THE ONLY PLACE WHERE GOOGLE CANNOT TAKE YOU Contents

THE ONLY PLACE WHERE GOOGLE CANNOT TAKE YOU Contents:

Loosing my Deep Web virginity…………………………………………….....…3 Anonymous and unsafe world of the dark…………………………………….5 Story about the eBay of illegal drugs………………………………………..….9 No reasons to loose your identity………………………………………………12 Deep, anonymous, but not unlockable……………………………………..…14 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………...16

2 Loosing my Deep Web virginity

I always felt that curiosity might be a mood killer. Not even a mood killer, but sometimes something even stronger. It might break the ideology of the world that we had in our thoughts. That is for sure. From the moment I have entered the doors of the Deep Web I started seeing the world through my eyes fully open. All the missing people, secret terrorism attacks, unhealthy and horrific pornography or easily accessible drugs are elementary explained now. All this kind of information is just buried far down on the sites of the Hidden Internet. However, no one ever told me about this in my high school or even university. I have never read about it, until my friend told me to check it out. I felt insecure and curious to research much more. I thought that we all should know about the place, which is estimated to be 500 times the size of the Surface Web. Deep Web, Invisible Web or the Hidden Internet is a place, where all the missed and deep information is hidden.

Fig 1. The image shows the idea of the Deep Web. Image from the Deep Web, Hidden Wiki : (http://wikitjerrta4qgz4.onion/)

3 Nowadays, the Deep Web is the largest growing category of new information on the Internet and it is a specific branch of the Internet that is distinguished by that increasingly rare commodity: complete anonymity. Nothing you do on the Deep Web can be associated with your real life, no one will ever know your identity, unless you want someone to know. Most people around you might have never seen the Hidden Internet, however, if you are curious enough to check that, it will not take you more than three minutes to download the browser, which is the easiest way to unlock the Deep Web. Tor is an anonymous browser for this secret world of the dark.

Fig 2. Screen shot of Tor Browser.

From the moment you have it and find the first website to get you on track, you get a free way ticket to the place, which might be called an electronic heaven for thieves, human traffickers, child pornographers, forgers, assassins, peddlers of loose nukes and state secrets. As doing my research, I realized that most of the information is absolutely new and online articles are much more helpful than any other book, because the theories about the Deep Web are changing a lot. I have chosen to look at this Hidden Internet while using three different methods. In the

4 first paragraph I will talk in a voice of a young mother, who is a freelance journalist. She explores and explains the beginning and the way of how the Deep Web works as in a descriptive analysis. In the second paragraph I am going to write through the eyes of the Dread Pirate Robert’s (or as already known Ross William Ulbircht) friend. He was like a brother and a colleague for the founder and administrator of The Silk Road – an underground online market place. This website might be better known as a secret eBay of illegal drugs. A narrative analysis tells a story, as he is going to tell you about the underground and anonymous life of The Silk Road and all the black market. In the third paragraph I am going to look into the Deep Web, while doing a comparative analysis as a police student from 1988, when none of the webs still existed.

Anonymous and unsafe world of the dark

As a freelance journalist and a young mother I got a hard task from one magazine. They asked me to get to know as much as I can about the Deep Web and to prepare myself to write a series of articles. I did not know anything about it as I am usually using the Internet only for my e- mail, social networking, blog and reading news. I have decided, that the best way to start researching is to find out the history and the concept of this unknown world of the dark. I read the book written by Peirluigi Paganini and Richard Gatomalo Amores, called “The Deep Dark Web: The Hidden World”. Although, it still took quite a while to understand the whole principle of this Invisible Web. It was a challenge to interpret the difference between the Hidden Internet and the Tor project as well. As I try now to explain the idea of it to my husband and my friends, I say that the Deep Web has much more information than the Surface Web, however, you cannot reach it easily. The idea is to start from one page and to follow the links or either to have a link for an exact website. You will not find anything while searching on Google, as the Deep Web is a World Wide Web content that is not indexed by any standard search engines.

Fig 3. Image shows the principle of how does the Deep Web works. Found on : (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deep_Web.svg)

Tor was implemented in 1996, in Cambridge, England as an open project developed for the purpose of protecting government communications. Tor – (short for The onion Router) is a browser that allows users to surf the Internet with complete anonymity. People surfing through Tor cannot be controlled by anyone and even government. It was a highly elegant and effective creation, so much so that even the people who built it did not know how to break it. And no one knows it even now.

Fig 4. Image shows the principle of how the Tor browser works. Found on: (http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/08/what-is-tor-and-why-does-it- matter/#!zd5A5)

Interesting, because it started as police usage for anonymous tips online, how to set up operations or to explore illegal websites without tipping off their owners. Despite that, the corruption of the Deep Web began not long after it was built. As having a young family I started to feel insecure after all the information that I found. The Internet never seemed a safe place for my children, but now it looks even worse. Once I downloaded Tor and got on the Deep Web through the first link I realized that it takes only a minute or two to find weapons, children pornography or to order a hitman.

Fig 5. Screen shot from the Deep Web of the website called “Hitman Network”, accessed through the Tor browser: http://ybp4oezfhk24hxmb.onion/

Even though I wanted to protect my children, I had mixed feelings about limiting freedom of their Internet usage. “By censoring your child’s Internet access you could be boxing the child into a corner.”1 However, the decision that my husband and I made was to use only one computer in our house. It is blocked from all of the horrible information on the Internet. We think that our children are going to be safer, while they will be protected from the deep secrets of the world. Once we understand that they are mature enough, we will let them know about the Deep Web and anonymous surfing. Hopefully it will not be too late.

1 Kye Valongo (2000). Your Privacy on the Internet. Plymouth: Internet Handbooks. p.123.

8 Story about the eBay of illegal drugs

“The real irony of this story, is this thing was built by the US government, in particular, the US Naval research laboratory. They worked out the theory in the 90′s and then launched it in 2003, and they had very good reasons for doing it. The deep web is a vital tool for intelligence agents, law enforcement, political dissidents in foreign countries with oppressive governments are

trained in it by the state department.” 2

And now it is the time to laugh. FBI and other organizations are spending millions of dollars trying to figure out how to crack it, but also 60% of Tor funding still came from the U.S. government in 2011. It is really strange reading about my best buddy Ross William Ulbircht. Well, he was (and hopefully still is) an amazing person. So smart that no one even knew that he was the owner of the biggest black market place on the Internet. When he came back from Sydney, Australia at 2009 with the idea of the Silk Road we have decided not to talk about it too much as for our own privacy. Everything was going on perfectly for us as we were already ahead from The Farmer’s Market, which opened in 2006 and was selling loads of stuff from marijuana to ketamine. Why we were ahead? Because were using bitcoins. It was a radically new kind of currency introduced as a kind of fiscal thought experiment by someone known only as Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity is still kind of a mystery. Bitcoin is both a payment system and a currency that is purely digital - it has no physical form. “A bitcoin's worth is determined by supply and demand and is valuable only insofar as individuals and companies have

2 Hobson. (2013). The Deep Web: Where Google Won’t Take You. Available: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/11/08/the-deep-web. Last accessed 16th March 2014.

9 agreed to trade it. “ 3 And you know what? It works perfectly and we were successful taking payments until the Silk Road was closed down on the October 3rd, 2013. The day after my friend, called the Dread Pirate Roberts was arrested.

Fig 6. Fig 5. Screen shot from the Deep Web of the original, now closed the Silk Road, accessed through the Tor browser: (http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/)

That week was a hell of a week to me; I thought they know me as well. I thought they found out how the Tor works or maybe they tracked down the hidden identities. Anyway, I have never ordered any hitman to kill people or gave a secret interview for a magazine as my friend did. His courage to accept giving an interview for Andy Greenberg from the Forbes Magazine shocked me. Ross William Ulbircht understood and even mentioned that the highest levels of government are hunting him. And they finally found him. Now he is sitting in jail and cannot use the Internet at all. And it did not take a while for someone to recreate a new

3 Jay Newton Small & Lev Grossman. (2013). The Secret Web: Where Drugs, Porn and Murder Live Online . Available: http://time.com/630/the-secret-web-where-drugs- porn-and-murder-live-online/. Last accessed 16th March 2014.

10 home for our daily costumers, based on our idea, which Dread Pirate Roberts said on his interview: “What we’re doing isn’t about scoring drugs or ‘sticking it to the man’. It’s about standing up for our rights as

human beings and refusing to submit when we’ve done no wrong.”4

Fig 7. Fig 5. Screen shot from the Deep Web, of the Silk Road 2, accessed through the Tor browser: (http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion/)

Now it might be a question of time. How long it might take to hunt the new owner and to shut down the Silk Road 2, which is even bigger now and more accessible to everyone since the media did a great advert for it for free. Thanks to their free publicity easily accessible to everyone on the Surface Web, more and more people now are connecting on the Deep Web and visiting the new Silk Road.

4 Andy Greenberg. (2013). Meet The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Man Behind Booming Black Market Drug Website Silk Road. Available: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/meet-the-dread-pirate- roberts-the-man-behind-booming-black-market-drug-website-silk-road/. Last accessed 16th March 2014.

11 No reasons to loose your identity

A week ago, on 1988 January 18th I had the weirdest dream ever. I was really tired getting ready for the police recruitment test that night, so the dream was very long and vivid. I was somewhere in the 2013, already a great policeman, when I got the task to stop people from using the Deep Web. It was hard understanding the concept itself, especially how it works from the roots, and it seemed that I had to know more than only the difference between the visible and invisible content of the wired network that people call the Internet. The dreaming me was questioning how is that possible to prevent powerful search engines from indexing the websites on the Hidden Internet and how does the encryption work there. Everything, starting from identities and email addresses and ending with the currencies, was encrypted. That caused easily going crimes and the black market while everything was covered by the idea of anonymity.

Fig 8. Screen shot from the Deep Web, of the website called “USA citizenship” accessed through the Tor browser: (http://xfnwyig7olypdq5r.onion/)

Fig 9. Screen shot from the Deep Web, of the website, offering US fake drivers licenses, accessed through the Tor browser: ( http://en35tuzqmn4lofbk.onion/ )

Fig 10. Screen shot from the Deep Web, of the website, offering to do fake passports, id cards or drivers licenses, accessed through the Tor browser: ( http://abbujjh5vqtq77wg.onion/)

13 The only way to uncover the crimes there was widely used Social Engineering method, which seemed powerless since people there are aware of that. Then I woke up next morning, several hours before my exam and I could not get rid of the thoughts about the possible future invention, which I was dreaming. I was thinking a lot and despite the all the dark information and illegal activity on the Deep Web, it seemed a safe place on the Internet as it was anonymous. While people, who were using the Surface Web were followed by the government and owners of the websites. They did not have enough freedom there. As for me, a person, hopefully a future policeman from the late 20th century it seemed not fair. No one should know, where you are going or where you were using your computer the last time. However, my dream showed me, that this is what people might be experiencing in 2013. And I could not believe. You have to accept the reality and to deal with all the unnecessary information in your life, but to stay anonymous and not reveal who you are or where you are to people you would not like to know that information. Hopefully, it was only a dream. But if this is my future, I want to be a policeman even more now and to spread all over the world that they should protect their identities and try not to spread their personal information all around. Sometimes staying anonymous is a better choice. It cannot become the fastest growing crime anywhere in the world.

Deep, anonymous, but not unlockable

Everywhere we go we radiate the information about our browsing history, our taste in music, our social connections, information about ourselves and even our physical location. Everywhere but the Deep Web. Tor was a less a step forward than a return to an earlier era. It is a huge step back, step to the previous decade, where people were able to stay anonymous at mostly all times. After the whole new experience while doing my research, using the Deep Web on my own I created my own opinion about it. I started using it first, without doing any research and I

14 saw only bad things about it. But from the moment I started looking deeper and to search more, to compare it with the Surface Web that we use every day, I realized that the Deep Web is not only negative. “Anonymity can give a desperate person the confidence to ask for advice or help, where otherwise they would not step forward for fear of embarrassment or worse.” 5 Mather Record mentioned it on his book about identity and it’s protection. And I agree. People have their word freedom on the Deep Web. They can easily access whatever they want without any fears. Of course, it is not the safest place on our world, but it should not be a secret. And I agree with Kye Valongo, who wrote on the book “Your privacy on the internet” - “When governments try to legislate for illegal Internet activity, they do so with sledgehammer proposals likely to cause more damage for law-abiding citizens than good” 6. No one can solve the secret of this hidden dark world, but we have to deal and to live with it. People have to know about it, children should hear about it at their schools. It is a reality, people creation, which everyone should face. People have to know what is going on in their world, does not matter if it is on the Surface web or on the Deep Web.

5 Matthew Record (2008). Protecting Your Identity. Oxford: How to Books. p.112.

6 Kye Valongo (2000). Your Privacy on the Internet. Plymouth: Internet Handbooks. p.25.

15 Bibliography Books:

Pierluigi Paganini and Richard Amores (2012). The Deep Dark Web: The Hidden World. Napoli: Paganini - Amores. p.276.

This book was the first choice while trying to get to know the Deep Web more. It seemed like the best book about it, the must read. However, probably because it was written in 2012, the information did not look correct, as the articles on the Internet showed the newest information about the Hidden Internet. It let me to understand the basic principle about the Deep Web, but only the basics as the topics are changing really fast and it seems like you are jumping from one topic to another really quickly, while leaving some unanswered questions. I would not recommend this book as for a Deep Web beginner. It is not written in an easy way.

Kenneth D. Ricketts (2008). How to Pass The Police Recruitment Tests. 3rd ed. Oxford: How to Books. p.123.

I have chosen to read this book, because of the character in my third paragraph. I wanted to feel, how does it feel to prepare you for the police recruitment test in 1988, as it was the first edition of this book. The book showed some mathematics and physics as well as the information how to write an official letter.

Matthew Record (2008). Protecting Your Identity. Oxford: How to Books. p.174. This book seemed really interesting and official. It was actually a really nice experience while reading it. I have never thought before how does people can steel someone else’s identity or how to protect your identity from stealing. As well as I have never known that this is the fastest growing crime in the UK now. I felt that this book was really worth reading not only because of my research, but for my safer future as well.

Kye Valongo (2000). Your Privacy on the Internet. Plymouth: Internet Handbooks. p.147. As this book was written at the year 2000 I thought that this might contain already old information. However, I was wrong. The book was easy and interesting to read. The basics about the Internet spam on our browsers, hackers, followers, your own privacy and your children privacy or how to stay anonymous. These were the main topics of the book. It had the information that every Internet user should know about. Even more, it helped me to create a better opinion about the privacy on the Deep Web.

Articles:

Andy Greenberg. (2013). Meet The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Man Behind Booming Black Market Drug Website Silk Road. Available: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/meet-the- dread-pirate-roberts-the-man-behind-booming-black-market-drug- website-silk-road/. Last accessed 16th March 2014. This was, I can say, the most exciting read of my research. It brought so many emotions as the journalist; Andy Greenberg did a fantastic job. After six months of talking with the Dread Pirate Roberts, he persuaded him to give an interview for a magazine Forbes. The interview is alive. It feels like you are talking with a person. After this, I understood how it might feel to work for the biggest black market on the web. And on the whole, why does this thing – the Silk Road existed. It helped a lot, while writing my second paragraph of this essay.

Steve Pederson. (2013). Understanding the Deep Web in 10 minutes. Available: http://bigdata.brightplanet.com/Portals/179268/docs/deep%20web%20 whitepaper%20v3_for%20approval.pdf. Last accessed 16th March 2014. Hobson. (2013). This was a perfect place to understand how the search engines work for the web. This file could be called “The Deep Web for dummies” as it explained everything in a really short, but detailed way.

Richard Goodman. (2013). The Secret Web: Where Drugs, Porn And Murder Live Online . Available: http://sowhatelseyougot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-secret-web- where-drugs-porn-and.html. Last accessed 16th March 2014 / Jay Newton Small & Lev Grossman. (2013). The Secret Web: Where Drugs, Porn and Murder Live Online . Available: http://time.com/630/the- secret-web-where-drugs-porn-and-murder-live-online/. Last accessed 16th March 2014. This was probably the second most interesting resource, which I read during my research. The reason, why I have referenced two websites is because the blog is a copy

17 of the Times magazine of the Deep Web. It was really interesting, as Lev Grossman and Jay Newton Small wrote everything in a very creative way. The information, that I found was very helpful as it was about the bitcoins and the Silk Road. I just loved the way it was written. The whole magazine gave me lots of information about what should I look into more for my research.

The Deep Web: Where Google Won’t Take You. Available: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/11/08/the-deep-web. Last accessed 16th March 2014. This record is an interview from Lew Grossman (he was the one, who wrote the Times magazine about the Deep Web, that I read as well). The idea is the same, that written on that magazine, however the way he explains the Hidden Internet, while using the creative language, was impressive.

Daily Mail Reporter. (2013). The disturbing world of the Deep Web, where contract killers and drug dealers ply their trade on the internet Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2454735/The- disturbing-world-Deep-Web-. Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2454735/The-disturbing- world-Deep-Web-contract-killers-drug-dealers-ply-trade- internet.html. Last accessed 16th March 2014. This is the first article that I read, even before my research for this essay. This is an easy to understand and well written article, which has all the main topics of the Deep Web. Would recommend to read this to a person, who wants to understand the principle of this Hidden Internet. However, some information of this article is not correct, as the arresting day of Ross Ulbirch and while talking about the ads of Atlantis.

Zach Epstein. (2014). How to find the Invisible Internet. Available: http://bgr.com/2014/01/20/how-to-access-tor-silk-road-deep-web/. Last accessed 16th March 2014. This website has a perfect illustration, which I send even to family, to show how the Deep Web works. As in the XXI century people love to see everything visualized, this exact illustration explains the process of the Hidden Internet in an easy way. It explains the way how people access it and answers the question if either it is legal or not.

18 Parmy Olson. (2013). The man behind Silk Road – the internet's biggest market for illegal drugs. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/silk-road- internet-market-illegal-drugs-ross-ulbricht. Last accessed 16th March 2014. During my research I understood that one of the most interesting topic for me was about the Silk Road. This article is really detailed story about the owner of the biggest black market on the Web. It was very helpful to read not only about his arresting day, but as well as his childhood and life before the Deep Web.

Carole Cadwalladr. (2013). How I bought drugs from 'dark net' – it's just like Amazon run by cartels. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/06/dark-net-drugs. Last accessed 16th March 2014. The article written by a journalist, who did an amazing research while searching on the Deep Web. She bought some drugs to check if the system of the Silk Road is working and got it the next day after the payment was made. An interesting article to read through the eyes of the woman, who experienced the way using the eBay of illegal drugs.

Michael K. Bergman. (2001). White Paper: The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value. Available: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104. Last accessed 16th March 2014. The whole file of this information contains a lot of information. However it was written at 2001. I found out that information is already old and some facts are different now. But it contained some really nice statistics and illustrations about the usage of the Hidden Internet.

FBI. (2012). Bitcoin Virtual Currency. Available: http://cryptome.org/2012/05/fbi-bitcoin.pdf. Last accessed 16th March 2014.

A very descriptive analysis about the bitcoins made by FBI. It explains the way how it works and how did this currency started. It answered the question, which I had as well, about how anonymous it is.

19 Ken Yeung. (2013). What is Tor and why does it matter?. Available: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/08/what-is-tor-and-why- does-it-matter/#!z8YuM. Last accessed 16th March 2014. This is the article, which shows everyone how to start using the Tor browser and explains what is it. Even more, it contains some really helpful illustrations.

Satoshi Nakamoto. (2009). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Available: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf. Last accessed 16th March 2014.

This was one of the most interesting documents that I found out about the bitcoins as it was written by a person or a group of people, which are still anonymous and who created the new currency – bitcoins. There was a very huge analysis about how does it work from the moment you buy bitcoins. Very helpful illustrations were included.

Deep Web (all the websites were reached through the Tor Browser):

The Hidden Wiki (http://wikitjerrta4qgz4.onion/) A website, where you usually start before surfing on the Deep Web. It is not that hard to find this link on the Surface Web. Once you have it and type it to your Tor browser, it gives you lots of links for the Deep Web, which you can access through the Tor browser. I have visited all of the links through here, which were working.

OnionDir - Deep Web Link Directory (http://dirnxxdraygbifgc.onion/)

The principle is the same as on the Hidden Wiki. It has more different liks, though. http://pja3dhxxpn4cba63.onion/TSSA/

UK guns and Ammo store (http://tuu66yxvrnn3of7l.onion/)

The people working for it are selling lots of different guns from the price starting 500 GBP, once you login on the website.

The Secret Story Archive (http://pja3dhxxpn4cba63.onion/TSSA/)

Erotic fiction stories written by zoophiles. Stories about tigers, lions, Aladdin, Harry Potter, Digimon and much more.

20 Hitman Network (http://ybp4oezfhk24hxmb.onion/) A website of 3 contract killers, working in the US, Canada and EU. They will kill a target in the USA or Canada for 10000 USD, in European Union for 12000 USD. There is only one rule on their website: no children under 16 and no top 10 politicians.

Silk Road (http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/)

The original website of the biggest black market on the Internet, which is seized now by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Silk Road 2 (http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/) The same market, but owned by anonymous. It asks you to login if you want to start. The main products are drugs, but selling much more stuff. Accepting only bitcoins.

USA Citizenship (http://xfnwyig7olypdq5r.onion/)

The website offering bulletproof USA passports + SSN + Drivers License and Birth Certificate and other papers making a person an official citizen of the USA for 10000 USD.

US fake IDs (http://en35tuzqmn4lofbk.onion/) The website, making fake drivers licenses in the US for 200 USD.

Onion Identity Services (http://abbujjh5vqtq77wg.onion/)

This website offers you to buy a passport, ID card or driving licenses. You can choose from Lithuanian, Dutch, Danish, British, French or other identity. They have even more choices. Depends what a person decided to pick.