DEEP WEB AND WHISTLEBLOWING

DEEP WEB AND WHISTLEBLOWING

There is little doubt that whistle blowers have had a significant impact on politics, economy and business. People like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have demonstrated how whistle-blowers can change public opinion and hold governments to account for their shenanigans and wrong doings. But the rockstar aura that has been bestowed on some whistle blowers should not blind us to the risks that they have taken to bring sensitive and secret information to light. That’s because whistleblowing involves pointing fingers at someone or some organization that’s powerful. Whistleblowers are a breed apart, and they are often the source for shocking exposes that open the world’s eyes to a hitherto unknown facet about a renowned individual, a company or a nation. And the repercussions for whistleblowers could be dire – from being maligned and sued, to being jailed or physically eliminated. After all, you can scarcely expect the powerful to sit by idly when hitherto secret information is revealed to the world.


Thankfully, technology is helping many modern whistleblowers to publish their stories without revealing their identity. Even sites like Wikileaks wouldn’t exist without secret networks that exist beneath the public Internet. And these hidden or underground networks, collectively called the Deep Web or Darknet, owe their existence to services like TOR that provide a secure communication environment and ensure user anonymity.

CURRENT RELATIONSHIP

DEAD MAN ZERO

This site gives whistleblowers the option to have their information automatically published if they get kidnapped, jailed, injured or worse. The site is accessed using the Tor browser, and all you need to do is to upload your sensitive files into a cloud storage service. The files can be encrypted with a password, and you can also include a description of your content. The site then adds its own encryption to the files, making them extra-secure. Afterwards, you get a unique URL using which you can log in. While uploading the files, you can specify a time period (once every day, once a week or once every month). If you do not log into the site within that time period, your files will automatically be sent to a list of email addresses that you have provided in advance—allowing you to disseminate the information.

SLUR.IO

Most striking of all is Slur whose tagline is “you’re going to hate it.” At least it’s honest. Describing itself as an “anonymous marketplace for the selling of secret information,” Slur allows users to upload secret information of any kind and sell it to the highest bidder. The framework uses public key cryptography to ensure that only the auction’s winner is able to decrypt the information and, in case of a dispute, recruits arbitrators to verify that sellers actually deliver the information they advertise. This requires the arbitrators also to be given the decryption keys.