Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulett and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor and how stuff works dot com. Sitting
Speaker 1: in fresh for me as always a senior writer. Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland Hi high above the North Pole. On the first
Speaker 1: day of nineteen sixty nine, two professors of English literature
Speaker 1: approached each other at a combined velocity of one thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred miles per hour. Hmmm did they collide? You'll
Speaker 1: have to read the book to find out. Done. Done.
Speaker 1: So we are today talking about an interesting subject. Definitely
Speaker 1: something that is beyond the eyes of mirror mortals, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, you will put the right software on your
Speaker 1: computer or you know what you're doing. Yeah, more or less, Okay,
Speaker 1: beyond the eyes of people like me, because I'm such
Speaker 1: a I'm such a service level kind of guy. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the dark web or the dark Internet, or
Speaker 1: the deep web, or the undernet or the deep net,
Speaker 1: or the invisible web or the hidden web. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of different names for this. Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: are two main definitions we need to get out of
Speaker 1: the way. Yes, because there are people think of different
Speaker 1: things when these terms come up, and both both things
Speaker 1: are real and need to be addressed. So here's the
Speaker 1: less interesting one, at least in my opinion. There are
Speaker 1: machines that either were once connected to the Internet or
Speaker 1: were once connected to a network that subsequently was connected
Speaker 1: to the Internet, that are no longer reachable on the Internet. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's say, like their entire military networks that were
Speaker 1: part of arpanet back when arponette was a thing, and Arpanet,
Speaker 1: if you guys don't know, was a predecessor to the Internet.
Speaker 1: It was where a lot of the protocols that were
Speaker 1: developed for the Internet first were used. If only somebody
Speaker 1: wrote an article about that for how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and funny, you should mention that I did write an
Speaker 1: article about that how arpa Networks. But yeah, urpennet actually
Speaker 1: a very interesting story. Yeah, it's and that is the
Speaker 1: story of creating a network that can let different machines
Speaker 1: uh communicate with one another. You know, and before networks
Speaker 1: were mostly composed of machines that were essentially identical to
Speaker 1: each other and they were all generally within the same space,
Speaker 1: like same building. But Arpanet was an attempt to create
Speaker 1: a network that would allow different machines running on different
Speaker 1: operating systems and different locations communicate with one another. And
Speaker 1: it grew substantially over the years that it existed, and
Speaker 1: it started to incorporate other types of networks, including military
Speaker 1: networks and research organizations. Well, some of those military networks
Speaker 1: did not keep pace with the changes that were aid
Speaker 1: when the Internet began to emerge. Now, our bonnette and
Speaker 1: the Internet are not the same thing, not technically. The
Speaker 1: Internet is a is a network of networks, of which
Speaker 1: our ponnet was sort of kind of one, But our
Speaker 1: ponett's essentially been offline. That's another example. Is that stuff
Speaker 1: that was on our ponnet that's no longer accessible by
Speaker 1: the Internet. Um, sometimes these machines themselves have failed and
Speaker 1: they are no longer reachable, so that information is the
Speaker 1: at least the original source of the information is lost.
Speaker 1: You might be able to find bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: information on other sites because people have have cited it
Speaker 1: or stolen it or whatever, but the actual original source
Speaker 1: of that information is gone. You know what occurs to me,
Speaker 1: what's that that we should point out to that that
Speaker 1: that information may not have ever been on the web.
Speaker 1: Um because as as a lot of our listeners know,
Speaker 1: but maybe not all of them, Uh, the the Worldwide
Speaker 1: Web is a part of the Internet. It is not
Speaker 1: the entire ternet. There's information that is available on a
Speaker 1: computer network that can be accessed through different means, and
Speaker 1: so calling it the deep web in that case, in
Speaker 1: the in the definition that you were just talking about,
Speaker 1: the sense that that you were just talking about may
Speaker 1: not necessarily be completely accurate because it might be found
Speaker 1: in a different form. Um. Not that I'm saying that
Speaker 1: you're wrong, more of a clarification so that that people
Speaker 1: understand it does a great clarification, because, yeah, the Internet
Speaker 1: comprises so many different ways of sharing information email for example,
Speaker 1: one way, file transfer protocol, another way using net us
Speaker 1: net HTTP being the web based way of yea of
Speaker 1: sharing information. And yeah, when we talk about deep webs,
Speaker 1: some of this information is not necessarily the kind that
Speaker 1: you would access with a normal web browser, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's a good point. You might have to have
Speaker 1: some sort of emulator, or you may have to have
Speaker 1: a totally different kind of program in order to access
Speaker 1: that information, and that sort of leads into the second sense.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, yes, So, so that first sense is
Speaker 1: stuff that is no longer accessible, either due to machine
Speaker 1: failures or the fact that just did not keep pace
Speaker 1: with the protocols, or it was disconnected for a reason there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just though it is now its own intranet, but is
Speaker 1: no longer connected to the Internet at any rate. That's
Speaker 1: stuff that maybe at one time was connected to the Internet,
Speaker 1: but now no longer is, and therefore you cannot get
Speaker 1: to it. That's why we call it dark. That's that
Speaker 1: one definition. Now here's the more super cool, awesome, spy
Speaker 1: scary definition. Well, and in its purest sense, I would
Speaker 1: say it's not spy or scary at all. Um. You
Speaker 1: think about the depth and breadth of the Internet as
Speaker 1: you see it on a search engine. You know, you
Speaker 1: put in a search term, you get three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: hits plus for for a topic, and you go, wow,
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of information out there. Well, that's
Speaker 1: only the information that the web browser that the search
Speaker 1: engine knows to go to find. We call that the
Speaker 1: surface web. Yeah, yeah, and it's overused as as a metaphor.
Speaker 1: But the whole Iceberg thing really applies here. It is
Speaker 1: really a very very small section of what's available on
Speaker 1: the internet as a whole. Part of it's because that
Speaker 1: that's what's available on the web, and there are other protocols.
Speaker 1: It's not that Google, for example, is not searching. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily collecting all the information that's on on
Speaker 1: US net sites and things like that, so you may
Speaker 1: or may not find the information that's out there. Uh
Speaker 1: some people don't want their site indexed, and they can
Speaker 1: choose not to just by putting in a little bit
Speaker 1: of code at the top of their their their page.
Speaker 1: It will It's essentially an instruction saying, hey, web crawlers,
Speaker 1: skip the site. Yes, do not index this site that
Speaker 1: I do not want an index and the web crawlers won't,
Speaker 1: they'll ignore it, they'll move on. And so then you
Speaker 1: have a website that is not indexed by any search
Speaker 1: engine and the only way to get there or as
Speaker 1: if there is another incoming link from somewhere else. Uh So,
Speaker 1: so someone's build a website and they've gone outgoing link
Speaker 1: to this other website that doesn't have any that's not
Speaker 1: indexed by websites or web search engines rather or you
Speaker 1: physically give out the U r L two people. Well,
Speaker 1: and then then there's stuff that's dynamically generated, such as
Speaker 1: the search engines results page such as, um, let's say
Speaker 1: you go to your bank and you want to see, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the your balance on your account. You log
Speaker 1: in and you you know, check the balance on your account. Well,
Speaker 1: that page that you generate by logging in checking at
Speaker 1: you know, to fourteen pm and twenty six seconds, that
Speaker 1: page is not indexed by anything. So that is a
Speaker 1: dark web, if you will. That's a dark web page
Speaker 1: that you alone are accessing and no one else really
Speaker 1: has access. So so dark web includes all these databases
Speaker 1: that have have terabytes and terabytes and terabytes of data
Speaker 1: that again will only appear in very specific sets of
Speaker 1: circumstances and otherwise doesn't. So therefore they are not indexed.
Speaker 1: Yauto bites even mostly just because I wanted to say,
Speaker 1: y auto bites, Yes, there is such a thing. I'd
Speaker 1: like to grab some yauta bytes after this podcast. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean, and and it's purest sense, the
Speaker 1: dark web, the invisible web, the invisible net. These are
Speaker 1: things that that just aren't. They're hard to find. They're
Speaker 1: not something that you're going to find simply by uh,
Speaker 1: you know, surfing around or typing in a couple of
Speaker 1: terms in the search engine. It's not gonna come up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there there's a whole lot out there. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I I use part of my website as
Speaker 1: a sandbox just to test different technologies and play around
Speaker 1: with it so I can learn more about it. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, I put security access on it because I did.
Speaker 1: I'm just fooling around, you know, I'm gonna type bladdy
Speaker 1: bladdy bladdy blah. Who look at that. I could change
Speaker 1: the fonts, I could, you know, And I want to
Speaker 1: see what this under construction gift looks like on my site. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, this looping middi is so much more awesome
Speaker 1: than that looping middi. Wow, this browser totally still supports
Speaker 1: that marquee tag. This is where Jonathan is clear that
Speaker 1: Jonathan has not built a website since anyhow. Yes, that
Speaker 1: is part of that all as part of the dark Web,
Speaker 1: and and therefore there is nothing particularly sneaky. You have
Speaker 1: very funny. Look. I was just I was just thinking
Speaker 1: back to my oldest stinking back to actual websites I've
Speaker 1: built back in. That's the problem. Alright, sorry so but
Speaker 1: but um, you know, we did have somebody who was
Speaker 1: asking about this, and we have not revealed your identity
Speaker 1: dark web person. You're is safe with us deep web
Speaker 1: anyway or her. Let's not narrow it down too much
Speaker 1: him or her. So the thing is there is and
Speaker 1: you think about it. Okay, I get it, but that's
Speaker 1: not really all that interesting. It's not necessarily but people
Speaker 1: are using the the inability to find this stuff, uh
Speaker 1: to their advantage. They might be the hiding secret information
Speaker 1: or you know, information that might get them in trouble
Speaker 1: with the law, or they just don't like the idea
Speaker 1: of companies, websites, governments being able to track all their movements. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of people this century, right Have they
Speaker 1: talked to Mark Zuckerberg? Have they have privacy is a
Speaker 1: thing of the path? They read George? Orwell, uh, there
Speaker 1: it was, and look how far we've come the uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The one of the concerns about using the Internet for
Speaker 1: a lot of people is that a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff you do is trackable. There are records of what
Speaker 1: you do. I mean, this has been in the news
Speaker 1: recently because Google has changed this privacy policy where it's
Speaker 1: going to be sharing the information that gathers across multiple
Speaker 1: Google products in order to shape results for you personally,
Speaker 1: which means that it's actually actively using your history of
Speaker 1: navigating the web. Uh, and that freaks a lot of
Speaker 1: people out. Yeah. Yeah, well, speaking of people want to
Speaker 1: know the as of the day, we're recording this that
Speaker 1: happened yesterday, March one, and uh, you know, people have
Speaker 1: been making a big deal out of it ever since
Speaker 1: Google had announced it, and plus plus they put it
Speaker 1: on all those sites. There's a little banner at the
Speaker 1: top seeing, uh, this stuff matters, which I thought was
Speaker 1: kind of funny. And they actually make it easy for
Speaker 1: you to look at what the history of your web
Speaker 1: searching is, so that way you can choose to and
Speaker 1: you can get rid of it. Yeah, you can choose
Speaker 1: to delete it if you want, you can keep it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the purpose of that, from Google's perspective is
Speaker 1: to give you the best service possible. But there are
Speaker 1: people who have brought up the concerns and I think
Speaker 1: they're completely legitimate concerns that the fact that you have
Speaker 1: this history that's personalized and visualized to a very specific user.
Speaker 1: That's troublesome because what happens if another entity comes in
Speaker 1: that isn't concerned about giving you a great experience, but
Speaker 1: it's more concerned about finding out exactly what you've been
Speaker 1: up to for you know, a nefarious purpose. And uh,
Speaker 1: and that might be that you could be a perfectly
Speaker 1: innocent person and still have problems arise because there there's
Speaker 1: this information about your habits when you're out there serving
Speaker 1: the web or using the Internet in some way. And
Speaker 1: so there are people who have used this, this part
Speaker 1: of the web, this kind of idea of the uh.
Speaker 1: This this anonymous, untrackable sort of web presence to be
Speaker 1: able to navigate through without leaving a trail. And in
Speaker 1: some cases it is to do something that is not
Speaker 1: necessarily ethically uh in the green right. I mean it's
Speaker 1: some stuff. Some of the stuff is really illegal, unethical,
Speaker 1: nasty stuff. Yeah, well it's it's like everything else. You've
Speaker 1: got the technology to do this. It can be used
Speaker 1: for good. Pause, Yeah, if we're for good or bad.
Speaker 1: Like for example, Google basically says when you sign up, hey, look, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: just between you and us we're gonna collect this information,
Speaker 1: and as a result of us collecting this information, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to tailor this for you. We're not
Speaker 1: gonna look at your records. We don't care where you go.
Speaker 1: This is all gonna be stored on a computer in
Speaker 1: between you and us. You'll get a really great experience.
Speaker 1: And Jonathan may say, well, okay, I mean, hey, just
Speaker 1: between me and you guys, I think we're good. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't mind that you're you're collecting this
Speaker 1: stuff because I want a positive experience. I want to
Speaker 1: visit a site in my password, just to go in there,
Speaker 1: and I'm blam, I'm right there. The thing is, what
Speaker 1: if somebody breaks into the server, or what if they're there,
Speaker 1: there's an unethical employee or or somebody who gets ticked
Speaker 1: off at the company and says, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to steal some customers information and make this company's
Speaker 1: life miserable by giving him bad pr I mean, it
Speaker 1: could be used for something like that, although the company
Speaker 1: may not necessarily be trying to do that. On the
Speaker 1: flip side of that, uh, people might be saying, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm just uncomfortable with you having that information,
Speaker 1: and the other people might be saying, I'm uncomfortable for
Speaker 1: you having this information because I don't want to get
Speaker 1: thrown in jail. So you know, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: positive and a negative for all these things. Right, So
Speaker 1: you've got you know, you've got people who are using
Speaker 1: it to do stuff like pirate material. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you created a database online and you did not have
Speaker 1: any pointers to this site, so no web search engines
Speaker 1: are going to be pulling up this site, and you
Speaker 1: distribute the information some other way to the people that
Speaker 1: you want to visit your site, then theoretically you could
Speaker 1: host stuff and the the likelihood that you would get
Speaker 1: caught would be lower. Right, So there are people who
Speaker 1: do this where you know, you hear about like the
Speaker 1: big peer to peer network X and everything, because those
Speaker 1: are the ones that get a lot of focus and
Speaker 1: they are searchable. But then there are other ones that
Speaker 1: are not searchable, and they there are plenty of them
Speaker 1: that exist out there. It's still just as illegal to
Speaker 1: use them, but they are they are evading detection more effectively.
Speaker 1: I think. You know, the organizations that are concerned about
Speaker 1: intellectual property have to make sure that they get the
Speaker 1: services of people who are aware of the dark web
Speaker 1: in order to be able to police that kind of stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But but there it's also used for things like a
Speaker 1: journalist who might be overseas in a country that is
Speaker 1: not so concerned about offering the press free speech as
Speaker 1: other countries, and that journalists may want to be able
Speaker 1: to publish reports that are unfavorable to a regime in
Speaker 1: that country, and using something like dark web in order
Speaker 1: to get that information out could protect the journalists or
Speaker 1: the journalist sources. So let's say like the journalist is
Speaker 1: overseas talking to a government official UH and trying to
Speaker 1: communicate with this government official who does not approve of
Speaker 1: the regime's policies. Well, that official could very potentially be
Speaker 1: at in serious danger for sharing the information. Using some
Speaker 1: sort of untrackable anonymous UH software or doing this over
Speaker 1: the web in a way that's not not searchable or
Speaker 1: trackable would be very important in that case. And so
Speaker 1: there are tools that are out there for people to use.
Speaker 1: And again, just like Chris said, they're the tools are
Speaker 1: are neutral. The tools are tools. Yeah, they're just tools.
Speaker 1: But there are tools out there like me so like
Speaker 1: free net that that's an example. Now we've talked about
Speaker 1: free get before. UM it was some time ago, I
Speaker 1: think about a year ago as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: because we were talking about the UH using the internet
Speaker 1: to communicate UM protests and other information in countries where
Speaker 1: UH the government is aggressive about finding and punishing people
Speaker 1: for UM speaking their mind in that country. UM. Of course,
Speaker 1: we've over the last couple of years, we've had a
Speaker 1: lot of that in many countries around the world, where
Speaker 1: people are UM getting the word out about stuff that's
Speaker 1: going on, people who are being jailed for being dissidents. UM.
Speaker 1: People are trying to find ways to communicate with one another,
Speaker 1: to establish protests. UM. The government is is watching the
Speaker 1: law the the law enforcement authorities in that area are
Speaker 1: are watching to see if they can crack down on
Speaker 1: these protests to keep it from becoming worldwide, to keep
Speaker 1: it from gathering more support. UM. So they these folks
Speaker 1: are trying to find ways to share information without bringing
Speaker 1: down the authorities on them, and software like free net
Speaker 1: is is one way that they can do that. And
Speaker 1: in fact, some people were setting up UH servers over
Speaker 1: the past couple of years where people could speak their
Speaker 1: mind and it wouldn't disclose their location, um, which and
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were supporters of democracy for
Speaker 1: these these uh governments that were not necessarily so democratic. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they were saying, oh, well, this is a
Speaker 1: good thing. We're we're giving people an opportunity to speak
Speaker 1: their mind, that we're giving them freedom of speech where
Speaker 1: they had done before. Yeah. Another example is uh the
Speaker 1: Onion router or tour. I've used that myself on my
Speaker 1: own computer. As a matter of fact, you may you
Speaker 1: may have heard of tour and tour is a part
Speaker 1: of a project called Anonymity Online, and it's all about
Speaker 1: being able to to access the Internet anonymously where there's
Speaker 1: not going to be any tracking. Um. You have to
Speaker 1: pair this with some other software sometimes depending on what
Speaker 1: it is you're trying to do, but in general, what
Speaker 1: it's trying what what it's its purposes is so that
Speaker 1: you can go through and find out what you need
Speaker 1: to find without leaving a trace of what you're doing,
Speaker 1: which can be really important depending on what is like
Speaker 1: maybe you're a whistleblower, Maybe you're in a huge company
Speaker 1: and you've seen something that's truly unethical and you feel
Speaker 1: it is your responsibility since you know about it to
Speaker 1: reveal this, but you also know that if you do
Speaker 1: this you could have some serious problems in your personal
Speaker 1: life further down the line. Well, that's sort of the
Speaker 1: kind of tool you might want to look into if
Speaker 1: you were to do such a thing. Right. So, the
Speaker 1: way Tour does it is kind of interesting. They do
Speaker 1: it through a distributed network, So distributed networks, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about it again, it's kind of similar to
Speaker 1: peer to peer networks. Well in in in a way
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot of Uh, it has some similarity
Speaker 1: to the people who are conducting hacker attacks because as
Speaker 1: we again, another thing that we've talked about on on
Speaker 1: occasion is how, um it can be difficult to trace
Speaker 1: exactly where an attack comes from, or it can be
Speaker 1: possible to spoof another address, say, you know, make it
Speaker 1: appear as though an attack is coming from a country
Speaker 1: to go you know, hey, they're the ones doing it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: China's attacking us. And then if you were to really
Speaker 1: look at you might realize that, uh, the attackers came
Speaker 1: from a totally different country, but they had spoofed it,
Speaker 1: or they had created a zombie army where they had
Speaker 1: infected computers within China, So the attacks were coming from China,
Speaker 1: It's just they were being masterminded from computers that were
Speaker 1: in a totally different country. Yeah's the tricky thing about
Speaker 1: computers is that, uh, it's it's entirely possible for you
Speaker 1: to be able to cover your tracks or to off
Speaker 1: you skate where you are working from and make it
Speaker 1: appear that someone else, some patsy, is really the one
Speaker 1: in charge of the actual attack. Well, tour works works
Speaker 1: in a similar fashion to that, basically uses this array
Speaker 1: of servers to mask your location. Right. So, so the
Speaker 1: way the way it works normally with Internet traffic is
Speaker 1: that if I'm sending, if I'm seeing a request to
Speaker 1: a server for me to get let's just say a
Speaker 1: web page back, then that request is going to go
Speaker 1: out and pack it across the Internet with a header
Speaker 1: and a footer that gives the information about where it's going.
Speaker 1: And then once it gets to where it is, it's
Speaker 1: the request gets received, the server response sends it back
Speaker 1: my way, not necessarily in the same pathway that my
Speaker 1: request went, uh, and then it gets to my machine.
Speaker 1: My machine puts it all together, and then I can
Speaker 1: look at the web page the Tour Each jump from
Speaker 1: one UH server to one machine to another is is unique,
Speaker 1: and it's it's unique to that like the the information
Speaker 1: is unique to that jump. So that UH, when I
Speaker 1: send my request out, it goes to a server on
Speaker 1: the Tour network. Server on the Tour network doesn't know
Speaker 1: that it needs to go to the specific destination. It
Speaker 1: just knows that it has to send this request to
Speaker 1: a second server it's that's in the Tour network. So
Speaker 1: that request goes to that server within the Tour network.
Speaker 1: Now that that server doesn't know where the request originated from.
Speaker 1: It knows that it got it from server number one,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't know who sent the request to server
Speaker 1: number one, Right, So server number two is like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: server number one sent this to me, I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: send it to server number three, goes to server number three.
Speaker 1: Server number three doesn't know about server number one. It
Speaker 1: just knows that a request came from server number two.
Speaker 1: It definitely doesn't know about you who sent the request
Speaker 1: in the first place. And it does this all the
Speaker 1: way across the network until it gets to where it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be, and then it comes back in that
Speaker 1: same pathway and there's no way for any individual machine
Speaker 1: to know what the origin point or destination point was
Speaker 1: except for the ones that were immediately adjacent to those points.
Speaker 1: So it protects your identity because you can't track where
Speaker 1: this this traffic is going. There's no way to figure
Speaker 1: it out because uh, these machines are It's if you
Speaker 1: were the only one using this network, sure, then I'd
Speaker 1: be able to tell. But with all the information passing across,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to say who sent what when and where
Speaker 1: this information was going and what was inside it. Now
Speaker 1: the tour requires that you uh install some software on
Speaker 1: your computer, which basically you know, uses your browser. You
Speaker 1: can turn it on and off, um, which is nice
Speaker 1: in a way. I did test it just to play
Speaker 1: around with a couple of years ago, UM, because I
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of interesting and and uh, you
Speaker 1: know how it how it masks your identity. So I
Speaker 1: found I found out two things. One uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I tried it, and then I went to see where
Speaker 1: it said I was coming from, you know, I did, Uh,
Speaker 1: I traced the route and it said I was in Sweden,
Speaker 1: which is really great, except it made me hungry for
Speaker 1: Lincoln berries. And then the next thing I was thinking meatballs.
Speaker 1: Yeah I knew, and well that's you know cliche. Um.
Speaker 1: And then, uh, the other thing is it because it
Speaker 1: is traveling so much farther now, remember we've talked about, UM,
Speaker 1: you make it a request of the over the internet.
Speaker 1: The information goes from one computer to the other computer,
Speaker 1: to the other computer until it gets to the other location,
Speaker 1: and then it sends it, you know, back back back
Speaker 1: back until it reaches your machine. When you go through Tour,
Speaker 1: it does that through a whole lot more computers, and
Speaker 1: it slows everything down. So if you want to be
Speaker 1: private for whatever reason, you can use this software, but
Speaker 1: it will slow things down. Yeah, just be aware. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much true with every security system too. Anytime,
Speaker 1: anytime you have some encryption or whatever, it's going to
Speaker 1: affect the speed of the transmission. Um. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: one of the trade offs you have for for increased
Speaker 1: security and tour it goes beyond just uh web browsing,
Speaker 1: you know. I use that as my example, but it's
Speaker 1: also used for things like instant messaging or remote logins.
Speaker 1: You can even create an instance where you're you're creating
Speaker 1: a rendezvous point, right let's say that you want to
Speaker 1: create a uh discussion area for some political uh reason,
Speaker 1: Like let' let's say you're in a potentially dangerous situation overseas,
Speaker 1: you know, in some in some country where the regime
Speaker 1: is is cracking down on internet access and internet communications. UM,
Speaker 1: you might want to be able to set up a
Speaker 1: space where you and two or three or more people
Speaker 1: can have a discussion about something, but not have it
Speaker 1: pop up in a very popular or publicly visible way
Speaker 1: like on Twitter or Facebook. Because even though those tools
Speaker 1: have been really useful, uh, it's also true that if
Speaker 1: you use them a lot, then there's the chance that
Speaker 1: it could either get shut down or that authorities could
Speaker 1: track you, or that authorities could infiltrate your your communications.
Speaker 1: So if you're using something that's below the radar, that
Speaker 1: that's not being broadcast publicly, you have a better chance
Speaker 1: of maintaining that security. Well. Tour would let you do
Speaker 1: things like set up a UM essentially what it would
Speaker 1: be like a chat room or a forum among a
Speaker 1: bunch of people that is not visible to anyone else,
Speaker 1: and it does it through this distributed network way where
Speaker 1: you the person who creates the instance, lets people know Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm building this thing on blah blah blah. When
Speaker 1: they respond, that's until someone responds, there's no rendezvous point,
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually create anything. And when that person responds,
Speaker 1: then one computer, one server on this system is designated
Speaker 1: as the place where that will live for as long
Speaker 1: as it needs to. And then uh, the different computers
Speaker 1: will have to travel via the normal tour method to
Speaker 1: that particular server in order to interact with it. But
Speaker 1: this again maintains that level of anonymity that is necessary
Speaker 1: for situations where you're talking about life and limb, you know, scenarios. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it's interesting stuff. And like we said, you know there
Speaker 1: military has been using this at In fact, tour the
Speaker 1: onion router was a product of the United States Naval
Speaker 1: UH branch of the military. It was it was a
Speaker 1: Navy project that ends up now being used by lots
Speaker 1: of different UM people, including civilians. But yeah, businesses use it, UH,
Speaker 1: law enforcement uses it. It's it's been very instrumental in
Speaker 1: lots of different UH uses other than the one that
Speaker 1: everyone thinks about, which is to do something sneaky and criminal. Actually,
Speaker 1: the only thing that's come out of my navel is
Speaker 1: lent So that's that's really impressive. Um, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what you're gonna give up for lent um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: But the thing is to note, um, this stuff is
Speaker 1: on the Internet. And that's actually it's biggest flaw. UM,
Speaker 1: when you go back to the original sense that Jonathan
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, when stuff is just disconnected from the Internet,
Speaker 1: that's the easiest way to protect information on the dark web. UM,
Speaker 1: once you make it connected to that giant network of
Speaker 1: networks that we've come become accustomed to using. UM, that
Speaker 1: makes it more findable. It is not a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff is not completely unfindable. So for example, let's say
Speaker 1: you have your robots dot text file and you say
Speaker 1: I don't want my page to be index That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's not there and it can't be accessed by people.
Speaker 1: But it might mean that Google and Being and the
Speaker 1: other Surgeon's is just say okay, well hey, I okay,
Speaker 1: we'll leave you alone. You don't have to be in
Speaker 1: our directory. But that doesn't mean it can't be found. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you think nothing stopping. Let's say an incredibly
Speaker 1: popular website could post a link and that would do it.
Speaker 1: So I mean, you know, it's uh, it would be
Speaker 1: another step to get to where you needed to go,
Speaker 1: but it would make that dark website very easy to
Speaker 1: access us. Well okay, well okay, so jon and Jonathan
Speaker 1: and I have created a file a secret file sharing thing,
Speaker 1: and we're going to let's just make it interesting by
Speaker 1: making it nefarious. So we're gonna share all these you know,
Speaker 1: video files and all sorts of other stuff. But we're
Speaker 1: sharing all the good Star Wars movies, so four or
Speaker 1: five and six, and all the good Star Trek movies
Speaker 1: so every other one. So, uh, the thing is Jonathan
Speaker 1: set up this site and he's emailed me, so he
Speaker 1: both died to bring us this site. So they both
Speaker 1: ends send me the email and okay, so it's between
Speaker 1: you and me, right, Nobody else knows about it except
Speaker 1: there's a trace of that email on every server that
Speaker 1: it touched between you and me. Plus you know, we
Speaker 1: have I s p s and there should they have
Speaker 1: that information somewhere and find Now, they're not gonna go
Speaker 1: looking through all they don't have time to look through
Speaker 1: all that stuff. There's no way. There's just so much,
Speaker 1: but it's there. So if someone else hears about this,
Speaker 1: like if I become Mr Flappy Gums and I walk
Speaker 1: outside and I'm like, you should look into that gingivitis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably should and that, and I say, man, Chris
Speaker 1: and I we shared episode four Star Wars New Hope
Speaker 1: eighteen times between the two of us for no apparent reason. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm just chatting away. Well, then there's a chance
Speaker 1: someone goes to someone else, that goes to someone else
Speaker 1: because someone else. And next thing you know, you've got
Speaker 1: authorities looking into it. And they say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: if we can't find this site directly, what other routes
Speaker 1: can we look at in order to build a case
Speaker 1: against these two idiots and and and find out whether
Speaker 1: or not they're really breaking the law, and if so,
Speaker 1: how hard we can punish them. And the answer to that,
Speaker 1: by the way, is very very hard. Yeah. The chances
Speaker 1: are that the user agreement that Jonathan and I have
Speaker 1: between our Internet service providers says that they're not going
Speaker 1: to give up our information unless the law enforcement authorities
Speaker 1: come knocking at their door with the warrant saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we believe that these guys are up to no good
Speaker 1: uh cough of the records, in which case they're going
Speaker 1: to say, okay, well, if you've got a legitimate reason
Speaker 1: to worry about it, here you go. This is why
Speaker 1: the various pieces of legislation around the world, really but
Speaker 1: in the United States are the ones that we were
Speaker 1: mostly familiar with, things like d M c A, SOAPA,
Speaker 1: uh and and PIPPA. One of these were such a
Speaker 1: huge deal because it was one of those things that
Speaker 1: people were worried the government would get too much authority
Speaker 1: to be able to snoop in on what you were doing,
Speaker 1: and whether whether you were doing something wrong or not
Speaker 1: wasn't the point. And it was the fact that it
Speaker 1: was almost like an unreasonable search and seizure kind of
Speaker 1: approach to information, like it wasn't wasn't necessarily your personal
Speaker 1: property in the sense of physical things you owned, but
Speaker 1: it was your information, which is more and more becoming
Speaker 1: something like property to people. So yeah, it's uh. And
Speaker 1: also there the whole SOAPA and PIPA thing was for
Speaker 1: a while also a concern for people who used tour
Speaker 1: and that it looked like services like to or could
Speaker 1: be at threat because of some of the various kinds
Speaker 1: of laws they are being proposed around the world. Act
Speaker 1: as another great example and that's one that's global. It's
Speaker 1: not the United States, uh, just the United States anyway,
Speaker 1: And there there's a lot of concern that this kind
Speaker 1: of legislation is specifically taking aim at services that have
Speaker 1: legitimate legal and one could argue, uh pro humanity um
Speaker 1: reasons to use them, and yet it would those would
Speaker 1: get wiped off just as easily as the piracy stuff.
Speaker 1: And so the question that a lot of people have
Speaker 1: is is the damage that's being done by piracy, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is completely impossible to define. We cannot
Speaker 1: define how much damage piracy does. It's we just can't.
Speaker 1: It does do damage, Don't get me wrong, we just
Speaker 1: can't define how much it is. But is that indefinable
Speaker 1: amount of damage greater than the good that a an
Speaker 1: anonymous web gives us. And if it is greater than
Speaker 1: maybe we have to look at wiping it all out. Personally,
Speaker 1: this is just my own personal opinion, not representative of
Speaker 1: anyone else. Uh. I seriously doubt that. But because I
Speaker 1: look around in the world and how the world is changing,
Speaker 1: like the events of the Arab Spring, and I think
Speaker 1: if it weren't for the fact that we have these outlets,
Speaker 1: then these social changes which in many cases look like
Speaker 1: they are long overdue, may still not have happened. And
Speaker 1: and that would be unfortunate for people who are living
Speaker 1: under oppressive regimes who uh just don't have any opportunities,
Speaker 1: like like a lot of the rest of the world does.
Speaker 1: So now that's my again my own personal opinion. Jonathan's
Speaker 1: getting off the soapbox. So so, in short, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the the deep Web, the the invisible Internet. This is
Speaker 1: this is just information that, um that the average person
Speaker 1: is not going to be able to find easily. Um.
Speaker 1: It could be anything from people planning a hate crime
Speaker 1: or an act of terrorism to uh, people planning their
Speaker 1: next big venture and they just don't want it to
Speaker 1: become public before they can make a sensation. And and
Speaker 1: and ruin Facebook's day by coming out with something even
Speaker 1: better to to like fifty hard drives that are holding
Speaker 1: databases of information that are not relevant unless you put
Speaker 1: in a specific query. You would not want that searchable
Speaker 1: on the Internet because it would be totally useless. Yes, yes, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a simple definition, but you know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of two a lot to it. And
Speaker 1: when you start thinking about it, um, it's there's some
Speaker 1: ethical questions involved. But your Iceberg comparison at the top
Speaker 1: of the show was very apt because again, the stuff
Speaker 1: that we see on the web is a fraction of
Speaker 1: what is out there. It's from what I understand, it
Speaker 1: is a fraction of one percent of the information that
Speaker 1: can be accessed over the internet. Um, which when you
Speaker 1: think about the the billions and trillions of web pages
Speaker 1: out there, of many of which have MIDI files embedded
Speaker 1: in them, and scrolling texts and the under construction guy, um,
Speaker 1: you know that that's amazing to think about because there's
Speaker 1: a vast amount of information that is accessible to us.
Speaker 1: It's pretty phenomenal. But you know, and that's one of
Speaker 1: just one of those things that that when you think
Speaker 1: about you step back and you when you think about
Speaker 1: this vast amount of information, if you just go, wow,
Speaker 1: us really when you think it's amazing, Yeah, it is is.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, who would have thought that we have come
Speaker 1: up with that much stuff? And I have to write
Speaker 1: about all of it, well some of it, speaking of
Speaker 1: which I need to get back to that. So let's
Speaker 1: wrap up this discussion. Guys. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics that we should tackle, you should email
Speaker 1: us our addresses tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or
Speaker 1: send us a message via Facebook or Twitter are handled.
Speaker 1: There is tech Stuff hs W and Chris and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuffwork staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The househof Works iPhone app
Speaker 1: has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you
Speaker 1: by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
Speaker 1: you