Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 02/26/2019

What Is The Dark Web – Who Created It

Craig Peterson: 0:00
We had a really good webinar yesterday. Craig Peterson here for the Infragard. It’s kind of cool looking at some of the patterns and what people are interested in. Yesterday, we were talking about the difference between cyber and cyber enabled crimes. Very, very hot topic. The other real hot topic that we discussed, in fact, the number one topic in the last year on the FBI Infragard webinars I’ve been running. The number one topic has been dark web. And that’s kind of interesting, because that’s what we talked about today with Jim Polito. Some history here behind the dark web. And why did the government create this thing? So here we go with Mr. Polito.

Unknown 0:47
The man who knows it all our good friend and Tech Talk guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Unknown 0:55
Hey, good morning, Jim. How y’all?

Unknown 0:58
You’re from Canada. Don’t say y’all just just because you travel the country frequently.

Unknown 1:07
Isn’t this the deep south? Isn’t that how y’all talk down here

Unknown 1:09
For you technically it’s the deep south.

Unknown 1:12
Yeah

Unknown 1:14
Speaking of the deep south, let’s see Facebook which has nothing to do with the deep south uses its app to track users it thinks could threaten employees and offices. Wait a minute. So Facebook can’t you know a tell me can’t the tell me whether or not a real post is actually offensive or just a lot of people complained about it. But they can tell me when there’s going to be like an attack at work. And not that I’m making light of that.

Unknown 1:55
It’s kind of interesting. There’s two interesting stories kind of along the same lines as this week. The Facebook one and then YouTube one both of which are how come they can police things they want to police but they can’t police these things they don’t want.

Unknown 2:10
Right? Exactly good. That’s what I was trying to say. But I’m not as smart as you.

Unknown 2:18
It’s interesting to look at. And that’s a lot of interesting in one paragraph but to look at what Facebook is doing, and that is they have a whole security team that just cracking people who might who might threaten their employees or some of the physical offices. So for instance, there was a threat against their offices over in Europe. And Facebook picked on that really, really quickly. And CNBC ended up doing a story about it because they had more than a dozen former Facebook employees who said that Facebook is mining its social net

Unknown 3:00
Work for threatening comments against Facebook wow some cases it uses its products which are of course the Facebook app the Facebook never use it VPN that using its products to track the location of people it believes present a credible threat now this is incredibly Big Brother-esque here bottom Yeah, yeah and Facebook’s other employees are out there and you know Facebook’s management is saying well listen it’s only legitimate Every business has physical security. We have a physical security team why wouldn’t we do it? But you know when when you get right down to a Jim. Why aren’t they doing this sort of thing for threats against other people warning people about it. Why aren’t they reporting all of this stuff to the local police departments? Why are they trying to do it themselves.

Unknown 4:00
And why are they using their app to track these people basically without their knowledge that Facebook thinks might be a threat to themselves in this? That’s where I think they really crossed the line.

Unknown 4:15
Wow. Wow. We’re talking with our good friend Craig Peterson, our Tech Talk guru and at the end of this segment I’ll give you, well Craig will give you a number and you’ll be able to get this information plus a whole lot more. Could this ever help you know I mean, is there any way that they could use this to help him in always in almost in a bit of remember the science fiction movie Minority Report where someone Yeah, predict someone was going to commit a crime and you’d be arrested before you committed the crime and… what?

Unknown 5:01
Future crime became a crime in itself. If you are going to do that.

Unknown 5:05
You are going to commit a crime? Yeah. Which is completely contrary to our Constitution. But all right, Craig, let’s suspend disbelief here for a little bit. Could you know police use this kind of modeling to see where they may be spikes in crime? Could Facebook use the same kind of stuff?

Unknown 5:26
That’s why like you, you really are brilliant because you’re pulling together a whole bunch of pieces. And one of the pieces that should enter into this fray here is the fact that there is already pre crime type technology in place. Then they’re using it in New York City. They’re using it Los Angeles. My last I heard Boston might be using this but what it is it looks at trends. It looks at social media feeds.

Unknown 6:00
To try and find agitators to try and predict where a crime is going to occur and then the police departments are using that kind of pre crime information to have police officers and units and even in some cases SWAT teams on the standby in that area because this machine learning system this are you know not quite artificial intelligence is predicting crimes there so you combine that technology that already is there is already in the field with the ability of somebody like Google or Facebook is what we’re talking about right now who does collect all of this information who does sell all of this information put it all into a pot and stir it and Jim it’s a civil libertarians worst nightmare.

Unknown 7:00
Yeah, I can see that. I mean it’s like fire it’s the good and the bad unfortunately you’ve destroyed your reputation by saying Jim you’re brilliant I mean that’s you know Craig we all know you’re brilliant but if you’re going to say that I’m brilliant people gonna say I don’t know if I completely trust Craig Peterson. and his intellect i don’t know if I.

Unknown 7:22
Most people Jim they’re not thinking it through right and that’s the brilliance of brilliance is seen through just the normal short term thought process. And nowadays the average millennial has a an attention span less than that of a goldfish. We’re talking five or six seconds so how would somebody like that going to think the next order through and that’s where the brilliance comes in Jim in and it’s absolutely necessary to think this through what’s the ultimate outcome, right of this type of technology?

And then look at the story on YouTube this region where we’ve got YouTube now ads pulled from companies like McDonald’s, Disney, Grammarly. Chromebook, Purina, IKEA, Glad, GNC, Lysol. Now why did those ads get pulled? This is a story that’s not really making the news but it turns out that there was a pedophilia ring, a pretty big one, a soft core pedophilia ring running on YouTube, and apparently YouTube kind of knew about it, trying to should have done something about it and absolutely didn’t. So this YouTuber guy, his name’s Matt Watson. Yeah, he exposed what he’s calling a wormhole into this ring on the YouTube platform. He uploaded a video a week ago Sunday about all of this stuff, and it’s disgusting to look at. I don’t want to get into any of the details but it’s right there in the open on YouTube. So you talk about Facebook tracking users is threatened Facebook and and the Facebook is insane, seemingly doing much about anything else who got YouTube now with some of the most important stuff you can imagine out in the open and it gets it so bad that advertisers have to pull their advertising to try and make YouTube do something about it. And it really makes you wonder where we’re going.

Unknown 10:00
Wow, we’re talking with Craig Peterson. Our Tech Talk guru. At the end of this segment will give you a number you can get all this information for free. Plus other stuff when there’s a crisis. I’ll explain to you how you do it. There’s no obligation All right, this is a question people ask me all the time and I give them a half baked explanation. But let’s get it from the guy who’s an expert at explaining the technical aspects of the web in a simple way that most people can understand, probably because you wrote some of the language, some of the code for the web that’s still in use today. But what is the dark web? Almost sounds like that old dark shadows. That soap opera horror. So what is the dark web?

Unknown 10:27
It does, doesn’t it? Well, there, there are multiple parts to the internet. But you can think of it like an iceberg. The dark dark web and the business web are both the part that’s underwater, in other words, is a part you don’t see the internet inside businesses is bigger than the internet anyone else can see. And the number of apps in fact that are in use outside of the public curve, you are actually outnumber the number of apps available in the app store.

Unknown 11:01
So so there’s this huge underwater component of the iceberg when it comes to the internet. And there’s really two parts to that. there’s what’s called the dark web. It’s kind of a generic term. And believe it or not, the dark web was set up the effectively by our government and our tax dollars still maintain it. And the idea behind the dark web was how do we let people who are in these countries where there’s heavy oppression in Iran, etc, etc. How do we let these militants communicate with each other and communicate with us, our military or the State Department, etc. So we developed this this dark web concept around Tor and some other technologies to allow these people to be able to communicate.

Unknown 11:51
Oh wait a minute. I got it right now. So the government put this together for good and it’s been taken over by the identity theft people the people you just talked about pedophilia and YouTube that’s where pedophiles trade video in this dark web which was created for good and where did it, where is it ended up?

Unknown 12:19
Well it is created for good it’s still used for good but the overwhelming use of the dark web is really a lot of different types of criminal activity in this day and age frankly. So now there’s a conundrum here for the federal government. Do do we shut this down which they can’t do by the way there’s no way they could shut it down because it was designed to be unsettled and shut down a

Unknown 12:46
They did too good of a job you mean it was a government contract that did too good of a job. Yeah, exactly. So and they still want militants to be able to use it. So it’s kind of stuck though there’s a really interesting article on CSL online that I put up on my website that goes into this because not all of the dark web is bad. Not all of the tools by militants but if you do go out on to that dark web Be careful because it’s easy to stumble on stuff that will make your eyeballs pop out.

Unknown 13:18
Yeah. Oh the real bad stuff the really really bad stuff that people want to be able to share. It’s like the back alley of the internet, isn’t it?

Unknown 13:33
It really is. You know, this is a place where people like Bob Kraft might find another a new massage parlor

Unknown 13:46
Oh. So wrong on so many levels. But ok, I’ll let it go.

Unknown 13:51
We also have out there have been some of these sites like the Silk Road and things where people were buying and trading drugs and they was shut down. These people were caught. So just because it’s on the dark web, just because you’re using cryptocurrencies doesn’t mean that the FBI or the Secret Service or other guys can track you down because they can and they do. So keep that in mind as well. It’s a scary place to go. There are a lot of dark alleys out there we keep an eye on some parts of the dark web so that we know what’s going on. And if there’s something major that’s where we find these huge cracks when when you know one of these places is broken into that’s where we find that and that’s what we use it for. But you know as a general rule, Jim they away from the dark web.

Unknown 14:45
So, you know, teach us how to access it, which is good, but at least we know what it is and why it was created. It’s kind of a back alley for the government to communicate with individuals who are in countries where they don’t allow the internet and yet Then it got co opted by the bad guys all right I promised that I would give you a full well that Craig would give you a phone number and you’d be able to get this information plus a whole lot other stuff you get on Craig’s list. Hey, Craigslist. Hey that’s pretty good I just made a pun there well good register that yeah might be a little late. But anyway you get on Craig’s mailing list. How about we say that and he sends you information without annoying you. He doesn’t do it constantly. But the good thing is when there’s a big problem like a big hack, he tells you what to do. And it’s all free. So Craig, the number that people should text my name to is what?

Unknown 15:47
It is 855-385-5553 that’s 855-385-5553.

Unknown 16:00
Standard data and text rates apply and again it’s it’s great to get the service but Craig it’s better to get you in person every Tuesday here and we appreciate your time We hope you have a great day.  Thank you. Thank you to talk to you next week.