BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
In practice some sites drop Tor connections, and localisations come through wrong, but that doesn't seem to be why you said "no".
Captchas on some sites, for sure, sometimes a different route will fix it. Usually mainstream sites either block tor or work properly.
And don't even think about trying to sign up for some free service like an email account or game account. Your account will be flagged before you finish thinking up your username.
Well, it's the websites using Cloudflare, not Cloudflare doing it for fun. You're better served hating other Tor users for ruining nice things for you.
But you're lucky if a service even allows Tor. I straight up block it for some of my applications since it's 99.99% abuse.
"Use tor for everything" might be good life advice, but it's not a good answer for "how do I avoid using tor for everything" :P
Tor Browser has millions of active daily users VS Brave Browser has only a very small amount.
For a network wide approach, you will need to set up PAC and a network accessible tor proxy. The PAC would have a rule that redirects all .onion hosts to the network accessible tor proxy.
Keep in mind that this only protects publishers, not those accessing the website.
More info: https://www.tor2web.org/
I've seen these proxies bleed into more problematic Tor use cases among vulnerable individuals. Defaults matter, and as technical people we should assume a bit of 'do no harm' moral responsibility for people who seek our advice.
Tor Browser is painstakingly maintained to be fit for its specific purpose. If you're not authorized to install Tor Browser on a device and to emit Tor traffic on the network you're using, you generally shouldn't access Tor there.
Anyone using Tor to access resources that might get them in trouble in the country they're in should look into proper operational security with Tor Project-provided infrastructure like bridges.[1] The special purpose Tails operating system can be used with bootable USB memory on common hardware like laptops without leaving a trace.[2]
1. Run the service.
2. Disable blocking onion in about:config.
3. In firefox set manual proxy and enable proxy dns for socks5.
Done :D
Takes all of two mins.
That said, it's generally better to run the official TOR Browser instead. It has security nerds working over every aspect of it to make it as anonymous as reasonably possible. Deanonymization is shockingly powerful in the age of big data.
If you want to be anon, use tor.
In /etc/tor/torrc:
DNSPort 127.191.0.1:53
TransPort 9040
TransProxyType TPROXY
AutomapHostsOnResolve 1
iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -d 127.192.0.0/10 -j TPROXY --on-ip 127.0.0.1 --on-port 9040 -p tcp
iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -d 127.192.0.0/10 -j TPROXY --on-ip 127.0.0.1 --on-port 9040 -p udp
[Service]
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE CAP_NET_ADMIN
server=/onion/127.191.0.1
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.stoutner.privacybrowser....
I'd just really advise against touching Tor with a regular browser. For starters, you shouldn't browse Tor without blocking JavaScript by default. Hogging the bandwidth needed for video is also where 'normal use' turns problematic for the people who actually rely on Tor for personal safety.
Tor Browser is painstakingly maintained to make it suitable for Tor. Even Brave's Tor mode is more fit for purpose than proxying Tor manually.
I'd also argue that it's better for the anonymity of all to use a browser prepared to avoid fingerprinting.
(I'm stretching the analogy to point out that you are correct that he is providing cover [the hay], but that most of the traffic currently is of the type that the surveilling entity is looking for [the needles]).
Could you say why this is recommended?
If you use .onion services for anything... interesting, you should also be aware that the first step an advanced attacker might do with a compromised site is to try and completely own all browsers visiting.
If you run JavaScript, you're just waiting for someone to poke a hole in whatever sandbox protections the Firefox base of Tor Browser can provide. Example: https://threatpost.com/tor-browser-update-critical-flaw/1458...
Tor Browser is based on Firefox, and has a bunch of anti-fingerprinting measures built in to it which have been slowly upstreamed to Firefox (as well as ensuring the Firefox doesn't send anything without going through Tor -- something which historically has been hard to do as a Firefox user).
Tor hidden services are notoriously difficult to protect from DDoS attacks due to its code being mostly single-threaded. Build 5000 circuits to any darknet site, max out one core on the server, and you take it offline. Cheers to BBC for this great step forward for privacy. Hopefully their traffic surges to bring more attention to .onion scaling problems.
Easy ROI
Surely if some well funded organisation (Eve) were to install a similar number of relays itself, then it is reasonably likely that for a given user a packet would eventually travel across relays solely owned by Eve, and at that point Eve could map a Tor address to a physical IP?
Operating 6000 nodes in a manner unlikely to cause suspicion , and correlating packets across those nodes, is a massive undertaking, but it seems that it would be well within the means of e.g. NSA.
Would this work, or am I missing something fundamental about how Tor works?
What's going to kill Tor is a global passive adversary, meaning someone with perfect visibility of all traffic going in and out of Tor nodes by tapping network infrastructure and correlating at the endpoints. I'm sure the NSA is working on this. They couldn't do it in 2013, but what could they have accomplished in the 6 years since the Snowden leaks?
It's also possible to use machine learning to "fingerprint" encrypted blobs entering guard nodes and correlate them with websites (even onion services!), although it gets less feasible as the set of potential websites increases.
Official version is website bug tho.
> A global passive adversary is the most commonly assumed threat when analyzing theoretical anonymity designs. But like all practical low-latency systems, Tor does not protect against such a strong adversary. Instead, we assume an adversary who can observe some fraction of network traffic; who can generate, modify, delete, or delay traffic […]
https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-des...
More reading: https://blog.torproject.org/how-report-bad-relays
What I am thinking about is the hypothetical case that 3000 of the 6000 active relays today had been started and operated by Eve over the last few years according to Tor guidelines and without any external sign that the nodes were centrally controlled.
If that were true it would be hard for a user to detect, and it seems to me that Eve would be able to reasonably easily break the privacy protection of Tor.
Tor circuits tend to go through many countries and rarely do they go through the same country twice. Not sure if this is part of the node selection criteria. But if you can’t have two nodes within a circuit go through the same country, and someone identifies you, then you’re dealing with a hell of a global adversary.
FWIW I think many people are concerned more about being monitored by their local governments rather than foreign ones.
You can do that with a credit card and AWS. Setting up server presence in multiple countries is trivial. Setting up enough of them is expensive.
https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-inte...
The purpose is to deliver the viewpoint of the UK to other countries, such as Iran, Russia, China.
A current example: Hongkong. They have headline reporting every time there is a protest while other protests in other countries, and arguably much more significant protests, barely get a mention. This is not a coincidence.
Edit: A lot of the replies to this comment try to rationalise. This is being willfully blind.
Noam Chomsky has written a lot about the issue of raltive importance of reporting in order to manipulate public opinion. This is exactly what is happening because it should be obvious to everyone that there is a campaign against China ongoing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=protests
Sure choice of facts and style can and does show a middle-left bias, but as for agenda. If it is that crystal clear, then what is it!
I will say though, the trend of media outlets to report opinions of interviewers as news and for the populus to take those avenues of news and run with them as facts, has been something that plays out upon social media. This then as we have seen, is used by news outlets as sources of news (ala Tweets have becomes news sources now). This does create the potential for massive feedback loops. But then, no media outlet seems immune to that.
Hong Kong is a former British colony with international importance, Chile is not.
150+ people have died in Iraq over the last month during wide scale protests. There is an article on this on the BBC's website.
On the other hand, there is almost live coverage with embedded journalists as headline news every time a protester throws something at the HK police, or every time the HK police throws a teargas canister at protesters.
I think it is still better to have access to the other point of view, and as one frenchman once said, even if you don't agree with a point of view, you should defend the right to be able to say it.
Do you have other examples?
Well, state your bias? Why did you formulate it as "against China" and not "for people of Hongkong"?
Sure, there is some criticism of BBC news, but I don't think you could ever compare it to the junk filled propaganda machine that is RT.
EDIT: for clarity, I wasn't suggesting the BBC did either.
The propaganda is what's in between
Eg. Today's home page, first headline "Russia's 'secret weapon' for winning influence in Africa – and it's not what you might think".
Then have a look at the op-ed pieces that are basically hit-pieces disguised as journalism.
Also, there are things that they do not report (or omit) which is what you should be most concerned about.
I know roughly who writes the cheques at thr BBC, RT, NHK, or DW.
With privately owned media, figuring out where they're not going to be impartial is a lot more subtle. Who's buying the ads? What other companies are owned by major shareholders or key staff?
World Service - mainly radio, but also TV, is to deliver a UK viewpoint to the world - traditionally "the colonies".
The content can either be static like mirrors of banned sites (wikipedia, BBC and the tor website). It would be at secret locations.
The site should randomly pick a few of it's Chinese users. When they visit public pages, they will be redirected to the secret locations. (With a welcome message).
It will appeal to apolitical Chinese, because they will feel they are unraveling secrets.
It will be hard for the Chinese government to clamp down: They will struggle to identify these websites and when they shut them down, they will hurt their own industries.
If it becomes successful, then China will make that fear real, and start running the same thing themselves.
While the Tor browser can be used to access the regular version of the
BBC News website, using the .onion site has additional benefits.
"Onion services take load off scarce exit nodes, preserve end-to-end
encryption [and] the self-authenticating domain name resists
spoofing," explained Prof Steven Murdoch, a cyber-security expert from
University College London.The only other parts that remain HTTP (that I've seen) are certain archived content, e.g. the older Learning[0] and Languages[1] portals.
get "https://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20191021-the-sea-of-60-ghos... Location: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20191021-the-sea-of-60-ghost...
BBC is one of very few sites on my HTTP allowed list. By default I've disabled HTTP completely.
People are starting to use that to create .eth domain names that point to .onion sites.
https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/list-of-ens-nam...
That's why news and public service actors with global ambitions launching onion services is likely a huge net gain in the long run.
*Currently illegal in some jurisdictions, more coming soon!
Bit ironic given that the influence of the government at the BBC.
Sadly, in the US, extremists ( particularly the left ) are leading the charge to censor "politically incorrect" speech.
BBC is publicly funded and unlikely to be banned in the UK but they provide global news coverage.
You can either donate to various groups running Tor servers, the developers, or take part on your own.
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Tor
https://donate.torproject.org/
Also, as a side note, in countries where Tor access is actively inhibited, users may need to rely on bridges.
https://bridges.torproject.org/
https://blog.torproject.org/how-use-meek-pluggable-transport
I ask because I have 5-6 Raspberry Pis, a couple retired Supermicro boxes, and old Cisco gear that isn't doing much...
As for exits, you'll be dealing with abuse reports from countless parties, including the off-chance that someone sends a death threat through your exit and you have may to fend off law-enforcement that still hasn't gotten the memo on Tor. In countries, like the US where any police encounter might turn deadly, I'd highly advise against running exits at home.
As a Tor exit operator, I can in fact honestly tell you not to run exits on production business networks, or basically anywhere where you're not prepared to be a recipient of a lot of unwanted attention.
It's also worth setting up a Tor relay to use a different external ip address. Because VPN/Procy whitelists employed by dumb web firewall products will temporarily blacklist all publically listed Tor relay IPs.
Here's a typical residential setup: ISP-provided broadband modem in bridged mode + some sensible home router with security patches you should be using anyway and the Tor relay server connected to the modem with a non-managed switch (if needed).
Please note that Bridges give help directly to individuals who can't access Tor, due to blockage in their home country. They don't use a lot of bandwidth and aren't listed publicly, so bad actors on the firewall market won't block them.
So, if you only have one IP address available and you want to do the internet at large a huge solid, just run a Bridge.
For anyone interested in running Tor relays, here's an intro to why your new box won't use all available bandwidth for a while https://blog.torproject.org/lifecycle-new-relay
In practice, though, TOR is more convenient for such things because a resource's name (the onion address) doesn't change when the content does. This difference makes it rather unlikely that you're going to find the lets-make-an-illegal-deal crowd gathering around BitTorrent.
But legally, and from the ISP's perspective, seeding a torrent with incriminating content is no different than running a TOR exit node that happens to be trafficking that content--it's just that since they attract different crowds, one is more likely to attract the wrong kind of attention than the other.
Also, you get to choose what you seed on BitTorrent, but when you run an exit node, you don't. So you're unlikely to even know what kind of incriminating content is going through your internet connection.
When I was hosting a exit node I was getting over 50GB/day
Also the "limiting bandwidth" section here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide#...
Well, I've only linked to communities listed by the Tor Project itself.
Otherwise, the same way you would check whether HN or your local tea store is the NSA. You do your own research, run your own risk analysis, and if you want to stay sane, by default you give people the benefit of the doubt.
Generally, it's best not to run Tor relays from home as services will start to blacklist your IP as a proxy.
If you are going to be an exit node, then you should inform yourself about he legal challenges you might face, since you don't know what people will access with your IP address.
https://blog.torproject.org/tips-running-exit-node
https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/faq.html
Being an entry or middle-level node is less of a problem but some uncertainties remain, so this depends on your local laws.
I actually tend to assume websites like HN are the NSA or at least the NSA have read access to their databases. Maybe it's my tinfoil hat tendencies but instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt I would rather not give them any data I don't mind the NSA having.
> Everyone has read access to HN
No, not to their databases as OP is discussing. It would be definitely a crime if any of us had that info as it would imply we broke in and stole it - but OP is suggesting that they assume NSA already has it (a potentially paranoid but also reasonably fair thing to do, IMO).
From a personnel standpoint, isn't Thiel on the board of HN/YC and doesn't Thiel have basically uncountable NSA/CIA/etc connections? I'm not saying Thiel has anything to do with HN's security - but clearly, saying HN's databases might be accessed by someone like CIA (while a board member of YC is active in sales & partnerships to CIA etc) isn't that crazy.
He is not.
None of us know how many points your comment has, or if you have an email address on file, or how many times you visited HN today, or what IP you're using, etc. But all of those things are in the HN database(s) I'm sure!
I'll go out on a limb and predict that my HN internet points score is not a signal of interest to NSA selection criteria.
Social voting data is a rather sizable and useful dataset for surveillance agencies. HN has a high concentration of current-high-impact and future-high-impact individuals and is therefore a reasonably interesting trove of information.
I realize all this is indeed tinfoil-hat-ish stuff. But I'd be shocked in NSA/CIA/FBI etc was disinterested in online social voting habits of users.
Also, you latched on to a single example I gave. HN may have your email address privately (if you gave it to them) and they also have your IP/access logs. This is all stuff that they save but is not publicly available information.
I'm sure there's more as well. It's not just "internet points" and reducing the discussion down to simply dismissing a single one of my thoughts isn't going to get us anywhere.
But you can't calculate the 'score' without knowing who those people are, when they voted, and what else they voted on too. The score is a summary generated from lots of information. It's not just some number that carries no value.
I'm pretty certain there's nothing the NSA doesn't already have. See the Swowden gifts on MUSCULAR[1] the better-known PRISM[2], and XKEYSCORE[3]. There are other relevant programs, but I don't have my notes on that stuff with me at the moment.
Anyway, I won't argue about how much the NSA values internet scores. Let's just say I can imagine a targeted extortion campaign against a specific individual using such inputs, but I can't see how the Great Hoover would use them as any sort of actionable signal.
[1] http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/how-the-nsas-mus...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%...
(And if you don't, APTs, will assign one to you....)
Being a Tor relay you participate in a public proxy network, so you automatically run risk that someone will harvest your IP address for whatever reason, e.g., lists for companies trying to prevent browsing via tor, etc.
No communication channel can be guaranteed to be 100% secure in the broad sense, i.e. even One-Time Pads can be stolen, recipients of messages can be watched to see what they’re up to, etc.
Users of Tor should assume that the whole channel (not just the Tor part) can be compromised by a willing and capable adversary, and take additional precautions if they feel it’s necessary, e.g. “tradecraft” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradecraft
Conversely, if you're engaging in illegal online behavior from your home IP, intermittently running a TOR exit node could be a useful mechanism for creating plausible deniability.
I think this also specifically refers to exit nodes, no ? Running an intermediate relay should be fine as you'll only be shuffling encrypted tor traffic to other relays.
You shouldn't run exit nodes from a home connection due to possible abuse. If a person uses it to do something illegal you may end up with law enforcement busting down your door. Relays are safe though.
Is this not the case, or is it not a black/white answer?
Tor's anonymity depends on distributed control of its nodes. If one entity, say a government org, controls a large portion of entry and exit nodes it may be able to trace some requests. That's an attack that has been known since the beginning though, it's not new.
Tor is just a proxy. A fancy proxy that uses onion routing, but a proxy nonetheless. Think of it as a CDN that does not have to hand over customer details because they have plausible deniability about who you are. Unlike commercial CDN's however, Tor does not try to prevent hacking. That exercise is left to the people running the servers that Tor is routing to. As it turns out, some criminals may be lazy or inept.
Citation please? Last I checked people get charged with things they didn't do, or weren't responsible for, in just about every system of justice - that's why we have courts.
This leads to the other issue of your service being cut...
The (non CIA ) people who use it primarily act as traffic in order to improve the security for operatives . Your Mileage May very
Another is to find a place that will agree to power your machine and allow it to hook in to the ethernet if it runs a tor node.
At any rate, running a tor node isn't as simple as running apt-get.
The amount of configuration you need to run a node isn't terribly difficult. There is plenty of documentation online and really it's just changing a few lines in the config file. The Tor daemon is pretty good about pointing out potentially undesirable configuration options if you watch the log file on startup.
If you mean that you don't want to relay traffic that carries child porn, than you can't do that, since you can't see what you are relaying (and even if you did, you'd need to automatically recognize it which is not easy afaik).
It creates an interesting moral problem. If people who view such material are in the wrong because they support the harm it causes, then are not people who support Tor in general also guilty of the same? Yes, they have more noble reasons for doing so, but do the ends justify the means, especially when dealing with such a topic?
How is this any different than FedEx or USPS? They don't read your mail to see what it is. To a near certainty at least some of what they deliver contains child pornography.
And what about roads? I bet child pornographers sometimes use roads for child pornography related purposes. Does that mean we're all complicit as taxpayers? Or maybe it's that the child pornographers are the guilty parties and common carriers are not the police.
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/sex/a19573460/craigslist-s...
Because of the hypothetical impedance of some unknown (but likely very small) amount of trafficking, millions of people found it more difficult to find partners for their entirely consensual acts.
Congratulations you've spawned another decade's worth of sov-cit arguments
sudo snap install tor-middle-relay(Aside from David Attenborough documentaries, they’ve always been worth it)
(maybe it doesn't get stripped bc the flag is encoded as [U][K], two "letterlike symbols" but still it's the first time i've seen one!)
edit: yeah, my cat got removed :/
I guess they're distinguished by unicode block: the regional indicator letters are "Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement", and emoji are "Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs". still not sure why remove them though
System Preferences → Keyboard → Show input menu in menu bar
While I agree that no news corporation should ever be censored and should be accessible to all including the "dark-web", the level of clickbait / fake-news level content on the BBC website is getting ridiculous in some areas and contradicts with their duty to be fair, impartial and balanced as the only UK state broadcaster privileged with a royal charter.
Apart from the actual World News section, the front page + newsbeat section is completely littered with frivolous cringe-worthy content and memes that isn't worth paying attention to, neither is purchasing the TV license for.
edit: also their "reporting" on anything climate related is amazing. It's no wonder that extinction rebellion, a movement originating in the UK, has as the first demand to "tell the truth". At first I was confused because climate change in my media consumption was a regularly occurring topic. But then I checked the bbc website. See [1] for a screenshot. This is at a time, mind you, when the whole of Europe was shattering temperature records left and right, and Greenland was melting. And they choose to report on a thumb wrestling tournament.
[1]: http://muchmuch.coffee:8989/blobs/get/&Jwu6gu4Ub33VBWbmz6YbT...
It’s easy to prove this isn’t true, by looking at its Brexit output. The BBC represents middle- and upper-middle-class London, regardless of who’s in power in Number 10, and regardless of any other part of the country.
That said, I often see both sides of a debate complaining about the bias of the BBC. So long as that is the case then we can reasonably assume they are doing a fair job of walking the fine line between both sides.
This is absolutely not true, because unscrupulous parties are careful to complain vociferously (and shamelessly) even about coverage that is heavily skewed in their own favour.
Since the Andrew Gilligan debacle (where the BBC sacked a reporter and apologised profusely over the self-evident truth he had reported: that Tony Blair lied about Iraqi WMD), the BBC has gradually transformed itself from a public broadcaster to a state broadcaster. The only time you hear a reasonable balance of views on an issue these days is where the governing party itself is split on it.
This has been the BBC response to criticism of its news reporting for a long time now.
However there are very few debates which have only two points of view, and the very act of reducing every issue to a "both sides" argument is a real problem for the BBC (well, for me anyway!)
It's not even confined to clickbait, the articles are getting seriously dumbed down too - you'd think many of them were written for children!
And it's not even confined to online - the news section on Radio 1 is an absolute joke these days - if the online content is dumbed down, then this is seriously dumbed down to the point where you'd think it was for pre-school children!
So, in a way, if BBC wishes to remain accessible among people who are used to... certain popular British news outlets, it shouldn't isolate itself in an ivory tower. If BBC's domestic target demographics have a poor reading level, that's likely more of a Britain problem than a BBC problem.
There's probably also an aspect of serving populations inside Britain who don't speak English as their first language. The BBC's mission statement[1] also mentions mirroring Britain to the world, which likely increases the need for accessible language.
This is a basic soft power strategy anyone seeking global relevance should pay attention to.
"Undercover at a 'seduction bootcamp’"
"The peasant whose binge drinking went global"
"'Why I'm desperate to get rid of my bum implants'"
"We spent a morning in Rick Astley's home studio"
"Lizzo credits writer of 'DNA test' tweet after row"
I well I suppose that makes a change from:
"'I’m a Muslim artist inspired by the female body'"
"On stage at a Jewish queer club night"
To be fair I guess having Tor access to that content is probably needed in some locations. I just wish it was presented separately to genuine news content.
If you open up something like the World section (and subsections), you'll get a lot of good reporting.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world
I also find the shows From Our Own Correspondent the Global News Podcast to be world-class news sources.
The main problem I have is not a lack of good content but filtering good from frivolous.
You'll see that in the technology section too.
For every insightful article you'll find 3 discussing "so called "computer mice" are a way to interact with a so called computer"...
Probably, in the face of trends like Brexit and a sense of their declining popularity, this is phase one of preparing to take their resistance underground if they have to.
"The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a neologism coined by American mathematician Eric Weinstein, and popularized in a 2018 editorial by Bari Weiss. The term refers to a group of public personalities who oppose what they see as the dominance of progressive identity politics and political correctness in the media and academia."
Seems like the conventional usage of the term "Dark Web" predates your usage, and is more relevant given that we're on a tech forum.
Seems a bit unfair to equate wanting to protect privacy with the dark web where people associate it with drugs and paedophiles and whatnot.
Very clickbaity from the BBC.
It's you who's wrongly associating it with paedophilia and drugs (both amply available on the 'clearnet') IMO, which does quite a disservice to attempts to promote Tor to the newly privacy-conscious.
'Dark' means hidden, not 'evil'.
> The Tor browser is privacy-focused software used to access the dark web
Yes it is. But that's the worst thing it's used for.
It's like saying 12-gauge shotguns are used for bank robberies...
Ok, I'm stretching the point but it's needlessly putting the association of privacy focused browsing using Tor with the nasty shit that some people do with it.
Edit: I realise my understanding of The Dark Web was incorrect so this argument is invalidated now but I'll leave it up.
The "dark" in dark web doesn't mean "bad", it's darkness to prying eyes. If you buy drugs on the dark web, it's the dark web. If you read literature on the dark web that your government doesn't want you to read, it's the dark web as well. The negative connotations you're associating with it are what this step by the BBC will help reduce: pointing out that the criminal use isn't the primary use of the dark web. Privacy is.
On that note, I bet if you asked non-techs what they think "dark web" means they'd think nasty stuff.
That will change when more normal stuff is available on the dark web and the privacy aspect gets more pronounced (privacy being a major topic these days). And "we're providing access to the free internet to everyone living in countries with authoritarian regimes that try to restrict information and oppress their citizens" is a powerful narrative. They'll be less likely to consider it evil if it's compared to the BBC German Service during WW2, broadcasting to Germany in German, unrestricted by the Nazi government.
"The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets, overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access."
Sure, many so-called Hidden Services offer illegal and immoral content, but the dark web is enormous. There are many more such sites offering ebooks and other (legal) media, anonymous blogging/forums/social media, whistleblowing services, censorship-resilient news platforms (BBC, NYT, The Intercept, ProPublica), cryptocurrency trading, and so on.
Hell, even the CIA has a 'dark web' presence on Tor [1].
[1]: http://ciadotgov4sjwlzihbbgxnqg3xiyrg7so2r2o3lt5wz5ypk4sxyjs...
I would say to most people, if they have heard of the "dark web" then they think it exists exclusively for "the nasty shit".
I think I've seen the exact BBC article ;)
1 - Can the same not be achieved via VPN usage?
2 - Can TOR browsers not already access the BBC in the "clearnet"?
3 - Why do I, as a UK resident, have to provide money so that someone in Vietnam can access our state news?
However, UK audiences tend to question the TV license if the BBC does anything out of their duty. But non-UK audiences will see ads on the site that will eventually be clicked on.
So what does the BBC do? Increase more click-bait articles on newsbeat, entertainment, brexit sections to make up for their lost UK audience that are now on other news or streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, etc.
You will need to use a VPN provider (often for a fee). Tor comes at no cost.
> Can TOR browsers not already access the BBC in the "clearnet"?
I don't understand this question.
> Why do I, as a UK resident, have to provide money so that someone in Vietnam can access our state news?
It doesn't cost anything extra to run a Tor mirror.
The GP is saying that someone using the Tor browser could simply just visit bbc.com already. However, they'd have to exit the network, whereas with an .onion address they don't.
Up until a few years ago you didn't.
In the news + current affairs genre there was
1) UK output (Huw Edwards, News24, Panorama, etc) -- licence fee funded
2) World service (mainly radio, in a variety of languages) -- funded direct from the foreign office
3) World News TV (English language TV station) -- commercially funded
However the government of the time told the BBC they had to continue to fund World Service, but stopped the grant in aid. This meant that Doris in Dudley had to pay for Radio Hausa broadcasting from Abuja. Hausa is good for the UK (soft power), but it should be funded by the foreign office.
To add confusion, a couple of years ago the government then decided to invest £300m over 4 years to expand the world service reach - this money came from the foreign office.
Then there's more confusion. Many reporters for world service are expected to file into UK news too. If there's a news story in Vietnam that breaks, it will be nominally world service reporters who are on the scene reporting. Even if it's a planned event, like the Trump/Kim summit, local WS staff will be planning and often staffing that event, even if Huw Edwards is flown out to cover it, so there is still a tangential benefit
If you access BBC News from outside the UK you'll notice that it has advertising. I don't know how much of the cost of international news this offsets, but it will help.
But the more important answer is that everyone benefits if accurate and unbiased news is available to all. The cost of running an onion site is negligible. The cost of international news (and the World Service etc.) is not, but is definitely worth it (and as pointed out elsewhere, not actually paid for by the licence fee).