known as the ebay of drugs in the dark net. “Between 2011 and 2013, its period of operation, an estimated $1.2 billion in sales took place on the Silk Road forum, involving 150,000 customers and 4,000 distributors. (Malik, 2019)” But after the shutdown of Silk Road in 2013 didn’t stop the trade of drug, Silk Road was just the beginning of the drug trade business. That’s why drug trade business has become the most demanding business in the dark net. Child pornography is another dark net business which earning a huge amount of money. Child pornography is a severe crime but this there are so many websites in the dark net trading child pornography and earning a huge amount of money with it. “More than 80% of so-called “dark net” internet traffic is generated by visits to websites offering child-abuse material, according to a study of Tor “hidden services” websites conducted at the University of Portsmouth (Dredge, 2018)”. It’s very shocking by seeing the number of views in a dark net child porn videos being watched my paedophiles around the globe. Dark net realizes us that there’s many creepy people living among us. Benjamin Faulkner, a Canadian, who is the owner of “Child’s Play” a child pornographic site had over 1 million profiles and had over 100 producers of child being raped and humiliated for entertaining the paedophiles around the world. There are sites in the dark web where human trafficking takes place. Young virgin girl being sold on auctions in various websites of the dark net for using them as a sex slave. There are even websites where gangs are willing to abduct person according to the will of the people which come at considerable price rate. An evidence of human trafficking is Chloe Ayling, a British model, who has been abducted by a group name “The Black Death Angel Group” and demanded £300,000 from her agency otherwise they would sell her off in auction for sex slave. Dark net has become a secure place for terrorists and there are even websites in the dark net where terrorists are being recruited. Terrorist uses dark net for communications as it helps them stay anonymous. Hackers also earns huge amounts of money in the dark net by hacking social media IDs according to the people choice. People can even hire hitman to murder other people in the dark net. An example of that is Albanian Mafia, who gives hitman services to anywhere in the world. Weapon trade is another huge business in the dark net. Huge amount of weapons are being sold in the dark net every year and criminal or terrorist organizations usually use dark net websites as their platform to buy weapons. People can buy fake passports, driving license and stolen credit cards from the dark web. Different hacking tools and malwares are being sold in dark net. Dark web is a very tricky place and it’s full of scams and fake requests to hack in to people systems, lots of people lost their private information because of not being careful in the dark net as it’s full of fraud people. There websites even where live tortures takes place in the dark net. There are even websites in the dark web where people tells their experience being a cannibal and even creepy websites where it’s said that you can summon devil for services with exchange of fair amount of money.

Dark net has done a huge effect to our society. It shows us that still many creepy people lives in this world and it shows the places where changes needed to take place. Like Dark net now enforcing the government to make new rules which is completely new to the society and further changes needs to be taken place. To protect the society values the government bodies need to be stronger. Child pornography, human trafficking, human assault, cannibalism, hiring people to kill and many other dark side of the dark net is really killing our social values. Catching criminal like Ross Ulbricht the creator of Silk Road, Peter Scully the infamous Australian paedophile and many other people like them would help us to protect our social values. People need to come together in this to eradicate the negative effects of the dark web. New forensics investigative procedure needs to be taken place to stay one step ahead of the criminals al around the word. Even many hackers come forward to destroy various child porn sites and we need more hackers like them for the well-being of the society. Now we are getting better in catching the dark net criminals, we have many success stories recently related to catching dark web criminals, if we keep going in this way hopefully in future dark net won’t be able to affect the value of our society.

Dark net is not only for criminals, we all should make sure that we use the dark net in a proper way that people will start to notice the bright sides of the dark net rather than dark sides. It’s our duty to protect our society values and we all should encourage other people to help the governing body to catch criminals in the dark web who are destroying our social values. We all want to live in a peaceful society not in a society full of paedophiles, killers, torturers and sick people like them. We already managed to shut down many illegal market place like Silk Road, Hansa, Wall Street Market and many others. So the future of dark web depends on us and it’s our duty use it the correct manner in which it was meant to be used. Lastly, I would love to finish this research paper with this mazing quote of Og Mandino “I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” As dark net is surrounded by dark materials we should always use the light (good side) in ourselves to use it in the right way so that we can bring out bright materials from it.

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