![]() A popular social networking site was abuzz about the “deep web,” this seemingly mythical internet underworld supposedly filled with drug lords, pedophiles, hackers and hit men. ![]() Yesterday, some 15 years later, I had a similar experience. I had grown up around water, learning to ski not long after learning to walk, but breathing under water just felt strange, unnatural. As I wiped the chlorine from my eyes the instructor asked, “what happened? Why didn’t you just breathe?” I looked around the pool, seeing only the legs of the instructor before I lunged upward for air. The mask covering most of my face, I plunged my head below the surface in an effort to learn what it feels like to be able to breathe under water, step one in training for scuba diving certification. The Deep Web is similar to an iceberg in that it’s not visible from the surface.Īt 14 I stood chest-deep in a cold swimming pool with a scuba tank strapped to my back. "Through the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions," IRS Criminal Investigation chief Don Fort explained in the release, "IRS-CI special agents were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, identify the administrator of the website and ultimately track down the website server’s physical location in South Korea.Zina Deretsky / National Science Foundation ![]() It was also blockchain analysis, the process of analyzing Bitcoin's public ledger to identify patterns and in some cases tie cryptocurrency addresses to real-world names, that allowed law enforcement to locate the server hosting the child-exploitation site in the first place. among other places - were allegedly buying access to child sexual exploitation videos with bitcoin. Those arrested - which include residents of Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington State, and Washington, D.C. The site's landing page, after it was seized by law enforcement. ![]() The DOJ notes that it discovered over 250,000 unique videos - 45 percent of which "contain new images that have not been previously known to exist" - when it seized the site's server. This website, dubbed "Welcome to Video," was reportedly a large operation. "The complaint alleges that law enforcement was able to trace payments of bitcoin to the Darknet site by following the flow of funds on the blockchain," reads the press release. "The virtual currency accounts identified in the complaint were allegedly used by 24 individuals in five countries to fund the website and promote the exploitation of children." That's because, as we can never repeat often enough, contrary to popular belief, bitcoin is only pseudonymous. In other words, authorities were able to trace bitcoin payments made to the site in question back to the alleged perpetrators. According to a Department of Justice press release on Wednesday, the individuals in question were tracked down with the help of blockchain analysis. Three hundred and thirty-seven alleged members of a massive dark web child pornography website were reminded of that fact last year when they were arrested by a global coalition of law enforcement. ![]() Say it with me: Bitcoin is not anonymous. ![]()
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