The mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey has called for stricter controls and oversight on social media and the internet for children under the age of 16.
Esther Ghey is campaigning for teenagers to be given special phones that can’t access social media and can alert parents of inappropriate activity.
Her call comes after one of Brianna Ghey’s killers, Scarlett Jenkinson, admitted that she liked watching videos of violence and torture on the dark web.
Jenkinson and fellow teenager Eddie Ratcliffe were both 15 when they killed Brianna, 16, with a hunting knife on February 11 last year.
What is the dark web?
The high-profile case has sparked renewed interest in the dark web, or the dark net, an intentionally hidden part of the internet that can’t be accessed using regular search engines such as Google.
Although it is legal to use in the UK, this relatively small segment of the vast web has become infamous as a hotbed of illegal trade.
Most of the illicit activity on the dark web takes place in so-called “darknet” marketplaces, where anonymous users buy and sell everything from guns to drugs to child pornography using crypto-currency.
What is a red room?
Giving evidence in court during the Ghey murder trial, Jenkinson said she liked to watch “a mixture of violent stuff, including murder and torture” on the dark web.
Two months before the killing, Jenkinson sent Ratcliffe a video that was an advert for an underground site for people who like “rape, snuff, torture and murder”.
She then told him: “I love watching torture vids. Real ones on the dark web.” Jenkinson said she had found a good online “red room”, where people are tortured and murdered for an audience of viewers via the dark web.
The existence of so-called red rooms is open to debate, with some experts claiming they are nothing but an urban myth.
Writing on his Substack blog, tech writer and broadcaster Jamie Bartlett says “I have spent a lot of time on the dark net. I have never seen a functioning ‘red room’. Nor have I seen links to functioning red rooms, or any other type of murder or torture videos.”
Citing fellow dark web expert Eileen Ormsby, Bartlett writes: “Red room sites definitely do exist in the dark net… but… there is no evidence any of them actually work."
He added: “In fact they are most likely scams, designed to lure people into spending Bitcoin for live streams that don't exist.”
What is Tor?
The dark web can be reached using special software that cloaks a user’s identity and encrypts their data.
One of these tools is Tor, short for The Onion Router, which was originally developed to protect sensitive government communications by the US Navy.
Unlike traditional web browsers, Tor allows users to connect to websites anonymously by bouncing connections between its network of global computers. This approach is designed to prevent a Tor user’s traffic from being tracked back to the device they’re using to browse the web.
Anyone can access Tor by downloading the Tor browser. Alternatively, the Brave web browser also features a Tor browsing mode similar to the Incognito modes offered on other browsers.
In the words of the College of Policing: “There is a common belief that the dark net is a complex, secretive environment that involves encryption and hackers, where child abusers and drug dealers can work anonymously with little chance of getting caught.
"But using the dark net is actually no more complicated than using apps on your phone.”
Who uses Tor?
While it has become synonymous with the dark web, Tor is also an important tool for those looking to maintain their anonymity online. Whistleblowers, political activists and journalists can use Tor and services of its ilk to freely browse the internet.
In the past, many established organisations have launched websites on the Tor network, including the BBC and Facebook.
According to Tor, its browser has 52,786 users in the UK, making it the tenth most popular country for the tool. By comparison, the top country on the list, Germany, has more than 2.4 million Tor users.
