The Gatekeeper of Top Secrets: Julian Assange

Since July 2012, Julian Assange has claimed asylum in an Ecuadorian Embassy in London, England – facing daily threats of extradition to the US while also facing charges in the U.K. But who is Julian Assange and why is he such a huge threat to world governments?

Julian Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, the notorious site that houses top secret leaked document and can only be accessed by the Dark Web software tools like Tor. Wikileaks wasn’t built in a day and neither was the internet, but his website has caused much controversy from meddling in elections to tearing down the fabric of “trust” in world leaders.

Assange is a highly skilled programmer, freedom & open opportunity of information pioneer and sees himself as a targeted political outcast. Born in 1971, he was raised in Queensland, Australia, Assange graduated from the city’s Central University – where he focused his studies on programming, arithmetic and material sciences.

Wikileaks, started in 2006, is a platform that allows whistle-blowers to share their documents and resources anonymously and openly to the site, minimizing their threat of conviction as much as possible. However, Assange and his platform became instant trending topic of debate when Chelsea Manning, a now convicted U.S. Military whistleblower, provided the site with documents pertaining to American forces killing unarmed Iraqis from the ongoing war in the Middle East. Assange has been known for releasing documents on Guantanamo Bay prison standards & procedures, the dumping of hazardous materials and waste into West Africa’s Ivory Coast as well as certain Scientology manuals that exposed the inner workings of the “religion” that’s wrapped up in money laundering schemes with top Hollywood celebrities.

The biggest leak that occurred was during the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Wikileaks had posted two sets of hacked emails from John Podesta’s, one of Clinton’s top aides, personal email accounts as well as the Democratic National Committees servers – Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails released to the public made it seem as though they were conspiring against the other Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders. This being released so close to the opening of the ballots made it almost impossible to do damage control and not allow this to be a “win” for the Republican party.

Wikileaks prides itself on providing the world with the “facts” and allowing the people to form their own opinions and judgement on what’s going on behind their backs. Assange wanted the platform to be a place where no person can hide from – and it seems as though there will be plenty more whistle-blowers where that came from. What will Wikileaks release next? It’s hard to say how much information they have provided and how much they have kept in the dark, but it’s safe to say that they have a lot of top secret documents just waiting to be published at the right time.

Ross Ulbricht: The Silk Road

You may have never heard of the name Ross Ulbricht, but this 28 year old Texan who has a huge background of libertarian ideology and being a physicist within the Silicon Valley community has quite the fame – but it’s not for developing the newest tech craze; Ulbricht propelled a start up business that has never been heard of before, for which he savvy called it the Silk Road. Like him and his pack of Silicon Valley junkies, Ulbricht held a general goal for which he believed meant to be helping the world and propel it into a functioning modern society.

Within the coming years after forming the Silk Road on the Dark Web, this new market place had began to take a new twist on an old idea – it began offering medications, military grade firearms, and even toxic substances that would be punishable by federal law to possess. The Silk Road was racking in the cash flow, increasing it’s value every hour the dark web site continued to be spread around. Ulbricht became bigger than the worlds most known drug cartels, he changed how people could get illicit drugs, medications and banned items – he’s Pablo Escobar 2.0 (although he did not murder anyone).

Ulbricht’s general push into the market was to win the war on drugs—by removing control from the federal administration and federal intelligence authorities, and enabling the general population to figure out and have a say into what they put into their bodies. At the start of the Silk Roads days, it was simply a commercial center for substances that were of the moderate scale, an example of the psychedelics being weed and shrooms. But it wasn’t all about drugs, it was also a platform for which like minded people could express themselves in discussions and open forums, it was a community as well.

This obviously forbidden fruit didn’t take long to have a certain escalation of items on the “free” market: powerful opiods like fentaynl and the highly addictive drug called heroin, body parts, and high powered weapons in all calibers. But Ulbricht continued to agree that the supply will always be allowed if there is a consensual demand for it.

After getting apprehended at a local library, Ulbricht is now sitting behind bars for life – a sentence that his judge placed on him as a warning to any copycat Silk Road communities and markets whom want to continue their illicit acts. It took authorities years to be able to track Ulbricht down, since the Silk Road can only be accessed by encrypted software platforms like Tor browser – in layman’s terms, you don’t leave any crumbs for the fuzz to sniff out since it’s end-to-end encrypted. This doesn’t mean the authorities don’t also have access to the dark web as well, as most of the sellers on the market are actually under cover authorities waiting for you to purchase.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-drugs-murder

https://www.biography.com/people/ross-ulbricht

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/silk-road-creator-ross-ulbricht-loses-life-sentence-appeal/

 

Sex-trafficking: Transnational Crime

Sex trafficking is a type of present day slavery that exists all through the United States and all around the globe – it’s one of the biggest transnational crimes there is, and it’s only increasing. Sex traffickers utilize an attitude of viciousness, black mailing, abducting, forced human slavery, and different types of pressure to urge grown-ups and even youngsters to participate in business sex acts without wanting to or being able to back out.

Under U.S. government law, any minor younger than 18 years old that prompted into this is a casualty and victim of sex trafficking—paying little heed to whether the trafficker utilized power, misrepresentation/black mail, or intimidation.

The circumstances that sex trafficked people confront differ significantly and are on a case-by-case circumstances which makes it very hard to track down the criminals and their victims. Different victims turn out to be those of whom are essentially owned by another authority figure, then at that point powers or controls them into prostitution with zero means of en escape route.

Others are attracted in with bogus guarantees of work, for example, how females will do “cam” sessions online to expose them more and advertise their body. Some are compelled to offer sex by their own family members, specially their parents, or other relatives with whom hold higher statuses in their life. Trafficking can last for a couple of days or weeks in length, or the victims may stay in the same trafficking circumstance for a considerable length of time in a never ending cycle.

The people that fall into this deplorable crime operation of sex trafficking can be from the U.S., outside nationals and aliens, females, males, young girls, and people whom identify as LGBTQ and transgender. People whom represent a weak or powerless persona are often focused by traffickers, including runaway and destitute youth, and people of whom show signs of abusive behavior at home, rape or molestation on a consistent level, ongoing and contentious war, or major social segregation.

Sex trafficking happens in a scope of settings including counterfeit “back rub” places that offer the happy ending, by means of online promotions or an escorting business, in private houses of which would be declared a brothel, in the city or at truck stops, or at lodgings and motels.

What is Sex Trafficking?

http://www.endslaverynow.org/learn/slavery-today/sex-trafficking

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/nation-now/2018/01/30/sex-trafficking-column/1073459001/

ISIS: We Want You!

ISIS utilizes online networking like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to contact people from across the globe, even targeting the United States, something that has parents worried. ISIS utilizes it for enlistment and publicity for their various stances on Muslim life and rule, and they utilize it at an extremely high standard that has never been seen before.

In the event that you are an offended and disappointed in the treatment you receive as a Muslim, you can locate a very thoughtful ear in an ISIS “promoter”. They will send you things in writing and build connections to special material about ISIS and empower and some of your friends along the way of radicalization. They have YouTube recordings with high creation quality, very popular dramatizing music and smooth graphic designs. They know how to form a perfect message, comparing extreme looking warriors with cute little fluffy cats and messing about like innocent rough-housing boys. They influence it to make jihad look appealing, more energizing, and all the more alluring to an online group of onlookers who are simply fed up of their current status in life.

For some this implies making a trip to places like Syria or Iraq. Utilizing the popular free messaging app called WhatsApp and other scrambled correspondences applications, an ISIS “promoter” via web-based networking media will send you contact data for an ISIS scout, who will vet you and send you down the pipeline of this radical school of thought. Here you might be reached by a bootlegger. He will instruct you to travel to Istanbul or elsewhere in the Middle East regions. There you will be reached by another ISIS agent, grabbed, and pirated into Syria and Iraq to join the fight against allied forces and continue to send the message of jihad and spread the word of ISIS.

In certain cases, as we have seen these past few years, they may motivate and assist you in acting alone within the United States or in the European Union. Sometimes they will be joined by other fear-based recruits and you will be sent small amounts of materials to make explosive devices. This “lone wolf” type of attacks have been popping up more and more as we progress into a more digital era of the modern world.

Maybe the most hard to catch are those alleged “lone wolves,” people who act without any help from ISIS, however are just roused by all the propaganda that is being spread across the internet and social media – they allow themselves to become brain washed into taking matters within their own hands. Federal agents and the intelligence community may have zero leads on that “lone wolf” up until the attack has commenced and finished, which is very demoralizing for many law enforcement who try to get ahead of such attacks. Why? All things considered, they haven’t spoken with ISIS or ISIS supporters and it doesn’t seem like we can get the opportunity to do so either. They may have quite recently devoured the purposeful publicity that the ISIS recruiters have spout out and trust the message that they have been given, and thus are motivated to assault as they have finally found that purpose.

Right now, it’s a losing battle. Every time one of the tech giants shut down an ISIS propaganda account – 10 more will be created and used to radicalize youth. The millennial generation and Gen Z are very tech savvy and grew up with so much technology at their finger tips; we are at war with our youth – and it’s costing so many lives.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/02/us/mississippi-isis-muhammad-dakhlalla-interview/index.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/recruiting-for-isis-60-minutes-2/

ISIS Recruiting: It’s Not (Just) Ideological

The Dark Web – Are You At Risk?

It’s a little known place online where things like your Equifax account and your stolen personal identities (even your signatures for checks) get sold to thousands of different buyers looking for an easy way to grab your hard earned money.

When you require something and you do not wish to go in person, you may go to an online commercial product hubs like Amazon, Ebay, Google and many more. Be that as it may, when a criminal needs something they go to a place much more vile and unknown, shrouded in a sense of secrecy: the Dark Web.

The Dark Web is around the world, it goes all over the place, universally and almost anybody can get to it, it’s simply one more online market that but only a select few truly understand how to access its fullest potential.

But everything in that market is illicit, if you’re heading into the Dark Web – it’s not to buy the latest power tools or a brand new car. You can discover top grade medications, military grade weapons, and you can also discover the darker side – kiddie porn. It’s likewise a place where highly skilled programmers go for when they want to be hired to “contract hack”.

You may even keep running into ISIS insurgents in this hidden layer of the web that can be only be connected into by utilizing an uncommon, and sometimes unheard of by the average Joe, the Tor browsing software. It’s almost like the Amazon for the black market and the underground dealers.

Do you want to purchase a rocket launcher? What about a couple grenades or some C4 explosives? If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, how about finding the number one arms dealer in Europe to get that mint condition 4k gold AK47? There are even sites that offer hacked Lyft and Uber accounts that are filled with free rides and credits that were stolen from hacked users of the ride sharing service.

After doing some research on many cyber security sites on how to prevent your information from getting onto this site, I found some very helpful things to get around. Firstly, change your password frequently and ensure that your computer firewall is always turned on and is functioning properly. Many cyber security experts also say to download anti-spyware and virus software’s onto your computer to give an added layer of security. Lastly – don’t venture into sites that look like a 40-year-old man in his mothers basement created! What’s more, whatever you do – don’t have a similar password or key code for numerous accounts and databases, that’s just plain stupid.

Being a person who is semi-computer savvy, I know of one site that you can type your email into and find out if your email and personal data have been placed onto the dark web – saving you a lot of time and narrowing down sites that have been breached. That site can be reached here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Likewise remember, in case you’re on the Dark Web and are itching for some of that top grade Filipino heroin – know that the FBI is also joining you in that search, and they have much more powerful resources to track you and the dealer down – so be careful out there because the FBI is lurking in the dark corners of the Dark Web.

https://www.dhs.gov/topic/cybersecurity

https://www.fcc.gov/general/cybersecurity-small-business

https://staysafeonline.org/