Chief Prognosticator

Terrorists on the Deep Web

First we need to define what is the “Deep Web”? The Deep Web is the content of the Internet which is not easily accessible for one or more reasons. These reasons include password protected sites, sites that have ZERO incoming links, or sites which are meta-created and change very often. In contrast to the Web we normally see and use (the so-called “Surface Web”), the Deep Web is a vastly unexplored and unknown area. It is estimated that only 1% of all information on the Internet is in the Surface Web. That leave thousands and thousands of Terabytes hidden from view.

The Deep Web is of great interest to many in the scientific and security community because it is seen as a harbor for Terrorists. How do you find and shut down these Deep Web sites used by Terrorists if you can’t find them? Well that was one of the topics of conversation on a recent episode of Talk of the Nation Science Friday on NPR. Listen to the podcast online. In the show not only the Deep Web (or Dark Web, at the guests refer to it as) is discussed but also how computer scientists and mathematicians are using social network modeling to discern hierarchical structures of terrorist organizations. Very interesting!