Untangling the ‘Dark Web’: An International Response to an International Crime?

In today’s technologically astute society, the way in which crime is conducted is evolving at an ever-increasing rate. Dark Web crime is the latest, and potentially most evolved, strain of cybercrime. Marketplaces hosted there are secretive, anonymous, places where less than trustworthy individuals can access and trade a vast array of illicit goods and services. It offers the potential for criminals, from the comfort of their own home, to conduct cross-border crime to a significantly wider audience than usual, with a reduced risk of detection by law enforcement. These risks are heightened by the use of digital currencies as a payment method. Digital currencies further obscure the criminal’s identity and assist them in evading traditional crime detection techniques which focus on following the proceeds of crime. Ominously, the impact of this is not purely limited to crime conducted on the Dark Web, it also has the potential to change the way that criminals facilitate and conduct offline crime too. Undoubtedly, the Dark Web has the potential to revolutionise the way criminals conduct crimes, and therefore law enforcement and the criminal law need to evolve at a similar pace. To this end, an ad-hoc, somewhat coordinated, international response has developed through a range of different international, regional and domestic bodies. However, it is clear that this international effort to tackle Dark Web crime needs better coordination, a more formalised structure, and domestic legal reform e.g. around search warrants and confiscation of assets. Further, there are clear question marks over the legal competence and practical bite of international organisations in this context. Yet clearly, the cross-border nature of these crimes mean isolated national action will not suffice. What this paper proposes is an international framework for action, realised through a decentralised system of enforcement at the national level. This allows international organisations to add value regardless of ‘hard law’ competence while permitting and facilitating support networks to ensure national action is coordinated rather than isolated. In any event, one response in relation to cybercrime and dark web crime would not work due to the idiosyncrasies of national laws and law enforcement agencies, therefore, broad guidelines at an international level are best suited for this purpose. Within these guidelines, the paper will highlight areas of domestic law for reform to ensure both law enforcement is in a position to be able to respond to this insidious threat, and also that similar laws are in place world-wide.