Annotated Bibliography

Stevens, G. (2018, September 27). What's The Deep Web and How Do You Get There? Retrieved from https://www.cloudwards.net/the-deep-web/
This is the first source I looked at in reference to my research paper. This page identifies key components that I wanted to address in my research paper such as what is the dark web, what is TOR, how does one access the dark web, what is available on it and more. This appears to be a reliable source, and the information found here is in direct relation to information I found in other sources. It contributes to my research paper in a positive way because the information is presented clearly in an easy to understand manner, making it easy for me to translate it into my own words in addition to using direct quotes.

Our Work to Defend Children From Sexual Abuse. Retrieved from https://www.thorn.org/our-work-to-stop-child-sexual-exploitation/
I chose to use thorn.org as one of my major resources for my research paper. The problem I am discussing is the appearance of child pornography and sexual exploitation that spreads around The Dark Web. The organization Thorn is constituted of digital defenders against child exploitation. I reference Thorn a lot in my research paper because they are doing incredible things to solve the issue at hand. I mention different tools they are creating in order to rid the internet of child pornography, and reference their success as well. Thorn.org is a reliable source that proposes solutions to the problems I am discussing in my paper.

Leiner, et al. (1997) Brief History of The Internet. Retrieved from https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/
This scholarly journal, published in 1997 was one source I decided to use for my research paper. One of the first things I needed to do was establish what the internet is and why it was created. This source gave me information I needed to know about the ARPANetwork which lead to the development of the modern internet. This is definitely a reliable source and it aided me greatly in explaining the history of the internet.

What is The Dark Web and is it a Threat (2018). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z9j6nbk
This article presented by the BBC is one that I chose to incorporate in my research paper. The article gives general information about the dark web, which can then be further explained with the assistance of other sources. The information I found on this cite proved to be accurate, as it says the same things I found in other sources as well. This article also mentions experts in the field of national security, internet research and more. This was helpful because I was able to look at their work after I finished this article.

Journal Entry #3

Throughout the course of history, technology has changed and advanced dramatically. It is truly amazing to look at where we started and compare it to where we are now. A common example is the first iPhone. The first iPhone was large, bulky, and didn't even have a camera. Today we can use iPhones to take professional pictures, access anything we want online and even use our faces to unlock them. Technological advances have certainly made our lives easier. 

One way today's technology is being used is in the classroom. Every age student now has access to knowledge through the internet. Whether that be through articles, experiments or teaching videos online, the internet has greatly improved our ability to learn. I think this is great. Information can be expressed differently online than it is in person. For example, if a child does not retain the material he is taught in school, he may go home and watch a video about the topic. This could have a different impact on his understanding and he may understand the material better. It all depends on a person's learning style. I personally work better in an old-school fashion. I work best using a pen and paper as opposed to a computer. I need face to face interactions with professors to understand the material and focus more. I often struggle with assignments when they need to be submitted online, or when a homework assignment is strictly used on the internet. However, not every student will have the same approach to learning as I do, and for some students learning onlineis the best way to learn. Because of this, I think Khan's persistence is amazing. He has helped millions of students learn topics that they did not understand in school.  Khan is making a virtual impact on the next generation by taking advantage of modern technology.

Research Proposal

Research Question: What role does The Dark Web play in relation to national and global crime.

In my research paper, I plan to address the role that The Dark web plays on a national and global scale. The Dark Web is infamous for its sinister products. These include stolen credit card information, stolen passports for sale, hitmen for hire, computer viruses for sale, child pornography and much more. The Dark Web is a portion of the deep web, which is simply anything protected or encrypted behind a guarded wall.

The Dark Web is a breeding ground for criminal activity due to the fact that it is nearly 100% anonymous. To access The Dark Web, and individual will need a browser called TOR, the onion router. TOR anonymized and protects its users by changing their IP address nearly every 30 seconds, making it impossible to know who is using The Dark Web and where they are located.

TOR was created by the US Navy research team in the 1990’s with the intentions of keeping conversations of US government officials anonymous. What’s ironic about this is that in order to keep records private, TOR had to be released to the public. You can’t be anonymous on your own. TOR is beneficial to those in communist or oppressive nations where users can be punished, tortured, or even killed for the things they do online. That is why the US continued to fund TOR for as long as they did.

One of the most awful things on The Dark Web is the abundance of child pronography. Users find a safe space for their sick fetishes on The Dark Web, and it normalizes their outlandish beliefs. Every 8 seconds a child in the world is kidnapped, sold, or traded into sexual slavery.

An organization called Thorn is attempting to put a stop to the sexual exploitation of children. They are developing tools and engineering new systems that have potential to catch perpetrators. Thorn is known as a digital defender of children, due to their work on The Dark Web. In the paper, I plan to discuss the tools Thorn is creating, along with their statistics of success.

I will begin my paper with a brief history of the internet, followed by the three levels. I will then explain what TOR is, why it was created, who uses it, and more. Then I will discuss credit card related crimes, mentioning an interview with an expert in the field. Finally, I will discuss the human and sexuall trafficking available on The Dark Web and mention Thorn as a possible resolution.  

Literacy Narrative

It is a common expression that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Ever since I was four years old, I have never related to anything more in my life. The diamonds I am referring to aren’t clear, shiny rocks. I’m talking about a Softball field. Fourteen years ago I stepped onto the field for the first time and fell in love with the game. I had no idea what the next decade would hold; I didn’t know about the friends I would make that would soon become family, I didn’t know about how I would dedicate every minute of my weekends to tournaments, and I certainly didn’t know about the strength and determination I would need to find inside myself when times get tough.

I owe my knowledge of sports, baseball and softball in particular, to my older brother Matthew. Since he is five years my senior, some of my earliest childhood memories are of me being at “the oval”. The oval is a group of baseball fields in my neighborhood, where local little league teams would face off and play games. In my house, there were two seasons - Baseball season, and Winter.  For months on end - Spring, Summer, and Fall - my family spent hours and hours at the oval. Whether it be for games or practices, we were there all the time. That was my first introduction to baseball, and I fell in love. My brother’s coach saw my interest and suggested to my parents that they put me on a softball team. They were reluctant because after all, I was only four years old. I wasn’t the most coordinated kid around, but I did have a certain determination that other kids lacked. After weeks of me begging my mom to sign me up for a softball team, she finally did. That is when my life changed forever.

I walked onto the field wearing my cleats that were slightly too big with my blonde hair pulled back in two pigtails on each side of my head. As suspected, I was the youngest and smallest kid there. This didn’t stop me from doing what I wanted. In fact, it encouraged me even more.  I worked harder than anyone else did because if I didn’t, I would fall behind. I kept up with everyone else because I was determined to become the absolute best player I could be. This mindset carried me through the next decade of my life. I wanted to be the best I could be for myself and for my team alike. I wanted to impress my coaches, I wanted to impress my parents. I wanted to impress anyone watching the game. I strived to communicate my passion for the sport through my actions on the field. I grew up with the philosophy that “you play how you practice” and because of this,  I learned to give 110% everytime I stepped onto the field.

Softball, in itself, was fun. Like I mentioned before, I absolutely loved the game. But none of that would have mattered if I didn’t have my team of eleven other girls out there playing with me. The same girls from my team in kindergarten played together until we got into highschool. We took our team from little league, to a club team, to a full blown travel team. We would go across state borders on multiple occasions just to play the game we loved at the highest level of competition. My fondest memories growing up are racing in hotel hallways, signing the Jonas Brothers as loud as we could on the way to tournaments, and our entire team wearing full uniform running into rest stops on the I-95 because we all needed to use the bathroom (and ofcourse, stop to buy snacks). I got to play the game I loved with my favorite people, I didn’t think life could get any better.

My freshman year of high school I tried out for the varsity team and flew through tryouts. I made the team and I was ecstatic. Not many people got to make the varsity team as a freshman, and I was anxious for the season to start. What I thought would be the best few months of my life, turned out to be some of the worst.

One thing I realized growing up playing sports was that a coach is one of the most influential people in an athlete’s life. Their attitude sets the tone for the athlete, and if they re miserable, it will reflect in the team. When I first got into high school, my coach was unlike anything I experienced before. He was overly emotional, to the point where the team would make him cry if we corrected him when he said something wrong. He would ask us if we loved him and then bench us when we didn't answer him. He would cancel 8am Saturday practice at 7:45 with no regard for the girls that needed to travel an hour to get to the field.  He made us do drills and run laps while he yelled at us from a lawn chair. Instead of motivating and encouraging us, he discouraged us. Everytime a girl on the team was upset it had to be because her boyfriend broke up with her, or she was on her period. He never understood the affect his words had on us, never once stopped to think that he was the one making us angry. Every game and every practice ended with a talk about how we were such a disappointment. Eventually, we all stopped caring. Myself included. I loved softball, but I wasn’t enjoying myself and it broke my heart. It was abundantly clear how unhappy I was. It wasn’t only a matter of me being angry at my coach, it was the anger I felt toward myself for letting someone ruin the game I loved more than anything.

At the end of my Junior year, my coach announced his retirement. This was the what I needed to hear in order to lift my spirits. I was introduced to the new coach and we discussed how things were going to go next season. He had never coached a softball team before, and requested my help. Of course, I agreed to help him develop a greater understanding of the game I knew like the back of my hand. When the spring of my senior year finally rolled around, I was ecstatic.  College acceptances were rolling in and all I wanted to focus on was playing my final season of high school softball. The tryouts with my new coach were the happiest I had been in a long time. There was no daunting presence to yell and scream when one of the girls on the team messed up, no one to go ballistic on us if we made an error, and no one to yell at us from a lawn chair. Instead, our new coach actually ran laps with us. He raced us in order to make us run faster. He would actually do our drills with us, and this encouraged all the girls to work hard.  Everyday he encouraged us to play the game we loved and be the best athletes we could be.

While helping my coach run practices, him and I eventually developed a bond that I have never had with a coach before. He let me goof off and be myself every day, and I was soon back to being the optimistic athlete before my previous coach crushed my spirits. Everything on this team was kept light and goofy. My coach and I would even send funny pictures in our team group chat, I once put his face on a Lucky Charms box because I think he looks like a leprechaun. We would make jokes during practice and I would always be laughing at something.  At first it was weird. I was suspicious. Why were we allowed to fool around so much? It was the end of March when I finally got an explanation. I messed up on a simple play (probably because I was talking too much) and I groaned  in frustration. My coach approached me and told me to relax, that my mistake wasn’t a huge deal and that I’ll get the next one. I didn’t know what to say, I hadn’t had that kind of reaction to an error in years. He noticed my confusion and explained that he will never say anything negative to us because we know when we do something wrong. He explained that we come to practice to work, but also to have fun, and he said that he wasn’t in a position to take that from us. This meant more to me than he would ever understand.

I’m not going to lie. While this season was the best one I had in years, not everything was fun. He would work us harder than I had ever been worked before. I had never ran so many flights of stairs, worked out so hard in the weight room, or ran so many laps without stopping. There were days when I wanted nothing more than to go home from school and take a nap, but I showed up to practice, iced coffee in hand, and knew that it would be worth it in the end. At the end of the season I actually found out that on the days I was visibly tired, my coach worked me even harder. He explained that he wanted to push us to our absolute limits in order to make us better athletes. I didn’t appreciate it while it was happening, but I definitely do now. While some practices were mentally and physically draining, my coach always made sure we had fun, every single day. I eventually got to the point where I would be disappointed if practice was canceled or if a game got rained out. All I wanted to do all day long was play softball, just like I was a kid again.

This man, who I had only known for a few short months became one of the most influential people in my high school career. He changed my perception of what it means to be an athlete, and what it means to work hard. He taught me (or re-taught me) that if you’re working hard but not having fun, you should pursue another passion. My memories of varsity softball are no longer tainted by a man crying in a lawn chair. I remember laughing more than I ever did before, doing handstands after our victories,

and sending a lot of funny pictures. I’ll never forget at the end of our last game, I bawled my eyes out. All because it was the end of the best season I ever had. I was frustrated because all of the underclassmen would have more seasons, just like this one. I told my coach how jealous I was that everyone would get to experience this feeling again, and he told me they wouldn’t. He expressed how much I helped this team - how I was the one who made everything fun all the time, how I helped run practice and how I taught him things that he didn’t know. On the way home from the game I thought of everything he told me. I sat and reflected on the past decade of my life. Every event in my softball career shaped me into the player I was in that moment. From being the youngest and smallest kid on my first team, to being the leader of my last. I had accomplished everything I had ever dreamed of as a child. A common expression used by athletes is “Somewhere behind the athlete you've become, and the hours of practice, and the coaches who pushed you, is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back. Play for her.” That’s what I’ve done for the past ten years. I’d like to think I made her proud.

Journal Entry #1

Unlike most authors of American Literature, Amy Tan is not American. She is Chinese, and although this has played a pivotal role in her life as a child, adult, and author, it has not stopped her from doing what she loves. If anything, the opposite has happened. Being Chinese has encouraged her to write. At first it was difficult for her to assimilate into American culture. She struggled while eating weird dinners, and when she got B's in English instead of A's. This, as far as she knew, was her heritage. At the time she had no idea about how her mother was forced into an arranged marriage to an abusive man, or how her grandmother was a sex slave. She didn't know about how her grandmother swallowed opium, and how her mother watched her own mother die. When her mother gave her warnings about life, Amy just took it for what she heard; something that sounded irrelevant and idiotic. Her mother told her advice, and she took it with a grain of salt instead of actually listening. This eventually helped her writing because once she gained a better understanding of her family's past, she could write to inform others about it. 

My entire genetic make up is white, European countries. My mom and my dad are both from multiple different countries, but not from any of the same. Between my mom and my dad, all I know for certain is that I am a bunch of different nationalities and not one is more significant or prominent than the other. But heritage isn't just where you come from, it isn't all genetics. It's also about how you were raised, what your values are, what means the most to you. In that case, my heritage is Music. Growing up, there was always music playing in my house. Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Bon Jovi. There was always music playing either from the kitchen, the living room or someone's bedroom. One of my first childhood memories is playing "You Give Love a Bad Name" by Bon Jovi on my CD player that at the time, was bigger than me. My heritage is Major League Baseball, all day, everyday of baseball season, and my family rivalry between the Mets and Yankees fans. It divides us in two, but nothing makes us more united. My heritage is Thanksgiving day football, family wide sleepovers at my uncles house on Christmas Eve. My heritage is family game night that has extended from just family to mine and my brothers friends. It's barbeques in the summer after a day at the beach. It's every memory I have from being a child, and every memory I will continue to make. 

Questionnaire

A) Do you write on your spare time at all?  
I prefer reading to writing, but I will write on occasion.

B) What would you like to improve in your writing?
I would like to improve my vocabulary in my writing to sound more sophisticated and make my ideas sound more thought out. 

C) What are your strengths in written communication?In written communication I deliver points clearly and argue very well.

D) How do you read?  When you read, what steps do you take to better process information?
When I read I stop periodically and ask myself what I just read to ensure I comprehended the information.