A wealth of information about Deep Web (56K WARNING; ALSO DISTURBING CONTENT)

First of all, those of you who come across this post undoubtedly want to know just what the fuck the Deep Web is... This article should help to explain it a little bit..

A wealth of information about the Deep Web Part 2 (More information, slightly less disturbing shit, 56K WARNING)

http://www.businessinsider.com/tor-silk-road-deep-web-2013-3?op=1

The average person is only aware of a fraction of the Internet.

There is more content out there than any conventional browser can access. These sites are termed
"Deep Web" or "Undernet." They exist outside the scope of Google, Facebook, and your RSS reader. It's the digital equivalent of a thriving city that's been domed over and cordoned off.

Click here to jump straight to our tour of the Deep Web >

These sites are locked down so tightly that you need a special browser to access them. It's called the Tor browser, and it offers you an entirely new way of connecting to the Internet.

Where conventional web browsers like Chrome and Firefox make no effort to conceal your location
or identity, Tor is built upon the idea of preserving anonymity as aggressively as possible.

What is Tor?

Tor, originally an acronym for "The Onion Router," is an anonymity network designed to keep your identity and location completely secure as you browse the web. When you use the Tor browser (a free download), volunteer servers around the world route your internet traffic from server to server before finally delivering you your content. On top of this evasive routing, data is encrypted a number of times as it travels to you.

Exploring the Deep Web

Michael Bergman of BrightPlanet puts it succinctly: "Searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean. While a great deal may be caught in the net, there is still a wealth of information that is deep, and therefore, missed."

Using the Tor browser unlocks the door to a whole weird and wild world you never would have guessed existed online. Where Google helps you find the needle, Tor lets you "explore the haystack."

There is lots of promise in Tor's value – people use it to protect their communications, to research
sensitive topics, and to access information they might otherwise not have access to (if a country is behind a firewall, for example). By guaranteeing such a high level of anonymity, Tor lends itself well to information freedom activists, libertarians, and those who simply want to take their Internet safety to the extreme.

But with such anonymizing power made available for free, some less-than-legal (and even downright malicious) operations claim to operate successfully.

How To Remain Connected If Your Internet Gets Shut Off

http://www.movements.org/how-to/entry/how-to-prepare-for-an-internet-connection-cut-off/

Step 1. 

Keep all your outmoded technology - it may come in handy. If you live in a country likely to experience shut down of internet service providers at the behest of the government, keep in mind that tools like modems and even fax machines might be useful again. You can use a modem to access the web via dial-up provided you have a working telephone line. As in Egypt during the January 25 uprising, supporters can make available international numbers that you can dial into to avoid your local ISPs (since they will be shut down). You'll also need an international dial in number, a working phone line, and bluetooth equipped cell phone and computer.
Stay tuned to the Telecomix activists' network, which began providing disconnected people with dial up links to the WWW when Egypt lost its connection, and again in Libya a month later.

• Click here to see the Google Speak 2 Tweet number for Libya 
• Click here to see one free dialup number for Libya (note the username and password (they're the same))
• Click here to see another free dialup number for Libya (note the username and password (they're the same))

Share widely!

Step 2.

Take all your contacts out of the cloud. It's a good idea to make sure you have a list of your contacts' emails printed out and readily available. For example, the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page prepared for a possible Facebook cut-off in Egypt by asking supporters to share their email addresses and other contact information on a Google spreadsheet.
Most email clients let you easily export and download your contacts. Learn how to export Gmail contacts and Yahoo! Mail contacts.

Step 3. 

Gather contacts' phone numbers and write them down. Make sure to have a phone tree prepared ahead of time. A phone tree is "a prearranged, pyramid-shaped system for activating a group of people by telephone." Your contacts are divided into different groups with each group having a coordinator. These coordinators will be responsible for calling other members.
Start with those in your network with the biggest reach, for example community leaders such as politicians, imams, priests or rabbis, and then contact supporters with smaller networks but who you can count on to take to the streets and contact others

Step 4.

CB Radio and ham radios can be used to communicate. A CB ("citizens band") two-way radio service allows for communication over short distances. You don't need a license to operate one.
Ham radios--or amateur radios--are non-commercial and use designated radio bands to transmit communications. They are commonly used for voice transmissions and morse code. The requirements for receiving an amateur radio license vary country to country, so you will need to check what type of license you need to obtain. Ham radio signals are harder for governments to track and block. Learn more about becoming a ham radio operator with Wired's how-to wiki.
There is an active ham radio community that you can tap into right now and work with to develop a contingency plan for getting information out of your country in the event of a net shut down.

Step 5.

Use a fax machine to send and receive documents. Many printers now also come with fax machines built in, or you can use a standalone machine. Both parties need working phone lines and fax machines.

Step 6. 

Prepare a local or "ad hoc" network connecting devices to each other even without the internet. Here are different ways to do this:

Turn to FidoNet, a networking system that can be used for communication between bulletin board systems. Mail and files can be exchanged via modems using a proprietary protocol. You must meet the technical requirements to join FidoNet. 

Check out Daihinia, an app that extends the range of a network of devices that aren't connected to the larger internet but are connected to each other. Adding a chat client, like Pidgin, to this allows activists to talk to one another.

Look into how you might be able to harness other chat clients as well. On a Mac you can use the "Rendezvous" feature in iChat to communicate with anyone on the network. In Windows use a third party app like Trillian, and Linux has a bunch of 3rd party apps you can use - note that this does require some technical knowledge, which is why it is all the more important to prepare in advance. 

Packet radio is a radio communications protocol that lets you create long distance wireless networks between devices like ham radios - if you look into this option before hand, you might be able to create a network using radios.

Get involved with OPENMESH, a new project launched by investor Shervin Pishevar. So far, the forum is working as a place for engineers to offer solutions for building a mesh network in Egypt. 

Step 7. 

Get Twitter messages redirected to your phone and send Tweets by text. Make sure to link your mobile phone to your Twitter account and locate the Twitter short code for your country. Then you can send a text message containing your Tweet to that short code and it will be posted to your profile.

Step 8.

Have a basic radio on hand so that you can still listen to news. Portable scanners are also helpful for receiving police, fire, and rescue reports. They can be purchased online or at specialty electronics stores and usually cost around $100 USD. Walkie-talkies are handheld, two-way portable radios that can be used to communicate between two people within a short distance (usually at a range around 15-20 miles). A basic walkie-talkie is pretty cheap to purchase.

Step 9. 

Check with neighbors and friends who may use different internet service providers (ISPs) and see if their connections are still up. For example, in Egypt one ISP (Noor) remained online when all other ISPs cut service.

Step 10. 

Did all this, but still no connection? Landlines might still work. If they do, as we've seen in Egypt and Libya during the spring of 2010, an activist network like Telecomix  may be providing dial up links to the global web

NSA masqueraded as Google to spy on web users - report

http://rt.com/news/nsa-disguised-google-spy-801/

The NSA used ‘man in the middle’ hack attacks to impersonate Google and fool web users, leaks have revealed. The technique circumvents encryption by redirecting users to a copycat site which relays all the data entered to NSA data banks.

Brazilian television network Globo News released a report based on classified data divulged by former CIA worker Edward Snowden on Sunday. The report itself blew the whistle on US government spying on Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, but hidden in amongst the data was information the NSA had impersonated Google to get its hands on user data.

Globo TV showed slides from a 2012 NSA presentation explaining how the organization intercepts data and re-routes it to NSA central. One of the convert techniques the NSA uses to do this is a ‘man in the middle’ (MITM) hack attack.

This particular method of intercepting internet communications is quite common among expert hackers as it avoids having to break through encryption. Essentially, NSA operatives log into a router used by an internet service provider and divert ‘target traffic’ to a copycat MITM site, whereupon all the data entered is relayed to the NSA. The data released by Edward Snowden and reported on by Globo News suggests the NSA carried out these attacks disguised as Google.

When the news broke about the NSA gathering information through internet browsers, tech giants such as Google and Yahoo denied complicity, maintaining they only handover data if a formal request is issued by the government.

"As for recent reports that the US government has found ways to circumvent our security systems, we have no evidence of any such thing ever occurring. We provide our user data to governments only in accordance with the law," said Google spokesperson Jay Nancarrow to news site Mother Jones.

Google, along with Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo, has filed a lawsuit against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to allow them to make public all the data requests made by the NSA.

“Given the important public policy issues at stake, we have also asked the court to hold its hearing in open rather than behind closed doors. It's time for more transparency," Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado, and the director of public policy and government affairs, Pablo Chavez, wrote in a blog post on Monday.

The tech giants implicated in NSA’s global spying program have denied criticism that they could have done more to resist NSA spying. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, claimed that speaking out about the NSA’s activities would have amounted to ‘treason’ at a press conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

In Yahoo’s defense, she argued that the company had been very skeptical of the NSA’s requests to disclose user data and had resisted whenever possible. Mayer concluded that it was more realistic to work within the system,” rather than fight against it.