Dark Web’s Got a Bad Reputation

Dark  Web’s  Got  a  Bad Rep:  7  in  10  People  Want  It  Shut  Down,  Study  Shows

Speculation—no matter how baseless—that online black markets for weapons helped make the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels possible hasn’t helped the reputation of the dark web’s anonymous corner of the internet. But one new study shows that even before that dubious link between online anonymity and terror attacks, global opinion on the dark web was already overwhelmingly negative.

On Tuesday, the Canadian think tank the Center for International Governance Innovation released the results of a survey of more than 24,000 individuals in 24 countries, asking their opinion of the dark web—the collection of anonymous web sites that can only be accessed via tools like the anonymity software Tor.

In total, 71 percent of the respondents—and 72 percent of Americans in particular—said they believed the “dark net” should be shut down. “The basic perception is that it’s not a good thing,” says Eric Jardine, a CIGI fellow who specializes in research on the dark web and Tor. “For your average Joe or Jane, the dark web is not perceived as a very useful technology and, in fact, it’s seen as harmful.”

Rather than depend entirely on survey respondents’ prior knowledge of what the dark web or darknet might be, CIGI’s researchers offered a three-sentence description of it as an anonymous part of the web accessible through only “special web browsers,” mentioning that “journalists, human rights activists, dissidents and whistleblowers can use these services to rally against repression, exercise their fundamental rights to free expression and shed light upon corruption,” while “hackers, illegal marketplaces (eg. selling weapons and narcotics), and child abuse sites can also use these services to hide from law enforcement.” 

With that prompting in mind, a majority of respondents in all of the two dozen countries surveyed said that the darknet should be shut down. In the most negative countries, like Mexico, India and Indonesia, at least four out of five respondents were opposed to the dark web’s existence, while in even the most darknet-friendly countries, such as Sweden and Hong Kong, 61 percent of respondents came out against it.

CIGI’s Jardine argues that recent media coverage focusing on law enforcement takedowns of child porn sites and bitcoin drug markets like the Silk Road haven’t improved public perception of the dark web. But he also points out that an immediate aversion to crimes like child abuse overrides mentions of how the dark web’s anonymity also has human rights applications. “There’s a knee-jerk reaction. You hear things about crime and its being used for that purpose, and you say, ‘let’s get rid of it,'” Jardine says.

Responding to CIGI’s survey, Tor Project spokesperson Kate Krauss defended Tor’s value for privacy and free speech in a statement to WIRED. “Tor is part of the infrastructure of the Internet and provides people in horribly repressive countries with the ability to read and write freely. Tor ensures human rights,” Krauss wrote. 

“If you poll people about whether or not they support the right to free expression—some will say no. That doesn’t mean that free expression isn’t precious. Tor allows free expression.”

In fact, Jardine points out that countries with a stronger tradition of protest do show more support for the dark web. In Hong Kong, for instance, only 62 percent respondents believed the dark web should be shut down, while in mainland China, those numbers reached 79 percent. And opinion of the dark web was lowest in countries with recent histories of terrorist- or drug- related violence, like Indonesia, India and Mexico.

Belgium wasn’t included in the CIGI survey, which was carried out before the recent Brussels and Paris attacks. But 76 percent of French respondents said they wanted to see the dark web shut down. And those numbers are likely higher after last week when the French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve mentioned the darknet in remarks following the deadly bombing of the Brussels airport.

Cazeneuve argued last Wednesday that “criminal uses…can be made of ​​darknet types of informal networks, or, in general, the part of the Internet that is not indexed by traditional search engines and which circulates a large mass of information issued by criminal organizations, including jihadists.”

The Germany newspaper Bild in November also reported that ISIS’ Paris attackers used weapons purchased from a dark web black market. But that account was later discredited as a misreading of a German customs agency analysis, according to other German media.

Although the dark web does have troubling applications, the anonymous whistleblowing tools and privacy protections it offers have been adopted by organizations as mainstream as the New Yorker, the Guardian, and Facebook. Somewhat paradoxically, CIGI’s survey found that among the same respondents who tended to oppose the dark web’s existence, only 38 percent trusted that they weren’t being monitored online, and only 46 percent believed that information they accessed wasn’t being censored—two of the exact problems the dark web’s tools are meant to counteract.

“It’s a weird scenario: people don’t trust that governments aren’t looking into their activities online, and yet the technologies that allow you to get around these concerns…they’re advocating to get shut down,” Jardine says. “There’s a contradiction here.”

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/study-finds-7-10-people-want-dark-web-shut/