A couple of weeks ago, Alex Bloor and I gave a talk to the Society for Computers and Law, called "Demystifying 'The Dark Net'".

As with the "basics of tech" sessions that we have done before, the aim of this talk was to break the technology down in a readily-understandable way and, in doing so, unpick some of the many myths about 'The Dark Net'. In particular, the myth that the "Dark Net" is an intrinsically bad thing, only used by criminals.

We covered:

• a basic overview of Tor
• the differences between Tor and Tor Browser Bundle
• Tor onion / hidden services, and their use by organisations you might have heard of
• other practical applications of .onion technology (e.g. NAT traversal, encryption without certification)

The SCL recorded the session, and has kindly agreed to make it available to everyone.

You can access it via Vimeo through the SCL's website (it's video number 11; search for "Dark Net" to jump straight to it), or on YouTube (sorry).

You can, of course, access decoded.legal's main website within Tor: http://dlegal66uj5u2dvcbrev7vv6fjtwnd4moqu7j6jnd42rmbypv3coigyd.onion

You can also access this blog within Tor: http://chel4ai7y4xmkr3kgrwfddc5jjzjfhga7dult6btzola2eogsujiziad.onion