Inside the Dark Web turns to the topic of internet surveillance concerning the pros and cons of the ability for everything that passes over the immense World Wide Web being able to be watched, recorded, and analyzed.
Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited as the inventor of the Internet itself, explains that he sees the dangers being presented as the World Wide Web develops over the time. He makes the point that we have to understand, in regards to surveillance, that it is not people that are monitoring our internet activity in the initial tiers of these security agencies’ efforts – it is computers, or the algorithms housed on them, that flag behavior designated as worth looking into further and then alert human security officials that perhaps there is reason to delve deeper.
The film’s focus turns from government surveillance to that being conducted by commercial entities – big business acquiring as much information as it can about your search, traffic, and interest-related habits that allow them to target paid advertising into the path of your digital trailblazing for products that you just might be willing to hand over some of your hard earned money for. The aforementioned government agencies often acquire this information for their own monitoring purposes as well.