A hacker is using his powers for good, trying to rid the Internet of one of its greatest scourges — child pornography.
The unidentified hacker is taking child pornography off a secretive part of the web called the “Deep Web.”
The Deep Web is a hidden section of the Internet that can only be accessed through Tor, a web browser that makes you anonymous. It is often used to avoid surveillance and to keep your privacy online, but as a result of this, on the Deep Web “you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,” as Obi-Wan Kenobi would say.
Some of these scum are pedophiles who browse the underage porn section, also known as “Hard Candy.” Recently, though, the “homepage” of the Deep Web, Hidden Wiki, was taken over by a hacker known as Intangir who is behind Doxbin, a group of people who describe themselves “as judge, jury, and executioner for all matters relating to Onionland.”
In an email to Vice, Intangir said of the hack that “the opportunity presented itself, so it was taken. Doxbin has always been about owning and exposing people with poor opsec (operations security).”
When asked why he decided to take out child porn on the Hidden Wiki, Intangir said the aim was to achieve something good while exploiting the Hidden Wiki’s terrible security.
While you may think that everyone sees Doxbin’s taking down of the child porn on the Hidden Wiki as a good thing, it has ruffled a few feathers of users who see it as a stab at the free nature of the Deep Web and an act of censorship.
The site was eventually put back online, but with the explanation that it was only done under the condition that child porn will not appear on the Hidden Wiki anymore.
When asked what he thought about the claims that this is censorship on the “free” part of the Internet, Intangir said: “If someone added a pro-NSA page to the wiki, they would probably edit it or at least spam the talk page about having it taken down, yet they’re OK with cp (child porn) links.”
This article originally appeared on news.com.au.