For the “secret” classification to actually appear, the state needs compelling reasons. Most of these cases are state secrets. But many personal archives of famous people become secret at the request of heirs who do not want their ancestors to appear in an unflattering light.

The most secret documents steel in 1938

A radical change in the matter of classifying information occurred in 1918, when the Main Directorate of Archives was organized under the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. The brochure “Save the Archives” published by Bonch-Bruevich was distributed through “ROSTA Windows” to all government institutions, where, in particular, there was a provision on the secrecy of certain information. And in 1938, management of all archival affairs passed to the NKVD of the USSR, which classified a huge amount of information, numbering tens of thousands of files, as secret. Since 1946, this department received the name of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and since 1995 - the FSB. Since 2016, all archives have been reassigned directly to the President of Russia.

Questions for the royal family

The so-called famous Novoromanovsky archive of the royal family has not been fully declassified, most of which was initially classified by the Bolshevik leadership, and after the 90s, some of the archival documents were made widely public. It is noteworthy that the work of the archive itself was strictly confidential. And one could guess about its activities only from indirect documents of employees: certificates, passes, payroll records, personal files of employees - this is what remains of the work of the secret Soviet archive. But the correspondence between Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna has not been fully disclosed. Palace materials concerning the relationship between the court and ministries and departments during the First World War are also not available.

KGB Archives

Most KGB archives are classified on the grounds that the operational investigative activities of many agents can still cause damage to counterintelligence work and reveal the methodology of its work. Some successful cases in the field of terrorism, espionage, and smuggling have also been mothballed. This also applies to cases related to intelligence and operational work in the Gulag camps.

Stalin's affairs

1,700 files compiled in the 11th inventory of the Stalin Foundation were transferred from the archive of the President of the Russian Federation to the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, of which about 200 cases were classified as secret. The cases of Yezhov and Beria are of considerable interest, but they were published only in parts, and there is still no complete information on the cases of “executed enemies of the people.”

Confirmation that many more documents remain to be declassified is the fact that in 2015, at four meetings of the Interdepartmental Expert Commission on the Declassification of Documents under the Governor of St. Petersburg, 4,420 cases for the years 1919-1991 were completely declassified. Party archives are also “secret”. Of considerable interest to researchers are the resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars, the resolutions of the Council of Ministers, and the decisions of the Politburo. But most of the party archives are classified.

New archives and new secrets

The main task of the Presidential Archive established in 1991 Russian Federation was a consolidation of documents from the former archive of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, and then the subsequent period during the reign of Boris Yeltsin. The Presidential Archives contains about 15 million different documents, but only a third of them, five million, are in the public domain today.

Secret personal archives of Vladi, Vysotsky, Solzhenitsyn

The personal funds of Soviet leader Nikolai Ryzhkov, Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi are closed to the general public. Do not think that documents are classified as “secret” only with the help of government officials. For example, the personal fund of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, is in secret storage because the heir, the writer’s wife Natalya Dmitrievna, personally decides whether or not to make the documents public. She motivated her decision by the fact that documents often contain poems by Solzhenitsyn that are not particularly good, and she would not want others to know about this.

In order to make public the materials of the investigative case in which Solzhenitsyn ended up in the Gulag, it was necessary to obtain the consent of two archives - the Ministry of Defense and the Lubyanka.

Plan for "secrets"

The head of Rosarkhiv, Andrei Artizov, said in one of his interviews: “We declassify documents in accordance with our national interests. There is a declassification plan. To make a decision on declassification, three or four experts with knowledge are needed foreign languages, historical context, legislation on state secrets.”

Special Commission on Declassification

In order to declassify materials, a special commission was created in each archive. Usually - from three people who decided on what basis to give or not give wide publicity to this or that document. Secret materials are of unconditional interest to a wide range of people, but historians warn: working with archives is a delicate matter and requires certain knowledge. This is especially true for secret archival materials. Not many people have access to them - thousands of documents from the times of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union are classified for various reasons.

For the “secret” classification to actually appear, the state needs compelling reasons. Most of these cases are state secrets.
But many personal archives of famous people become secret at the request of their heirs, who do not regret making their ancestors appear in an unflattering light.

The most secret documents became in 1938

A radical change in the matter of classifying information occurred in 1918, when the Main Directorate of Archives was organized under the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. The brochure “Save the Archives” published by Bonch-Bruevich was distributed through “ROSTA Windows” to all government institutions, where, in particular, there was a provision on the secrecy of certain information.

And in 1938, management of all archival affairs passed to the NKVD of the USSR, which classified a huge amount of information, numbering tens of thousands of files, as secret. Since 1946, this department received the name of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, and since 1995 - the FSB.
Since 2016, all archives have been reassigned directly to the President of Russia.

Questions for the royal family

The so-called famous Novoromanovsky archive of the royal family has not been fully declassified, most of which was initially classified by the Bolshevik leadership, and after the 90s, some of the archival documents were made widely public. It is noteworthy that the work of the archive itself was strictly confidential. And one could guess about its activities only from indirect documents of employees: certificates, passes, payroll records, personal files of employees - this is what remains of the work of the secret Soviet archive.

But the correspondence between Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna has not been fully disclosed. Palace materials concerning the relationship between the court and ministries and departments during the First World War are also not available.

KGB Archives

Most KGB archives are classified on the grounds that the operational investigative activities of many agents can still cause damage to counterintelligence work and reveal the methodology of its work. Some successful cases in the field of terrorism, espionage, and smuggling have also been mothballed.
This also applies to cases related to intelligence and operational work in the Gulag camps.

Stalin's affairs

1,700 files compiled in the 11th inventory of the Stalin Foundation were transferred from the archive of the President of the Russian Federation to the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, of which about 200 cases were classified as secret.

The cases of Yezhov and Beria are of considerable interest, but they were published only in parts, and there is still no complete information on the cases of “executed enemies of the people.”
Confirmation that many more documents remain to be declassified is the fact that in 2015, at four meetings of the Interdepartmental Expert Commission on the Declassification of Documents under the Governor of St. Petersburg, 4,420 cases for the years 1919-1991 were completely declassified.

Party archives are also “secret”

Of considerable interest to researchers are the resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars, the resolutions of the Council of Ministers, and the decisions of the Politburo.
But most of the party archives are classified.

New archives and new secrets

The main task of the archive of the President of the Russian Federation, formed in 1991, was to combine documents from the former archive of the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, and then the subsequent period during the reign of Boris Yeltsin.
The Presidential Archives contains about 15 million different documents, but only a third of them, five million, are in the public domain today.

Secret personal archives of Vladi, Vysotsky, Solzhenitsyn

The personal funds of Soviet leader Nikolai Ryzhkov, Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi are closed to the general public.
Do not think that documents are classified as “secret” only with the help of government officials. For example, the personal fund of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, is in secret storage because the heir, the writer’s wife Natalya Dmitrievna, personally decides whether or not to make the documents public. She motivated her decision by the fact that documents often contain poems by Solzhenitsyn that are not particularly good, and she would not want others to know about this.
In order to make public the materials of the investigative case in which Solzhenitsyn ended up in the Gulag, it was necessary to obtain the consent of two archives - the Ministry of Defense and the Lubyanka.

Plan for "secrets"

The head of Rosarkhiv, Andrei Artizov, said in one of his interviews: “We declassify documents in accordance with our national interests. There is a declassification plan. To make a decision on declassification, we need three or four experts with knowledge of foreign languages, historical context, and legislation on state secrets.”

Special Commission on Declassification

In order to declassify materials in each archive, a special commission was created. Usually - from three people who decided on what basis to give or not give wide publicity to this or that document.
Secret materials are of unconditional interest to a wide range of people, but historians warn that working with archives is a delicate matter and requires certain knowledge. This is especially true for secret archival materials. Not many people have access to them - thousands of documents from the times of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union are classified for various compelling reasons.

In the 1990s, a number of Soviet-era documents that had previously been classified as “top secret” began to be made public, but the authorities, having come to their senses, again closed access to them. Apparently, many secrets of the USSR will remain inaccessible.

Classified as "top secret"

The classification of secrecy is imposed for two reasons. First and foremost, most of the documents stored in the archives are state secrets. The second reason is related to materials concerning famous personalities of the past, whose heirs do not want the details of their lives to be made public.

In 1918, something happened that today does not allow us to fully familiarize ourselves with the documents of the Soviet past. That year, Lenin received a message informing him how Red Army soldiers were indiscriminately destroying manuscripts and correspondence of famous writers. The leader immediately called the publicist Bonch-Bruevich with a request to write a brochure entitled “Save the Archives.” The brochure, which sold 50 thousand copies, bore fruit.

However, very soon Soviet officials realized that it was important not only to preserve the archives, but also to limit the access of ordinary citizens to them due to the confidentiality of the information contained in some sources.

In 1938, the management of all archival affairs came under the jurisdiction of the NKVD of the USSR, which classified a huge amount of information, numbering tens of thousands of files. Since 1946, the powers of this department were received by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and since 1995 - by the FSB of Russia. Since 2016, all archives have been reassigned directly to the President of Russia.

Stalin's affairs

Despite the fact that many documents from the Stalin era have long been declassified, some of them are still hidden away from prying eyes in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. In particular, about 200 cases from the Stalin Foundation are classified as secret. Of considerable interest to researchers are the cases of Yezhov and Beria, which were published only in parts, and there is still no complete information on the cases of the executioners who became enemies of the people.

Today, many Russians are requesting investigative files of illegally repressed citizens stored in the archives of the FSB and GARF. Access to the investigative files of repressed persons is permitted by law for relatives, as well as for other interested parties. True, the latter can receive the required documents only after the expiration of 75 years from the date of the verdict. Often, visitors to archives receive defective copies, in particular, with the names of NKVD officers blacked out.

Some researchers are confident that the NKVD files will never be declassified in full. In March 2014, the interdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets extended the secrecy period for documents of the Cheka-KGB for the years 1917-1991 for the next 30 years. This decision also included a large array of documents relating to the Great Terror of 1937-1938, which were extremely in demand by historians and relatives of victims of repression.

WWII Archives

Today, the Great Period still hides many secrets. Patriotic War. For example, there is still no publicly available summary work on the operations of the Red Army during the war with maps attached. Since the publication of the collection of archival materials “1941” in 1998, new original documents have been published in very measured doses. Moreover, researchers do not even have the right to familiarize themselves with the names of cases in the secret storage inventories.

Historian Igor Ievlev notes in this regard: “Apparently, researchers have already approached a barrier, beyond which, if overcome, completely inconvenient and, probably, even shameful and disgraceful pages can open.” real story countries".

Also, modern historians cannot familiarize themselves with the original documents recording the number of conscripts and mobilized in wartime and are still forced to rely on data from preserved conscription books - a secondary source. Unfortunately, the draft cards of recruits, the registration cards of those liable for military service in the reserve and the rank and file of the Red Army were almost all destroyed.

Not long ago, on the forum of one of the sites dedicated to soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, one of the readers shared interesting information. According to him, in one of the conversations, a former employee of the military registration and enlistment office told him a long-standing story about the complete destruction in 1953 after the death of Stalin of all service records and other primary documents for the rank and file from pre-war times until the end of the war.

What is the reason for the desire of the USSR leadership to hide data relating to mobilization on the eve of and during the Second World War? Researchers are sure: in order to hide the real losses of the USSR in the first months of the war.

KGB Archives

The KGB in the USSR, like the CIA in the USA, is an intelligence service that, during its existence, has conducted a huge number of secret operations around the world. Any state security officer will confirm that KGB business papers are rarely declassified in their original form. They are first “cleansed”, removing information that the department does not want to make public for one reason or another.

Almost all the currently known secrets of the Soviet intelligence services were published in London in 1996 thanks to a former employee of the archive department of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR Vasily Mitrokhin. The volume of the archive of secret KGB materials that Mitrokhin transferred to Great Britain was 25 thousand pages.

The published materials contain information that could hardly be published in Russia in the foreseeable future. In particular, it was brought to public attention how, from 1959 to 1972, the KGB collected information about American power plants, dams, oil pipelines and other infrastructure in preparation for an operation that could lead to a disruption in the power supply of all of New York.

It contains information detailing the KGB's plans to secretly acquire three American banks in Northern California as part of a covert operation designed to obtain information about high-tech companies in the region. The banks were not chosen by chance, since all of them had previously provided loans to corporations of interest to the KGB. The figurehead in whose name the banks were bought was supposed to be a Singaporean businessman, but the American intelligence services managed to figure out the KGB's plans.

Even these two facts are quite enough to understand why the KGB carefully guards its secrets.

Quite personally

Many personal funds related to the lives of famous people are also closed to the general public. Much that should not be known is hidden in Stalin’s personal archive. But at least the names of these materials are known. Here there are, in particular, outgoing cipher telegrams from Stalin for the period of the 1930s, correspondence of the Secretary General with the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR and the Ministry of the Armed Forces of the USSR for the 1920–1950s, letters from citizens and foreigners addressed to Stalin, documents about Molotov's trip to London and Washington in 1942.

Besides this, we will probably never know the details of the personal lives of Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky. Former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov will not reveal state secrets to us, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn will not tell us about his innermost thoughts. Personal archives of public figures are most often closed from open access their heirs.

For example, the personal collection of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, is located in closed access, because the heir - the writer’s wife Natalya Dmitrievna - decides for herself whether to make the documents public or not. She motivated her decision by the fact that documents often contain poems by Solzhenitsyn that are not particularly good, and she would not want others to know about this.

Difficulties of declassification

In 1991, the archive of the President of the Russian Federation was formed, which combined documents from the former archive of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, and later the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin. During the first 10 years of the foundation’s existence, many materials were declassified, but in the early 2000s this process was suspended, and documents that had already been made public were classified again.

The head of Rosarkhiv, Andrei Artizov, noted in one of his interviews: “We declassify documents in accordance with our national interests. There is a declassification plan. To make a decision on declassification, we need three or four experts with knowledge of foreign languages, historical context, and legislation on state secrets.”

What are the country's leaders afraid of when declassifying documents, many of which have already crossed the half-century mark? Researchers cite a number of reasons: Among them, for example, is the very difficult issue of cooperation between the USSR and Nazi Germany on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, reflected in numerous documents.

Among other reasons are mentioned: the real scale of repressions of the Stalinist government against its people; destabilization of the world situation by the USSR; facts that destroy the myth about the USSR’s economic assistance to other states; wasting public funds to bribe third world governments to gain support from the UN.

In fact, all prohibited materials can be summarized into two main categories: documents that present the Soviet regime in an extremely negative light, and documents that in any way relate to the ancestors of modern politicians, which we would like to keep silent about. This is quite understandable, since both of them can seriously undermine the reputation of modern Russia - the legal successor of the USSR - in the eyes of the whole world.

In the 1990s, a number of Soviet-era documents that had previously been classified as “top secret” began to be made public, but the authorities, having come to their senses, again closed access to them. Apparently, many secrets of the USSR will remain inaccessible.

Classified as "top secret"

The classification of secrecy is imposed for two reasons. First and foremost, most of the documents stored in the archives are state secrets. The second reason is related to materials concerning famous personalities of the past, whose heirs do not want the details of their lives to be made public. In 1918, something happened that today does not allow us to fully familiarize ourselves with the documents of the Soviet past. That year, Lenin received a message informing him how Red Army soldiers were indiscriminately destroying manuscripts and correspondence of famous writers. The leader immediately called the publicist Bonch-Bruevich with a request to write a brochure entitled “Save the Archives.” The brochure, which sold 50 thousand copies, bore fruit. However, very soon Soviet officials realized that it was important not only to preserve the archives, but also to limit the access of ordinary citizens to them due to the confidentiality of the information contained in some sources. In 1938, the management of all archival affairs came under the jurisdiction of the NKVD of the USSR, which classified a huge amount of information, numbering tens of thousands of files. Since 1946, the powers of this department were received by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and since 1995 - by the FSB of Russia. Since 2016, all archives have been reassigned directly to the President of Russia.

Stalin's affairs

Despite the fact that many documents from the Stalin era have long been declassified, some of them are still hidden away from prying eyes in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. In particular, about 200 cases from the Stalin Foundation are classified as secret. Of considerable interest to researchers are the cases of Yezhov and Beria, which were published only in parts, and there is still no complete information on the cases of the executioners who became enemies of the people. Today, many Russians are requesting investigative files of illegally repressed citizens stored in the archives of the FSB and GARF. Access to the investigative files of repressed persons is permitted by law for relatives, as well as for other interested parties. True, the latter can receive the required documents only after the expiration of 75 years from the date of the verdict. Often, visitors to archives receive defective copies, in particular, with the names of NKVD officers blacked out. Some researchers are confident that the NKVD files will never be declassified in full. In March 2014, the interdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets extended the secrecy period for documents of the Cheka-KGB for the years 1917-1991 for the next 30 years. This decision also included a large array of documents relating to the Great Terror of 1937-1938, which were extremely in demand by historians and relatives of victims of repression.

WWII Archives

The period of the Great Patriotic War still hides many secrets today. For example, there is still no publicly available summary work on the operations of the Red Army during the war with maps attached. Since the publication of the collection of archival materials “1941” in 1998, new original documents have been published in very measured doses. Moreover, researchers do not even have the right to familiarize themselves with the names of cases in the secret storage inventories. Historian Igor Ievlev notes in this regard: “Apparently, researchers have already approached a barrier behind which, if overcome, completely inconvenient and, probably, even shameful and disgraceful pages of the real history of the country can open.” Also, modern historians cannot familiarize themselves with the original documents recording the number of conscripts and mobilized in wartime and are still forced to rely on data from preserved conscription books - a secondary source. Unfortunately, the draft cards of recruits, the registration cards of those liable for military service in the reserve and the rank and file of the Red Army were almost all destroyed. Not long ago, on the forum of one of the sites dedicated to soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, one of the readers shared interesting information. According to him, in one of the conversations, a former employee of the military registration and enlistment office told him a long-standing story about the complete destruction in 1953 after the death of Stalin of all service records and other primary documents for the rank and file from pre-war times until the end of the war. What is the reason for the desire of the USSR leadership to hide data relating to mobilization on the eve of and during the Second World War? Researchers are sure: in order to hide the real losses of the USSR in the first months of the war.

KGB Archives

The KGB in the USSR, like the CIA in the USA, is an intelligence service that, during its existence, has conducted a huge number of secret operations around the world. Any state security officer will confirm that KGB business papers are rarely declassified in their original form. They are first “cleansed”, removing information that the department does not want to make public for one reason or another. Almost all the currently known secrets of the Soviet intelligence services were published in London in 1996 thanks to a former employee of the archive department of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR Vasily Mitrokhin. The volume of the archive of secret KGB materials that Mitrokhin transferred to Great Britain was 25 thousand pages. The published materials contain information that could hardly be published in Russia in the foreseeable future. In particular, it was brought to public attention how, from 1959 to 1972, the KGB collected information about American power plants, dams, oil pipelines and other infrastructure in preparation for an operation that could lead to a disruption in the power supply of all of New York. It contains information detailing the KGB's plans to secretly acquire three American banks in Northern California as part of a covert operation designed to obtain information about high-tech companies in the region. The banks were not chosen by chance, since all of them had previously provided loans to corporations of interest to the KGB. The figurehead in whose name the banks were bought was supposed to be a Singaporean businessman, but the American intelligence services managed to figure out the KGB's plans. Even these two facts are quite enough to understand why the KGB carefully guards its secrets.

Quite personally

Many personal funds related to the lives of famous people are also closed to the general public. Much that should not be known is hidden in Stalin’s personal archive. But at least the names of these materials are known. Here there are, in particular, outgoing cipher telegrams from Stalin for the period of the 1930s, correspondence of the Secretary General with the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR and the Ministry of the Armed Forces of the USSR for the 1920–1950s, letters from citizens and foreigners addressed to Stalin, documents about Molotov's trip to London and Washington in 1942. Besides this, we will probably never know the details of the personal lives of Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky. Former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov will not reveal state secrets to us, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn will not tell us about his innermost thoughts. Personal archives of public persons are most often closed from public access by their heirs. For example, the personal fund of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, is in closed access, because the heir - the writer's wife Natalya Dmitrievna - decides for herself whether to make the documents public or not. She motivated her decision by the fact that documents often contain poems by Solzhenitsyn that are not particularly good, and she would not want others to know about this.

Difficulties of declassification

In 1991, the archive of the President of the Russian Federation was formed, which combined documents from the former archive of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, and later the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin. During the first 10 years of the foundation’s existence, many materials were declassified, but in the early 2000s this process was suspended, and documents that had already been made public were classified again. The head of Rosarkhiv, Andrei Artizov, noted in one of his interviews: “We declassify documents in accordance with our national interests. There is a declassification plan. To make a decision on declassification, we need three or four experts with knowledge of foreign languages, historical context, and legislation on state secrets.” What are the country's leaders afraid of when declassifying documents, many of which have already crossed the half-century mark? Researchers cite a number of reasons: Among them, for example, is the very difficult issue of cooperation between the USSR and Nazi Germany on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, reflected in numerous documents. Among other reasons are mentioned: the real scale of repressions of the Stalinist government against its people; destabilization of the world situation by the USSR; facts that destroy the myth about the USSR’s economic assistance to other states; wasting public funds to bribe third world governments to gain support from the UN. In fact, all prohibited materials can be summarized into two main categories: documents that present the Soviet regime in an extremely negative light, and documents that in any way relate to the ancestors of modern politicians, which we would like to keep silent about. This is quite understandable, since both of them can seriously undermine the reputation of modern Russia - the legal successor of the USSR - in the eyes of the whole world.

In the last 3-4 years, news with the headline: “The government wants to block Tor” regularly appears in the news feed. But this idea is somewhat utopian.

The darknet can be used all over the world except North Korea, where to access a computer with the Internet you need special permission from Kim Jong-un. Even China failed to ban it. Golden Shield automatically blocks all new Tor entry node addresses, but people who need to bypass this barrier using VPNs and proxy servers.

News about the “ban on the underground Internet” only fuels interest in it among the population. More and more Russians are joining the darknet, which is fraught with many dangers and temptations. You should be aware of the consequences of using Tor incorrectly.

This article will cover the main types of stores and forums on Tor that should be avoided and the possible liability for using/creating them.

Fragments of the article were removed at the request of Roskomnadzor. The material has been edited.

2. Sites with job advertisements

A huge number of advertisements for the sale of *** contain a note: “We are looking for ***. Activity, adequacy, and professionalism are required. The salary is high." For one ***, an employee receives on average 500-3000 rubles. They write on the forums that a smart worker can earn up to 80-120 thousand rubles a month with a free schedule. And this is in the provinces. In the capitals the ceiling is much higher.

But this work is far from being as simple as it seems at first glance. Making a good “***” and hiding it is a whole science and experienced people write entire textbooks. There are many non-obvious problems that are difficult for a beginner to guess about.

For example, how to protect yourself from “seagulls”? This is the name given to *** who search for and successfully find other people's *** in typical places (flower beds, holes in the asphalt, entrance canopies). Or how to disguise a Ziploc bag inside an acorn or nut so that rain and wind do not damage the product?

Criminals from Tor require not only ***, but also parcel acceptors, stencilers (making announcements on the asphalt), growers (growing plants at home), and people to withdraw illegally obtained money from bank cards. They rarely look for strong guys to intimidate enemies. And every profession has non-obvious subtleties that you need to learn in order to avoid getting into trouble with the law.

In the criminal sphere, there is a terrible turnover of personnel and new employees are constantly needed. A truly adequate and neat person can work for a couple of years, but a simple ***/carrier/dropper walks free for only a few months. Most people are caught by the police sooner or later. People rarely manage to raise money, stop and leave on time.

Possible problems: According to Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, if a person is involved in the distribution or production of ***, then he can be imprisoned for a period of 8 years. We’ll talk about penalties for parcel receivers and money cashers below.

3. Stores of goods for committing crimes

WITH using Tor There is a trade in weapons, fake documents, fake SIM cards, telephones, skimmers for ATMs and a bunch of other interesting items. As with ***, Bitcoin is used for anonymous payment. Surprisingly, there are no particular problems with the delivery of goods.

Sometimes it is done via regular mail. To receive and send parcels, they hire “droppers” who go to receive/send parcels and show off their faces and passport details. Also, goods are sent with the help of taxi drivers or private transport companies. Here is a quote from the RuOnion forum:

I once sent an optical sight through a transport company, naturally not a branded one. They asked what was inside, he answered - a sniper scope, They: let’s write it down - an optical device :-)))) They don’t really care what to carry...

But sellers still take many precautions: they disassemble weapons into parts, which they distribute into several boxes, disguise them as other items, make parcels with double bottoms, etc. They have no less tricks than ***.

Possible problems: According to Article 222 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, illegal acquisition or transfer of weapons may be punishable by a prison sentence of up to four years. About fake documents it is written in Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, it says about a period of up to two years.

4. Pedophile forums

There are also a lot of people on the Tor network who are sexually attracted to children. There is a lot of “interesting” for them here. Firstly, huge archives of porn videos featuring minors. Secondly, these are forums where people share personal experience seducing children and hiding this process from others.

Some pedophiles consider sex with children absolutely unacceptable and sit on “conservative” sections of forums, where they simply post slightly erotic photos of little girls and boys with their genitals covered.

But there are people for whom just watching videos is not enough and they strive to make their fantasies come true. The main shock for me when preparing this article was familiarization with a book for pedophiles in Russian.

200 pages about where to find a potentially available child and how to recognize him, how to gain his trust, how not to leave traces and how to make sure that the child never tells anyone about what the pervert or pervert did to him.

And judging by the forums, many pedophiles actually manage to turn things around so that parents never find out what happened to their child. After all, most often children are seduced not by maniacs on the streets, but by neighbors, relatives or family friends who have been in the house for many years.

Never leave your child alone with anyone and never without video surveillance. There are many more pedophiles among us than one might think.

Possible punishment: It is prohibited to store porn videos involving minors on your computer. You can read more about this in the article:

5. Websites of extremist organizations

Terrorists, skinheads and radical oppositionists also create websites on the onion network, publish articles there and discuss plans for pogroms or the seizure of power on forums. Also, sect sites are gradually moving to Tor.

Since 2002, Russian authorities have maintained a list Federal extremist materials. It includes almost 4,000 books, articles, paintings and music. Rospotrebnadzor forces such materials to be removed from sites on the clearnet, but they are distributed freely in Tor libraries.

Possible punishment: According to Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, participation in an extremist organization can lead to imprisonment for up to six years. Also, you cannot copy materials from such sites to Tor and post them on social networks and blogs. There is also a separate article on this topic:

6. “Hacker” trading platforms and forums

In international dark markets, next to *** and weapons, there is often a Digital Goods section. In it you can buy Trojans, tools for Wi-Fi hacking, tools for hacking programs, tools for DDOS attacks and many other types of “tools for illegal access to digital information.”

Along with the programs, you can also buy instructions for their use and educational books. They also sell digital goods that were stolen using the tools described above: upgraded characters in games, paid accounts various services, hacked programs, access to infected computers.

There are also many hacker forums on the darknet. There people share their experiences with each other, look for perpetrators and accomplices for various cyber crimes.

Possible punishment: If it is proven that a person used any of the programs described above, then, according to Article 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, he can be imprisoned for up to two years.

7. “Black” cryptocurrency exchanges

The sites and organizations described above make financial payments in bitcoins (less often in other cryptocurrencies). And of course, they don’t pay any taxes on it. Cryptocurrencies are used to cash out money obtained illegally.

Tor has exchanges for withdrawing bitcoins to regular electronic wallets or bank cards. It is also full of advertisements of people who withdraw money from cryptocurrency wallets to offshore accounts or transfer money to the account of a “shell company.” From the latter, money can be withdrawn using ordinary “cashers”.

There you can also order bank cards issued to dummies or “virtuals”. And hire drops who will go to the ATM, show their face in front of the cameras, withdraw cash from the cards and deliver it to you.

Possible punishment: According to Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, participation in group fraudulent schemes can entail up to 10 years in prison.

The State Duma is also talking about adopting a bill that would provide for punishment of up to four years in prison simply for using bitcoins or other cryptocurrency.

conclusions

The above describes not all types of content that can be found in Tor networks. Not mentioned are sites with erotica for animal lovers, stores of stolen goods, sites for ordering killers and much more.

But what has been described is quite enough to understand why governments around the world are trying to control the Internet. Personal freedom and privacy are good. But how to fight criminals on the Internet without blocking sites and controlling traffic?

P.S. Is Tor anonymous?

There are a lot of tutorials on how to ensure online anonymity on the darknet. Some of the authors consider it a sufficient scheme virtual machine from Tails -> vpn -> vpn -> Tor. And someone recommends buying a computer from a flea market in a neighboring area and using a modem through the “left” SIM card. But one thing is for sure - if you just launch the Tor browser, then your level of anonymity is quite low.

Intelligence agencies around the world are actively working to identify criminals who use the “underground Internet.” For example, in the fall of 2016, as part of the international Operation Titan, Swedish police identified 3,000 buyers of *** on Tor. And there are more and more reports of such investigations every year.