The darknet is something I've raged against in the past -- not only because it harbours child pornographers, illegal drug dealers, credit-card thieves, etc. but because it's the playground of those pompous, arrogant unaccountable anarchist hackers who think none of those crimes matter as long as information gets to be free -- and they get to be licentious.
The darknet is usually associated with Tor -- but it's a lot more than Tor, as it has other competitors to Tor with chat anonymizer services like Crypto Cat.
Lately, Tor took a huge fall, with the FBI taking down a reported half of their nodes with a huge child-pornography raid.
The darknet has a surprising number of boosters among the next layer beyond the criminals and loons in the crypto kiddie IRC chat room -- it has people like Rebecca MacKinnon and Clay Shirky and of course Dave Winer singing its praises and demanding that it be brought into existence. They all see it as not only a haven for revolutionaries they golf-clap or cheer openly at home and abroad, they see it as the wave of the future -- that Wired State I warn against which they love because they see themselves as the elite who will run it.
If the FBI "cleanses" Tor by taking out some of the CP sites, they will privately be relieved, but they don't see Tor as a problem or the entire darknet concept as a problem.
Adrian Chen is one of those journalists who has to cheerlead Anonymous (even if he criticizes them a little and gets hacked by them, too) and WikiLeaks and hackers galore because otherwise, he couldn't get enough tidbits to report on them. I hate that. I see that every single journalist who reports on Anonymous is infected with the immorality of cheerleading for them in some way (*waves to Andy Greenberg*) because they need proximity to get stuff and that trumps their better ethics. That's why I think blogging, even if it is condemnatory and even hortatory, has to be an integral part of covering these monsters because otherwise, there's no moral compass.
Chen has a an article posted today, 'The Attack on the Dark Net Took Down a Lot More Than Child Porn" which is sure to fuel those awful Electronic Frontier Foundation and even Human Rights Watch think pieces morning the Chilling Effect blah blah.
His piece has graphic that makes it look like he, as a good journalist, is now going to shine the light of investigative scrutiny on the darknets -- but then he goes and whines that a lot of good...Polish alternative literary sites...or something...are taken down along with the CP.
All the comments saying things like "I don't care if they take down some of the other Tor sites to get rid of CP, so be it" -- are shaded grey, "in moderation".
Here's mine:
Oh, come now, the darknet isn't the ne plus ultra. There's lots more than child pornography on it — there's also hackers hawking stolen credit cards, the crashing Bitcoin empire, illegal drugs — and of course, that style of revolutionary hacker anarchy that is really antithetical to our human rights.
The darknet is unaccountable and non-transparent, even as it forces other people to be transparent — through coercive hacking and anarchist collectives like WikiLeaks. I don't see why liberals or even "progressives" should be cheering a "privacy for me, not for thee" fortress. You know, even Jemima Khan of the New Statesman, a former Assange supporter, has "gotten it" about Assange and WikiLeaks. Why does it take American hipsters so long?
Adrian you should be researching the hackers' convergence in Hawaii when Snowden was there.
And not weeping with such sillyness for the darknet. Never trust a burning man*. Since when does destructiveness get to masquerade as innovation?
* * *
Dave Winer said at that PDF forum three years ago that "journalism was no longer possible" (!) because Amazon had refused to host WikiLeaks on its servers -- a decision I applaud, of course, and which shows the maturity of the Internet business emerging out of the Wild West phase, not some sell-out to the Man as this former Firesign Theater regular imagines (and I was a big fan of Firesign Theater, it's sad...)
He must be furious at how Bezos has now bought the Washington Post, ostensibly to keep making journalism possible, I suppose...although I think it's more about just buying a lobbying organ for Silicon Valley -- er, Seattle/Portlandia (Wyden is never enough).
*Did c3 trademark this expression?
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