onion site that gives users a chance to access the sites without surveillance concerns. Facebook and ProPublica wanted in on the action, too, both having launched a dark web. Former US National Security Agency (NSA) employee, Edward Snowden, used it to leak information about the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program to the media in 2013. Despite this, many traders continue to operate similar businesses in the dark web. In May 2015 he was sentenced to life in prison. In February 2015, Ross William Ulbricht was convicted of seven charges for being the site’s founder.

It launched in 2011 and was shut down by the FBI in 2013. Approximately one million people using Silk Road made Bitcoin transactions that are estimated at US $1 billion. The dark web’s anonymity enabled people to conduct prohibited activities, the most successful of those being Silk Road, a marketplace for the trade of illegal goods. At this time the US Navy cut ties with the Tor project, but the US Government continued to provide funding. Computer scientists Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson further refined Tor with Syverson in 2003 and it was released under free licenze in 2004. However, the network had to be accessible for the general public so that officers could operate in a diverse crowd. The original software, The Onion Router (Tor), was developed by US Naval Research Laboratory employees Paul Syverson, Michael Reed and David Goldschlag in the mid 1990s to protect the identity of US Navy intelligence agents.

There is an additional layer known as the Dark Web that allows people to circumvent surveillance and move around online without traceability. If you spend most of your screen time loitering on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or LinkedIn then you’ve only ever scratched the surface of the web. What is the Dark Web and The Onion Router (Tor).

Onion router dark web