I’ve been reading a bit about the Dark Web lately.  Particularly in a great (and long) book called Future Crimes.

The Dark Web is a large section of the web that can only be accessed by the TOR browser which anonymizes all your internet activity.  While it’s initial purpose was to help people protect their information online, it’s mostly become an invisibility cloak for assholes.

TOR, by the way, stands for The Onion Router.  Like onions have layers like the internet has layers like ogres have layers.

It’s essentially hiding from Google.  Which I probably shouldn’t type too loud because they’re watching me right now.

You might have heard about the whole Silk Road controversy where they were selling drugs and firearms on their site.  That’s just one.  There are actually zillions of sites like it.  I haven’t fact-checked “zillions”, but there are a lot.

On the Dark Web you can buy whatever your darkest heart desires.  It makes YouPorn look like Disneyland.  If Disneyland had more boobs, I guess. I mean more than on missing Splash Mountain pictures.

Drugs?  Loads of them.  70% of Dark Web sales are marijuana, meth, and coke.  And they buy them right from home and have them delivered.  Because that’s what junkies need.  Less exercise.

You’d think the coke guys at least would have the energy to get out of the house a bit.

Weapons?  Oh yeah.  And probably without a background check.  I’m guessing that all the “responsible American gun owners” worried about not being able to get guns just haven’t discovered this part yet.

There have even been rumors of crowdfunded assassinations purchased on these sites.   Forget the days of a just passing a basket around the office to get rid of the boss!  Man… “9 To 5” would have been a way different movie.

The interesting thing about TOR and the Dark Web is that they can be used for both good and bad.  Like protecting civilians from mass surveillance or downloading illegal porn.  And it can be used for bad things too.

The best part is that many of the markets run on a reputation system with reviews like Ebay.  “5 stars.  He killed my ex nice and clean.  Would definitely recommend to friends.”

Seriously though… This is where weapons, drugs, human trafficking, child porn, and plenty of other stuff is going on.  All on anonymous untraceable servers scattered around the world.

If we want to fix a lot of the world’s problems, that’s where we need to start. And tell Google to stop following me.