Mining the Dark Side of the Dark Web-Part II

-Legal Blog by Rujuta Jog

Welcome back to Lawareness! In the first part I have mentioned basic things like who created the dark web, how does it work and some case laws. (Check it out before reading part II: www.lawareness.wixsite.com/1311) In this blog I gave information about Dark Web crimes, Dark Web transactions and Bitcoin.

Dark web crimes

Dark Web is like an untraceable hidden layer of the internet which is commonly used to store and access confidential information. The dark web has about 2.5 million daily visitors. It's a perfect sanctuary for criminal organizations and terror groups to buy and sell anything including human beings. People use the dark web for a variety of purposes, buying and selling drugs, discussing computer hacking techniques, child pornography, terrorism and more.

· Murder and extortion:-

The site "Besa Mafia" is a popular marketplace for contract killing. Criminals blackmail a victim for their videos or photos and a victim pays some amount in digital currencies like Bitcoin.

· Illegal drug and weapon sale:-

Silk Road is the most famous example for selling illegal drugs and weapons worth of thousands of dollars. Dark Web does not produce new weapons; it merely acts as an enabler of trafficking, with weapons and ammunition having to be shipped and delivered in the ‘real world’.

· Human trafficking and child pornography:-

Dark web is a perfect sanctuary for merchants of child pornography with sites such as "Hard Candy, Jailbait, Lolita City, PedoEmpire, Love Zone, The family album and many more". In the United States alone, trafficker’s traffic nearly 2, 00,000 children for sex and a pimp can generate $150,000 to $200,000 a year per child. There are other groups like Death Group based in Eastern Europe sells sex slaves to Saudi Arabia as well as dark virgin auctions of girls as young as 15, managed by Creepy Adverts group.

· Terrorism :-

Though, Jihad being an ideology it has gained many followers over the dark web. Many terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Hayat have planned their attacks through the Dark web .The Paris Attack of 2015 is one of the examples where ISIS have committed such heinous crimes and full responsibility has been taken by them . Recently terrorist organizations have started using telegram apps as a new source to have safer communications as these communications are encrypted and cannot be traced by the surveillance. Terrorists can use the Dark Web for fundraising, money transfers, and illegal purchase of explosives and weapons, using virtual currencies like Bitcoin. Many organizations have used dark web as a way of brainwashing people into committing terrorism.

Bitcoin:

Bitcoin is a crypto currency invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto and started in 2009 and released as open source software. It is a digital currency that has promoted many national security threats, as well as raised awareness around the need for government intervention and regulation. Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a block chain. Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for outer currencies, products, and services. People use Bitcoins in illegal transactions, price volatility, theft for exchange and outer crimes. But, bitcoin has also been used as an investment, although several regulatory agencies have issued investor alerts about bitcoin. Individuals can buy and sell bitcoin through an online exchange such as Quadrigacx.

Bitcoin Price: 1 Bitcoin equals 16, 91,204.09 Indian Rupees.(Data provided by Morningstar for currency, and Coin base for Crypto currency.)

Units and Divisibility: The unit of account of the bitcoin system is a bitcoin. Ticker symbols used to represent bitcoin are BTC and XBT. Its Unicode character is ₿. Small amounts of bitcoin used as alternative units are millibitcoin (mBTC), and satoshi (sat). Named in homage to bitcoin's creator, a satoshi is the smallest amount within bitcoin representing. ​1⁄100000000 bitcoins, one hundred millionth of a bitcoin. A millibitcoin equals. ​1⁄1000 bitcoins; one thousandth of a bitcoin or 100,000 satoshis.

Transactions: Transactions are defined using a Forth-like scripting language. Transactions consist of one or more inputs and one or more outputs. Though transaction fees are optional, miners can choose which transactions to process and prioritize those that pay higher fees. Bitcoin does not have a central authority. Anybody can become a Miner. Miners may choose transactions based on the fee paid relative to their storage size, not the absolute amount of money paid as a fee. These fees are generally measured in satoshis per byte. The size of transactions is dependent on the number of inputs used to create the transaction, and the number of outputs.

Privacy: Bitcoin is pseudonymous, meaning that funds are not tied to real-world entities but rather bitcoin addresses. Owners of bitcoin addresses are not explicitly identified, but all transactions on the blockchain are public. In addition, transactions can be linked to individuals and companies through "idioms of use" (e.g., transactions that spend coins from multiple inputs indicate that the inputs may have a common owner) and corroborating public transaction data with known information on owners of certain addresses. Additionally, bitcoin exchanges, where bitcoins are traded for traditional currencies, may be required by law to collect personal information. To heighten financial privacy, a new bitcoin address can be generated for each transaction.

Check case laws related to Dark Web crimes in the first part: https://lawareness.wixsite.com/1311/post/mining-the-dark-side-of-the-dark-web

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