The Dark Net

Did you know there’s a part of the Net that is “hidden”, inaccessible via regular browsers like Chrome and Firefox? Both the sites themselves and the special browser needed to access such sites use a “fiendishly clever encryption system”, as Jamie Bartlett puts it in his TED talk. Even users accessing these sites cannot be traced thanks to the encryption systems in use. Called the Dark Net, it is a “censorship-free world visited by anonymous users”.

So yes, as expected, the Dark Net has its share of sites for illegal activities. But Bartlett's talk focuses on other very interesting aspects of the Dark Net. Like it hosts lots of whistle-blowing sites and political activism blogs! Plus:

“(Innovation) also takes place in the fringes, because those on the fringes -- the pariahs, the outcasts -- they're often the most creative, because they have to be.”

But wouldn’t any financial transaction on the Dark Net be traceable eventually? Ah, but they don’t use regular cash; they use Bitcoins, the digital crypto-currency! And the Dark Net even has services to jumble even those transactions up. Ok, but if the system is so impossible to trace anyone (including the sites from which you buy), why would anyone trust it? The answer:

“It's the user reviews…The only way of trusting a vendor is if they have a good history of positive feedback from other users of the site.”

No wonder then:

“This introduction of competition and choice does exactly what the economists would predict. Prices tend to go down, product quality tends to go up, and the vendors are attentive, they're polite, they're consumer-centric, offering you all manner of special deals, one-offs, buy-one-get-one-frees, free delivery, to keep you happy.”

But surely it can’t be a good thing to be able to buy drugs so easily, can it? Then again, as Bartlett says, half tongue-in-cheek:

“On the other hand, if you are going to take drugs, you have a reasonably good way of guaranteeing a certain level of purity and quality, which is incredibly important if you're taking drugs.”

Hell, there’s even a Google for the Dark Net, a search engine called Grams! And so Bartlett wonders, as online surveillance by governments increases, will more and more people be attracted to the anonymity of the Dark Net?

“The Internet has actually changed many times over the last 30 years or so. It started in the '70s as a military project, morphed in the 1980s to an academic network, co-opted by commercial companies in the '90s, and then invaded by all of us via social media in the noughties, but I think it's going to change again. And I think things like the dark net markets -- creative, secure, difficult to censor -- I think that's the future.”

As Yogi Berra said, the future ain’t what it used to be!