The Deep Web's Dark Side
The Deep Web is not just a place where users can find privacy and evade censorship. It is also home to certain activities that are not entirely legal, and that ultimately aim to finance even more serious crimes. A year ago, DARPA announced Memex, an advanced search engine designed to combat, among other things, human trafficking. In recent days, several news outlets gained access to Memex demos, and to be honest, it looks impressive.
In an era as hyperconnected as today's, we still have missing women, containers that vanish with people trying to enter a country, and faces of children on milk cartons or electricity bills. Human trafficking is nothing less than 21st century slavery, a flagrant violation of human rights, and a crime of such gravity that it must be fought beyond flags, borders, and legislations. The problem is that those responsible for this crime have turned to the Web, or more specifically, to the Deep Web. How do you investigate a place that by nature rejects any form of indexing and records? How do you maneuver with temporary portals and seemingly anonymous ads? DARPA proposed an idea: create a new paradigm in search engines.
How Memex Works
Memex's official name is Memex, and a year later, the search engine has entered the news in a big way. It all starts with a search, a simple click on a link, or an email address. Traditional search engines can help to a certain extent, but Memex reveals its strength when it comes to discovering common elements among several links, which extend to hundreds of sites and ad networks, without the user having to review them one by one. These elements range from phone numbers to physical addresses, but Memex also has a system to generate data maps, exposing the movement in time and space of those who post ads to promote and move their “merchandise”.
Real-World Impact and Future Plans
The New York City Human Trafficking Response Unit has made Memex its go-to tool, and acknowledges that the technology has already been applied in more than twenty investigations so far. Needless to say, Memex is not limited to human trafficking, and could be used for other kinds of crimes (after all, crime is 'organized'). A critical aspect of Memex's operation is that it works with public information, thus avoiding any conflict regarding privacy and personal security that might arise. For now, the amount of available public data is enormous, but DARPA is willing to pour more resources into exploring things in greater depth, such as the Tor network. What does the future hold? Image analysis, including the recognition of obscured faces.
Source: CBS News
