STUDENT at NALSAR.

Significance of the Topic:

The author has selected this topic because the threat that the Dark Web poses is highly undermined by the millennia’s. Through his text, the author tries to explain the various layers of the internet, the illegal activities that take place at these layers and also how to counter these crimes in the most effective way.

Literature review:

EXPLORING ANONYMOUS DEPTHS OF INVISIBLE WEB AND THE DIGI-UNDERWORLD the author has written about the depths of the world wide web and how not many people know about the various parts of the web and what all happens in these parts of the web.

The researcher has reviewed this article and with its help tried to explain about Deep Web and the Dark Web and about all the information and black markets that exist in these platforms and also how to access them

The Digital Underworld: Combating Crime on the Dark Web in the Modern Era is written by Sophia Dastagir Vogt and published in the 15 SANTA CLARA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 104 (2017). The text talks about various approaches with reference also to international approach to the concept of privacy as a human right, it provides an overview of the layers of the internet and the legal framework that the US government has adhered to in order to combat crime on the dark web.

The researcher has relied on this article to look at the most effective method to combat the crime in Dark Web

GOING DARK: TERRORISM ON THE DARK WEB, Gabriel Weimann the author has written about how the terrorists have been using technology to carry forward the extremist ideologies and planning attacks and buying weapons, raising funds and recruiting for terror activities.

The researcher has incorporated the facts that the study has put forward in his text.

Understanding the world wide web:

The worldwide web is way more bigger than we think. The part of the internet that we access daily forms only a small part of the worldwide web known as the surface web that is accessible by regular search engines like google, firefox, bing, etc. The surface web only constitutes a meagre 4% of the world wide web. It is estimated that Google which is considered to be the largest search engine has only indexed 6% of the world wide web. The Deep or Dark web constitutes 96% of the total worldwide web. The surface web which is easily accessible can be equated that part of the iceberg which is visible above the sea, the deep web and the dark web can be equated to that part of the iceberg that can not be seen and is very deep. Deep web is something that a search engine can not directly access, deep web contains academic material, library data, pages that are behind paywalls, this is basically because the pages require passwords to be able to access them. When a search is done in a regular search engine like google, it shows only 0.3% of the total information that exists. The information that is available on the deep web is 1000 to 5000 times more than what is available on the surface web. Dark web is that part of the web which is hidden and cannot be easily accessed as it is not indexed by the regular search engines. Dark web contains illegal, malicious and anti-social information. It is most often used for access to child pornography and also for buying drugs online, leaking sensitive information, laundering of money, selling illegal weapons, credit card fraud and so on.

Deep And Dark Web:

Dark Web can be accessed only by using special browsers like the Tor Browser, I2P, etc. These browsers facilitate the user and the server from being identified, they help the parties stay anonymous. Tor browser uses a process called “onion Routing” which allows the users to remain anonymous while sending and receiving messages. Tor was created by The United States Naval Research Laboratory employees for protecting the naval communications online. The Tor Browser helps the user remain anonymous by jumping various networks and connecting via a group of virtual tunnels instead of a straight connection.[1] The dark web sites domain ends with .onion which is accessible only through the Tor network.[2]

In the beginning of the internet age, online information used to be easily indexed and hence easily accessed by the users, but as the time moved forward and internet expanded, the old search engines were only able to retrieve the static pages and not the upcoming dynamic pages. A static page means a page that is linked to other pages. Dynamic page means a page that is linked only to one particular web page and can be retrieved through only specific and targeted queries.[3] In 1994, jill Ellsworth coined the phrase ‘invisible web’ to refer to information that remains ‘invisible’ to queries of conventional search engine. The term Deep Web was coined by Bergman in the year of 2001. Deep web is usually defined as informational content on the internet that is not accessible via queries in conventional search engines. It can be accessed only through specific queries or keywords and are protected by passwords, logins, etc.

Access : The domain names are tough to find even after entering the dark web, so the users often go to ‘hidden wikki’ where the site organizes the site names and domains by category.

People can communicate through secured modes by using secure emails and online chats hosted by tor.[4]

People only started knowing about the dark web when in 2015 a popular dating site Ashley Madison was hacked and the personal information of almost 37 million users, including their addresses, their sexual fantasies and contact numbers and most importantly their credit card information was dumped into the dark web databases. But prior to this in 2013 a huge bust was made of a black market named Silk Road which operated in the dark web and used cryptocurrencies for transactions, the FBI arrested the founder of this site Ross Ulbricht. Only in two years of its business, Silk Road made over $1.2 Billion using bitcoins as currency for the transactions.[5]

Terrorist on the dark web:

Terrorist have constantly been active in using the internet for many years for communication and various other purposes. Terror organisations maintain hundreds and hundreds of websites and various social network platforms through which they interact and convey messages to its target audience, raise funds, recruit people. But as the surface web is too risky, as a user can be easily traced in the surface web platforms as there are many counter-terrorist agencies working round the clock to shut down the terror activities. The terrorist organisations have shifted to the dark web as it helps them stay anonymous and avert identification and arrests. Though the governments have constantly tried to block such extreme activities from happening on the internet, such material appears back on the internet as quickly as they have been taken down. But this doesn’t happen in the darknet as it is hard to track and block.[6] The idea of not being traceable and the advantage of being anonymous is very appealing to the terrorists and facilitates their shifting to the dark web. Email services provided by Tor browser such as the Tarbox is used a lot by these terrorists as they help in both hiding their identities as well as hiding their whereabouts. There are books authored by jihadists guiding other jihadis teaching them how to hide their identities, how to earn money, how to make bombs, internet privacy, how to use Tor to research for jihad topics on the web. “How To Survive In The West: A Mujahid Guide is one such example. In 2015 Ali Shukri Amin, a resident of Virginia was arrested and he admitted in court that he operated several ISIS pro websites and in his websites provided information on privacy and repeatedly referred to Tor. The terrorist required and suggested for jihadi wiki and finally created wiki-terror on the dark web, to create a guide for all the jihadists on several aspects like their sermons, instructions and lectures.

Transactions: Though Bitcoin was developed by Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonymous person ) of Japan (claimed) as an independent and alternate from central authority, he never would have thought about how it would be used for international terror funding. But the sad reality is that that is exactly what it is being used for. As the Dark Web allows anonymity, and bitcoin also facilitates the same, terror organisations via bitcoins raise funds and also buy weapons on the dark web using Bitcoins. In fact, there is a page named “Fund The Islamic Struggle Without Leaving a Trace” which asks for donations through bitcoins. There has been increasing evidence of terrorists using the darknet for raising funds. The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office has noted the growing threat posed by the Dark Web, in its memo dated January 2, 2014, it warned about hoe introduction of the cryptocurrencies will increase the opaqueness in the transactions and increase the efficiency of the terrorists.[7]

Communications: Terrorists have been ever-evolving and adaptive to the latest technologies and developments in the technological area. There was a time where the terrorists used to communicate through Twitter also but since 2014 ISIS did not have any official presence on twitter when the accounts related to ISIS were taken down from twitter, it started using lesser-known social networks and also used Diaspora, a social networking site which made its inception to address the privacy concerns that are related to social networks. Later in 2013 Telegram came into existence which boasted of being a very secure source to communicate and provided a ‘secret chat’ facility which was heavily encrypted so that no third party can crack its encryption, it was so confident about the encryption that it had offered to pay $300,000 as a reward for those who could crack its encryption. The terror organisations looking at the security provided by Telegram shifted to it and created a channel in Telegram through which they would communicate. In 2015 one such incident of using telegram for planning a terror attack came into light when a schoolboy aged 14 years was arrested over some matter and seized his phone, it was only then when they came to know about the plot to attack the Anzac parade in Melbourne and the planning was communicated through Telegram. Even Telegram CEO Pavel Durov agreed that ISIS uses Telegram for its communication but he also said that ultimately the Right to Privacy was more important than the fear of bad things happening.

Countering terrorism: the very nature of the Dark Web makes it very difficult to collect and analyse data. No proper method can be adhered to, to fight the dark web without the data. The University of Arizona in its long term scientific project on Dark web plans to study international terrorism by relying on a computational and Data-Centric approach.[8] This project was in fact successful in building the worlds most extensive database of jihadi websites, extremist forums, etc. But looking at the sophistication of the dark web, a need arises to develop a new method to measure and analyse extremists use of the Dark Web. DARPA, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency believes MEMEX a software technology which is a combination of memory and index can overcome the limitation of searches based on text will penetrate into the Dark and Deep Web and help better cataloguing and gain knowledge on domains that are of specific interest and tracking down of illegal activities.

Child pornography:

Offence of Child pornography includes creation, circulation and seeing the explicit material of children. Prior to the internet age, child pornography was shared in hard copy form and was very hard to obtain it, as it was shared only among known circles and also very expensive. With the advent of the internet, it has become very easy to create and circulate child pornography. Earlier circulation of such material was a huge task, but with the world wide web aids the infinite distribution of such material. But as it is hard not to be traced on the surface web and circulate child porn the obvious alternate option is shifting to the dark web, owing to its anonymous nature. Maximum queries made on the dark web are for child pornography. Almost 80% of the visits made to the dark web are in fact for child pornography. There is a huge demand for child porn on the dark web. Once a user arrives on the Dark Web Hidden wiki provides him with domain links aiding him to access the websites without any hassle. There actually exists a website on the dark web which aids crowdfunding for child pornography projects. What happens in this website is that each user makes a small amount of payment via bitcoin to the website and once the minimum price is reached a child porn video is released to each person that has contributed to the website and also payment is made to the creator of the child porn. And if the minimum price is not reached then the contributions made are returned to the people who made them and the video is removed from the server.[9] What is shocking about such a website is that they follow a set of norms before allowing the videos. Like, videos of a child under the age of 3 are not allowed as they don’t have the capacity to communicate if they like or don’t like what is being done to them if in the video it seems like the child is in distress, videos taken while the child is sleeping. The administrator of this website says he expects the child to be well paid by the producers.[10] There have been many laws and resolutions taken up by states and international bodies such as The United Nations, The European Union against child pornography.

Takedowns:

In July 2013 the FBI arrested Eric Marques, the creator of Freedom Hosting which is considered to be the website having the most child porn on the planet. The FBI was able to do this by controlling the website for a period of time. But unfortunately, all the material that was taken down was backed up in one of the servers that the website had used and the images and videos were still available online if the user knew where to look for it.

The most recent bust happened October 16^th 2019 as the Law enforcement officials had arrested 338 people worldwide. Officials from various countries like the United States, Britain and South Korea have described this event to be the takedown of the biggest child pornography site encountered till date. At least 23 victims have been rescued who have been abused repeatedly by the users of the site. The name of the site that has been taken down is ‘Welcome To Video’ run by a South Korean national and three hundred and thirty-seven others from twelve different countries. The investigation that brought this whole thing to light came into action after a tip was received by an IRS Officer from a confidential source. The most interesting fact of this bust is that the officials used and analysed cryptocurrency transactions to get hold of the site operator.

Drugs and weapons: Like every other illegal activity, fearing the problem of identification and being traced and prosecuted, drug dealers and people selling illegal weapons too to the dark web, to handle their business online and remain anonymous. The most famous website selling contraband and illegal things is The Silk Road. It is considered the biggest black market with thousands of seller selling drugs and weapons. Ross Ulbricht was its founder. He was known under the pseudonym of “Dread Pirate Roberts”. He was arrested in 2013 and convicted for money laundering, selling illegal drugs online. he has to serve a double life in prison plus additional 40years with no option for parole. But in no time silk road 2.0 came into existence to fill the void.

The Good In The Dark:

The anonymity that the dark web helps in good purposes also. While people use tor and the deep web for several malicious activities, it can also be used to voice out the opinions and situations of the oppressed. Anonymity offers a space for people for the minority sect of the people. It provides both security to the person from being traced and also the chance to make his opinion heard. As it has been duly mentioned in a U.S. Supreme Court Decision McIntyre v Ohio Elections Commission, “anonymity is a protection from the majority tyranny.. it thus exemplifies the intent behind the Bill Of Rights and the First Amendment: to protect unpopular voices persons from retribution by an intolerant society”. In countries where there is no democracy, being anonymous is the only option that the people have so that they can voice their opinions.

The Tor browser does it part by helping human right activists, civil activists, journalists and whistleblowers from the censorship of the government. Even news houses like The New Yorker, The Guardian host dark web sites so that people can drop anonymously tips and documents following are the domains of The New Yorker and The Guardian.

strngbxhwyuu37a3.onion this website belongs to The New Yorker.

33y6fjyhs3phzfjj.onion and this website belongs to The Guardian.

Even social networking site like facebook and also search engine named duckduckgo now have their own dark websites to provide its users an extra layer of protection.

facebookcorewwwi.onion belongs to facebook

3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion belongs to the search engine duckduckgo.

As explained above anonymity can be used both for noble causes as well as the worst of activities. However, the sad reality is that in liberal countries where browsers like Tor are used and hosted, they have to deal with a bad experience and reap comparatively less benefits. Because it is in these countries that cases like silk road and sites circulating child pornography are hosted. This fact brings forth the argument that in liberal countries where the people rights are given the utmost priority sites like tor need not be adhered to for expressing a dissenting opinion. But we also have to keep in mind the ever-growing obstacles and problems for the judiciary in safeguarding the peoples’ rights as a result of the rapidly growing technology.

However, in a non-liberal and non-democratic country, the cost-benefit usage of Tor changes radically. People from every aspect of life in a repressive country benefit from the anonymity that the Tor browser has to offer. Even if there are illegal activities that take places in such countries, the benefits are much more in such low political right countries.

Conclusion.

Many people think that the only solution is to do away with such privacy/ anonymity providing technologies by destroying them completely. But in this era of global internet that chances of that happening is very less. So what I suggest is instead of looking at some quick fix, a practical and real approach has to be taken up, to actively police the Dark Web

Despite the use of the Dark web for selling drugs, weapons, child pornography, etc. catching the handler of Silk Road and shutting it down as well as many other large sellers and most recently the 338 arrests made in relation to the bust of a website ‘Welcome to video’ countries foiling terror attacks before they take place to show the effectiveness of policing. Technology has been a fickle mistress and it has betrayed those that relied on it to do harm. Police from the UK and Australia had once infiltrated one child-abusing gang of 70,000 members by simply posing as a child online as part of the investigation. and also the fact that websites like silk road and others are taken down within a few years of their business further makes strong the effectiveness of online policing. And also because new sites come up as soon as old ones are taken down doesn’t mean the policing is ineffective because when a street corner drug dealer is arrested it is obvious that the void will be filled by a new dealer, but that doesn’t mean the earlier dealer shouldn’t be arrested, it means that we are stuck with the issue of dealers selling drugs. The point that new sites keep coming up shows the demand for such contraband in the market.

[1] Iflah Naseem, Ashirr K. Kashyap & Dheeraj Mandloi: Exploring Anonymous Depths of Invisible Web and the Digi-Underworld, International Journal of computer Applications (0975-8887)

[2] id

[3] Gabriel Weimann: Going Dark:Terrorism on the Dark Web, 2015, www.tandfonline.com

[4] Kristin Finklea: Dark Web, special report for congressional research service, 2015.

[5] Evander & Smart: The Dark Web: A Closer Look at one of the worlds Largest Bitcoin Economies, The Cointelegraph,2015.

[6] Reported by The Telegraph, December 24, 2014. Accessed October 5, 2015.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11300881/Terrorist-materialreappears-

online-as-quickly-as-it-is-banished-warns-thinktank.html

[7] Gabriel Weimann: Going Dark:Terrorism on the Dark Web, 2015, www.tandfonline.com

[8] Hsinchun Chen: Dark Web: Exploring the Data mining and the Dark Side of the Web. New York Springer, 2012.

[9] Amanda Haasz, Underneath It All: Policing International Child Pornography on the Dark Web, 43 Syracuse J. Int’l L. & Com. 353 (2016).

[10] Id