The Dangers of the Deep Web
There are approximately 1.2 million terabytes on the internet. 10-15% of that amount is the visible “common” web. The rest is made up of the primarily harmless zip-files and websites of the deep web. However, the anonymous nature of the deep web allows for a small portion to be an illicit mangle ranging from drug/sex/weapon markets, to detailed forums on cooking humans in ways to keep them alive as long as possible.
In 2014 Alicia Kozakiewicz told her story of abduction through the internet to the british tabloid, The Mirror of the United Kingdom. In 2001, thirteen year old Alicia started using some of the first online chat rooms of the decade with her friends. Through this chat room, she met a boy of a similar age in her area and agreed to meet with him. Apparently no one had ever advised her against meeting people this way. On New Year’s day, 2002, Alicia snuck out of her home into the evening. Then, at the spot where they agreed to meet, Alicia heard her name called. She turned around and did not see the boy she agreed to meet, but instead saw a man. She then blacked out, and woke up trapped in a car. After a five hour drive from Pittsburgh to Virginia, she was pulled down into a basement where she was stripped, given a dog collar, and chained to the floor. The man broke her nose and then raped her. What followed was a haze of torture and rape. Alicia says she did many humiliating and disgusting acts to stay alive. After three days the man implied he would kill her the next day. Luckily she was rescued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while her captor was at his place of work. She was found naked and hysterical under a bed. The man had been “live streaming” videos of him raping and torturing Alicia, and was seen and reported to the government by a viewer. This was one of the first reported cases of child abduction orchestrated through the internet. Compared to other such cases, Alicia's story has a somewhat positive ending. Many similar cases go unsolved or unreported. Often times victims are killed or forced into the human trafficking trade--never to be rescued. Alicia now works to educate others, but few steps have been made in the ten plus years since her abduction to help prevent similar crimes from occurring. At present, there is no one organization devoted to discovering the identities of people who use the deep web commit such crimes.
The Semantic illegal Content hunter (SiCh) is a British organization that specifically fights illegal activities on the internet. However, the main focus of SiCh is to fight online racism, illegal online gambling, and the illegal online drug trade. They make no mention of trying to stop trade in human trafficking, child pornography, snuff (murder/human slaughter) films, rape films, or forums and chat rooms that discuss how to carry out illegal activities. So while all these forms of illegal commerce are present on both the common web and even more frequently on the deep web, SiCh maintains no useful information on the inner workings of these trade systems, and has even stopped listing the activities as of August, 2015. t unfortunate, that while SiCh is the best anti-cybercrime organization not fully funded by a government, they have not a single page of data to contribute toward exposing these types of crimes.
Another group, possibly the best anti-cybercrime organization, is the National Security Agency (NSA). Unfortunately, it too, does not monitor the internet to try and stop victim crimes on the deep web. As a branch of the Federal Government, the NSA is intent on prevent more mainstream crime, such as theft of capital, theft of identity, invasion of privacy, and most famously acts of terror.
The deep web tends to be completely ignored because almost no theft, fraud, or terrorism is committed on it. Instead, victims become drawn in and taken advantage of by a market that uses and trades them through illicit acts and materials. The crimes committed against these victims tend to go unreported. In most cases these forms of cybercrime only come to light when other deep web users report the activities they have witnessed. Relying on other deep web users is problematic, because the majority of all deep web users are unwilling to identify themselves or are unable to report properly because they want to remain anonymous. In the end, this leaves the deep web barely monitored--open for crimes to fester. It’s the perfect place for perpetrators to wait for victims like Alicia to peek inside, not realizing what dangers await them.
Works Cited
"8 Facts You Didn't Know about the Deep Deb." AllWomenstalk. N.p., n.d. Web. 3
Mar. 2016. <http://lifestyle.allwomenstalk.com/ facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-deep-web>. Facts about the deep web.
Graham, Kate. "‘I was groomed online, abducted, chained up, raped and
tortured’- Survival victim tells her story." Mirror UK 24 Nov. 2014: n.
pag. Print. Antidote http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/i-groomed-online-abducted-chained-4684151
"The Semantic Illegal Content Hunter." The Semantic Illegal Content Hunter.
N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. <http://www.sichproject.eu/>.
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