An Explanation of The DarkNet:
In case anyone was wondering, the answer is no: you are not currently using the darknet.
Before any discussion of Darknet begins in earnest, we must first identify and clarify on what the darknet actually is. And in order to explain what the darknet is, it's necessary to understand what programs like TOR are.
Before I explain what Tor is, though, I want to give an example. Take Facebook, for example. Popular social media site, used by millions, if not billions, of people every day. It also automatically records your IP address the second you enter the web address into your search bar. Didn't know that? There are ways around it, though, and one of those ways is Tor.
Tor, also known as The Onion Router, is a free program you can download onto your comuter in minutes that acts as a proxy server on steroids, essentially. It takes your IP address and bounces it around the globe to different places and locations to mask where you're originally typing from. With Tor installed, for all facebook knows you can be typing from Palm Springs, California and they get an IP address located in Siberia. That's why it's called the "Onion" router; each little jump in location is a peel of an onion.
What's good about Tor is that it provides vast amounts of privacy and anonymity, far more than your typical incognito search bar. To compare the two, Tor is an invisibility cloak that makes you nearly impossible to sense and perceive. Incognito is hiding behind a plant at your grandmother's 85th birthday party.
There's another perk to Tor, though, and one that isn't discussed very widely. There are actually certain websites and marketplaces for goods and product that you can't actually view without something like Tor installed. This is what's known as the "darknet"[1], as opposed to what's refered to as the "clearnet", which is site's like this one.
The Harms of the Darknet:
So what's wrong with the darknet? Pretty simple, actually. As Al Jazeera writer Claire Gordon summarized it up nicely, "Honestly, it's not a particularly nice place."[1]
Crime is rampant on the darknet. Drugs, weapons, forgeries, child pornography -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Credit card fraud conducted on a international scale. Weapons rings organized online. Thieves and assassins openly posting their resumes and contact information through the anonymity of the darknet.
In order to stop this crime, we have a few options: track and prosecute the individuals who are perpretrating the crimes, shut down the individual sites in the darknet in which the crime originates, or shut down the darknet entirely. I'll explain why the first two are flawed, and how the third one is the only possible option.
Hunting down the individual members of the site's that are doing the criminal activity seems like a decent idea, but the inherent problem with it is that with Tor, they're virtually untraceable. Normally to find someone over the internet you just trace their IP back to a physical location, and then you're right at their doorstep. Tor physically prevents that by bouncing the IP address all over the globe, making it virtually untraceable.
To make matters worse, it’s impossible to trace the money trail to individual members because, well, thereisno money trail. All transactions occur through Bitcoin[3], an electronic cryptocurrency. These cryptocurrencies allow for entirely anonymous transactions to occur en mass[4].
Shutting down the sites on which the crime occurs is another decent thought, but that's simply naive at best. This has actually already been tried before. The Silk Road was the name of a very popular darknet hub for drugs and other illegal wares before it was shut down. The members fled to other sites, leading to a 70% growth in membership for BMR (a similar site), and a nearly 400% increase to the Sheep Marketplace (another similar site). Simply put, there's always going to be another site for the criminals to flee to, making shutting down individual sites a flawed method of solving the problem.[2]
The final method, shutting down the darknet entirely, is a rather simple process to do and one that is guaranteed to not fail in theory. The darknet is a part of the internet that is only visible with certain software and programs installed onto the computer. Banning this software removes the ability to access the darknet entirely, forcing the criminals out into the open, where they can be prosecuted and the crime can be prevented.
Why should we shut down the darknet? Because the harms from the crime that’s allowed to occur through it’s privacy is inexcusable and entirely unjustifiable. To start with, drug use is the cause of a quarter of a million deaths per year worldwide[5]. In 2012, $11.3 billion -- yes that billions with a “b” -- was lost due to credit card fraud globally, which was up 15% from the previous year[6]. Contract murder is, well, contract murder. And these are just the calculable things, things we can put numbers to and bring up some kind of raw “bodycount” for. The harms of child pornography on the child are incalculable; not just physically (everything from genital pains to headaches, loss of appetite and sleeplessness), but psychologically as well (feelings of isolation, anxiety, and fear)[7]. With all of these harms being rampantly created and encouraged over the darknet, we must do everything within our power to shut the darknet down and stop this crime. The only way left to do it that hasn’t failed is to prevent people from using the darknet entirely.
Sources:
[1]http://america.aljazeera.com...
[2]https://media.gractions.com…
[4]http://www.janes.com/article/47455/law-enforcement-struggles-to-control-darknet
[5]http://www.livescience.com/36068-worldwide-illegal-drug-deaths.html
[7]http://www.popcenter.org/problems/child_pornography/2Return To Top | Posted:
Thanks Zaradi for being such a staunch and challenging competitor for the 2015 World Online Debate Championships.
- anonymous storage of information
- anonymous communication
- anonymous purchase of goods
- anonymous file sharing and transfer of information
The common argument in reprisal to this misconception is that the vast majority of the darknet is estimated to be utilized for legitimate purposes, such as corporate security and privacy. While it is true that you can find niche places who utilize the anonymity of the darknet to commit illegal acts, we must remember that the problem isn't nearly as inflated as many critics would lead you to believe. Of course we can find illegal items on the internet. We can also find illegal items and real life.
Obviously we cannot rework the law, and encouraging people to break it on purpose can't be good for our society, but nothing is stopping us from enforcing the law regardless of how difficult it may be. The reason drug dealers tend to hang out in backalleys is because it is harder for them to get caught by the police. Yet many criminals have been caught in backalleys for over the course of a century. We can apply the same principles to the darknet. It might be harder to catch bad guys on the internet, but it isn't impossible. We just need to try harder ourselves.
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Welcome to round 2 of this already exciting debate.
- Almost every major company in the West (Competitive corporations are afraid of espionage, therefore certain internet activities are restricted unless you are anonymously routed)
- Security Services (including the secret service and several high level security firms)
- Private messaging services (Includes the once popular Bluedog, I2P, and WASTE)
- Pornography and other Legal Inconspicuous Item Vendors (A lot of people buy pornography using the darknet who don't want their financial transaction traced back to them)
- Just a general place for secure vending (As a dedicated roamer of the darknet using Tor, I can confirm along with Tor employees that the majority of darknet markets are used for legalized products, with the added bonus that the vendors can trade securely)
- The Estonian General Election (Which was the first in history to allow voting over the internet. Much of the security was done using darknet software)
- Require services like Tor to collect data from their users on why each person is downloading their router
- Collect a small tax for every user of services like Tor, which can then be used for an increase in national cyber security agencies
- Tighten national policies on internet crime, discouraging criminals
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So there's a few things that need to be noted that make this debate break down really, really simply.
And with that, that's literally 90% of his case gone. Don't let him come in the very last round of the debate and try to provide all these sources because he's had loads of time to do so before this point. He hasn't, so hold it against him. The only thing that's left is this idea that there's legitimate businesses on the darknet and it would be wrong to shut them down while we shut down the darknet. But there's a number of reasons why this doesn't matter and you affirm anyway:First, you prefer my arguments as to how the darknet is rampant with crime over his word that it isn't.Second, you prefer the impacts of drug-related deaths, money lost due to credit card fraud, and the physical and psychological harms of child pornography as reasons to want to be rid of the darknet over his "It's wrong!" statement that lacks any kind of justification whatsoever.Third, you prefer my statistics as to how, after "enforcement" in the darknet, other spikes that were not enforced substantially spiked in activity, suggesting that the idea of enforcing the darknet is foolish and naive over his "we can do it!" rhetoric that lacks any kind of warrant behind it.
First, like I said before, this isn't Sodom where if there's one good, God-fearing individual, then the entire city is saved. We're talking about what's best for society as a whole, meaning that if I'm preventing more harm by getting rid of the darknet than I am harming others via doing so (hint hint, I'm winning in this weighing game) then I'm winning this debate.Secondly, if there actually are legitimate businesses out there on the darknet, then, as I hinted last round and will blatantly say this round, they're being freaking idiotic. They're intentionally making their business suffer by reducing their visibility by running their business in a place where only a small portion of society will ever see. By shutting down the darknet and forcibly relocating those businesses to the normal internet, we would actually be increasing their visibility, thus increasing their chance of actually earning business. His argument here flows in my favor.Thirdly, ignore his massive capitalism/democracy rant because it's a massive appeal to emotion. He gives you no impacts to this at all other than saying "it's not what it was meant for so we can't shut it down", and gives no analysis at all as for why this is more important than saving the lives that would be lost to drug-related causes, the money stolen through fraud, and all the physical and psychological harm inflicted onto children from the child pornography that's rampant in the darknet.
First, he provided absolutely nothing in the way of warrants to show that the USFG can actually enforce the darknet other than "Yeah guys! They totally can! We aren't even trying yet!" rhetoric.Second, he doesn't actually respond to the reasons I'm providing for why the darknet is actually unenforceable. Money doesn't solve the fact that Tor makes users untraceable and there's an infinite number of potential sites for shutting down individual sites to actually be a feasible solution. And even if it could, he gives no reason to believe that it can or will.Third, his argument here that we're not pouring as much money as we can is the No True Scotsman fallacy. By Con's logic, so long as we're not "successfully" enforcing the darknet, it's just because we're not pouring enough money into things. He'll be able to write off any failure as "just throw more money at it! You weren't throwing enough!" and ignore the actual problem of the unenforceability of the darknet.Fourth, this argument of "lets just throw money at this" doesn't even negate. I can say the same thing and just say "Let's throw a little bit more money on this and just shut the entire thing down." and affirm the resolution.Fifth, this whole "we aren't even trying" argument is in direct contradiction with his whole "it can work, look at The Silk Road and that bad guy we arrested!" argument. He can't have both. Either a) he buys into the we aren't trying and doesn't have any reason to show that it could work in the first place, or b) he buys into the "we did something!" argument and bites into the argument I make showing how it increases the stats of other sites, meaning it doesn't actually do anything. Either way, he still loses.
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I think sources are secondary in a debate, considering how most real life debates don't involve website links. If the affirming position was truly skeptical of my facts, he would of disputed them earlier into the debate. The people should believe what I am saying, and if they do not believe in what I am saying, google search is only a click away.
The more important issue here is the fantasy the affirming position keeps advocating for on how we can "shut down" the darknet by "shutting down" software. Here's the problem with that. The reason criminals do not get caught on the darknet, is because they do not use Tor or other programs like it. They use black market software or even homemade routers. Launching an attack on software programs that allow access to the darknet would not bring down a single criminal. It would bring down a lot of legitimate small business owners though. What happens to those legitimate small business owners after we shut down the software they use to make their livelihood? I'll tell you what, they will get blackmarket software and become criminals too. Has it occurred to anyone that some acts of enforcement can actually cause more criminal activity?
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Cheers Posted 2015-06-16 16:43:08
I will abstain from voting on this debate, as I don't wish to produce more claims of bias.Posted 2015-06-16 07:18:25
It was set up with 12 days left before the round was over Posted 2015-06-15 03:17:24
Maybe it wasn't setup at the exact moment the timer started then. Posted 2015-06-15 02:36:01
Really? Zaradi specified the debate so it would go only for 12 days maxPosted 2015-06-15 02:34:47
Technically this debate should have ended already, but I'll give you two a pass 'cause I'm nice.Posted 2015-06-15 02:25:41
Jifpop vs Zaradi 2.0Posted 2015-06-11 12:52:41
9 hours till you miss the round from this comment. Posted 2015-06-08 08:22:39
How much time is left on this debate?Posted 2015-06-08 07:03:36