We spend an average of 6 ½ hours every day on the World Wide Web, a portion of the Internet consisting of pages and documents connected by hyperlinks.  Over five billion people – two-thirds of the world’s population – works remotely, scrolls through information, and streams content using popular search engines and browsers to index and view web pages.  The Web we know is an enormous creature.  Still, it represents less than 10% of the total Internet – the tip of the iceberg.

The remainder of the Internet, the part below the surface which requires a special “Tor” browser, is often referred to as the “Dark Web.”  While the Dark Web is perfectly legal, it’s sketchy reputation comes from people like Ross Ulbricht and his darknet market website Silk Road.  For two years, Silk Road facilitated the sale of narcotics as well as other illegal products and services.  The enterprise was a huge success, earning Ross free room and board for life at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson.

The dark web itself predates Ross.  Around the turn of the millennium, Ian Clarke was wrapping up his student thesis project at the University of Edinburgh.  Ian’s goal was to create an innovative way of communicating and sharing files anonymously on the Internet. He released his “Freenet” in 2000, forming the basis of the Tor project which began 2 years later and launched its first browser in 2008.  Users could now peruse the Dark Web anonymously, their information routed through thousands of relay points that make browsing virtually impossible to trace.  The U.S. Department of Defense was an early adopter. <continue reading>