CAJ_How hacktivists benefit from the Deep Web

I have to acknowledge that I have never even heard of the term Deep Web myself until I read an article about it in the newspaper Die Presse. Apparently the article’s authors were also quite clueless about it because they hired an IT expert who navigated them through this rather dangerous version of the WWW. In my understanding, it is the utterly uncensored version of the Internet, the one where not only adult content, but also illegal products of all sorts are available – all of it in the greatest excess possible.

More exactly, it is a hidden part of the Web, one that search engines cannot find and which can be accessed by using the software TOR (The Onion Router) that I previously mentioned. TOR can be purchased free of charge and enables its users to surf the Internet in a totally anonymous way. Once you’ve installed it, all you have to do is to open a special domain mainly comprised of numbers and you can start to browse. However, there's no search engine that helps you navigating through the vastness of the Web (allegedly, the Deep Web is 550 times bigger than its “visible” counterpart, the WWW). You have to manage that all by yourself.

Of course, this anonymity as well as the lack of censorship also appeal to criminals. The Deep Web is a prominent place of transshipment where all kinds of drugs, illegal arms and fake passports are traded. The common currency is Bitcoin. The Deep Web is also a place that is of great use to hacktivists, since they are able to flee the NSA as well as censorship. When they want to publish leaked information, they can do so on various sites and hope that somehow, this information will find its way to the surface. This meeting place for hacktivists eventually resulted in the creation of various hacktivism groups such as “Movement of Torism”. This group considers themselves to be a defender of anonymity as well as a bulwark against surveillance.

This was also about the only positive aspect I could find regarding this subject, because in my opinion, the Deep Web is mostly a place where crime is in full bloom and where sinister stuff is available.