Analysis Of David Kushner's The Darknet: Is The Government Destroying The Internet

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The Darknet is a place where criminals and terrorists go to collude about how they can make the world and the people in it bend to their will, right? Wrong. While most people see the Darknet as a place where malicious individuals lurk and try to drag good, hard-working people down to their level, that is not all there is to it, nothing is that black and white anymore. In David Kushner’s Rolling Stone article, “The Darknet: Is the Government Destroying the Wild West of the Internet?”, the Darknet is introduced as a place where individuals, both good and bad, can browse the web anonymously without worrying about governments or advertisement agencies following their every move. True to his title, Kushner explores the topic of the government’s …show more content…

The title of the article draws people in and puts them under the conclusion that something is happening. Westward expansion in the United States was critical in making the country what it is today, therefore saying that the government is destroying it alludes to the fact that they are preventing something big from occurring. Tor and the anonymity it provides helps people buy and sell drugs, among other things, but also helps keep activists, like Nima Fatemi, alive. Others who were not able to keep their identities hidden while exhibiting their radical opinions ended up dead or in prison, something that could have been avoided if no one knew who they were. The government is at odds with itself regarding the dark web, one branch created Tor in order to keep government officials anonymous and safe online, while another branch battles to crack its code and find the people that maliciously use it. The author uses the accounts of various individuals that were involved in both the creation and use of Tor and Memex, the program created to store information gathered from Tor so it can be used to uncover the data at a later time, to offer both sides of the story. However, by the end of the article Kushner

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