"Yet while anonymity offers a potential bulwark against surveillance, for those who do not wish to be watched, it has also helped in the development of that part of the online world known as the dark web.
Sites on the dark web like Silk Road have used Tor technology to hide their location and yet still be available to users who wish to visit them.
The dark web has now become a focus for law enforcement officers who believe it is facilitating a variety of illegal activities including financial crime and child abuse."
(Mike Radford, 3 September 2014, BBC News)
Fig.1 "Inside the Dark Web" 2014, television programme, BBC Two – Horizon, Series 51, Episode 4, first broadcast: 3 September 2014.
"The controversial spy laws have been passed by Parliament by 61 votes to 59. The laws were drafted in the wake of a succession of blunders by New Zealand's foreign intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, which included illegally spying on German internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom. Earlier, Prime Minister John Key acknowledged new surveillance laws have 'alarmed' some people but blames the Government's opponents for stoking their fears. Legislation giving the GCSB the power to spy on New Zealanders was debated in Parliament today ahead of being passed into law."
(Tracy Watkins, 21 August 2013, Fairfax NZ News)
"Echelon is a system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept and process international communications passing via communications satellites. It is one part of a global surveillance systems that is now over 50 years old. Other parts of the same system intercept messages from the Internet, from undersea cables, from radio transmissions, from secret equipment installed inside embassies, or use orbiting satellites to monitor signals anywhere on the earth's surface. The system includes stations run by Britain [at Menwith Hill], Canada, Australia [near Geraldton] and New Zealand [at Waihope], in addition to those operated by the United States. Although some Australian and British stations do the same job as America's Echelon sites, they are not necessarily called 'Echelon' stations. But they all form part of the same integrated global network using the same equipment and methods to extract information and intelligence illicitly from millions of messages every day, all over the world."
(Duncan Campbell)
This programme is a surveillance tool for data networks based on the programme DCS1000 that was developed by the FBI to perform electronic wiretaps. CarnivorePE listens to all Internet traffic (email, web surfing, etc.) on a specific local network and animates, diagnoses, or interprets the network traffic.