postulated in his classical treatise on People’s War. The difficulty, then as it is now, is how to
effectively separate the insurgents from the people, or armed social movements from the
Internet, in a manner that does not destroy the latter.
Transnational criminal networks are a second form of dark nets. These actors, who can be
large or small, local or transnational, exploit the relative anonymity offered by the Internet, as
well as the absence of harmonized national laws defining cybercrime, to circumvent or avoid
prosecution. Much of the activities of these actors involve old crimes, such as fraud and
theft, which have been adapted to the new possibilities offered by the emergence of the eeconomy. In other cases, jurisdictions with poorly functioning or nonexistent laws are used to
hide otherwise criminal activities, such as distribution of child pornography, out of the reach of
authorities in jurisdictions where such activities are clearly criminalized.
Globally, the incidences of reported cybercime is increasing in both developed and developing economies. In the Russian Federation, for example, acknowledged as a source of some
of the most imaginative forms of cybercrime, incidences reportedly grew by almost 300 percent between 2003 and 2006.
24 Yet accurate comparative statistics makes measuring global
cybercime difficult. For example, in the United States—an economy in which losses caused
by cybercrime were cited by one Treasury Board official as exceeding $105 billion—only in
2006 did the Department of Justice belatedly begin the process of establishing a baseline for
measuring cybercrime. In part, the absence of reliable statistics reflects the difficulty faced by
local police and justice institutions who have to police activities that may not be defined or
considered criminal in their jurisdiction (or against which they have few tools). Quite simply
the globalization of criminality has far exceeded the capacity of states to define or harmonize
an effective global mechanism to contain or police it. Consequently, despite notable efforts
such as the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime, criminal activity and networks
continue to multiply and expand into new regions and activities. Russian hackers are implicated with identity theft and credit card fraud in the United States and Europe. Nigerian gangs
have become omnipresent in a variety of scams and wire fraud, while Chinese and Israeli
gangs preside over a global distribution network of pirated DVDs and software. The result of
this criminal use of the Internet is that in local jurisdictions the first real awareness of Internet
use in their local community comes accompanied with a request for prosecution. In one particularly egregious case that occurred in the late 1990s, the entire ‘‘.tj’’ domain was registered
by a U.S.-based entity that used it to host child pornography. Local Tajik authorities were
forced to pursue legal action to claim the domain, a fact that did little to portray the social
benefits of an unregulated Internet to the morally conservative Tajik society.
A third dark net, and perhaps the hardest to define, consists of the multitude of private social networks that exist among migrant and diaspora communities and that play an important
function in supporting the economic and social ties that bind these communities to their kin
and communities of origin. These ‘‘private interest’’ networks are the least well known and
analyzed, as penetrating them requires gaining the trust of the communities. Often these
Global Civil Society and the Securitization of the Internet
131
effectively separate the insurgents from the people, or armed social movements from the
Internet, in a manner that does not destroy the latter.
Transnational criminal networks are a second form of dark nets. These actors, who can be
large or small, local or transnational, exploit the relative anonymity offered by the Internet, as
well as the absence of harmonized national laws defining cybercrime, to circumvent or avoid
prosecution. Much of the activities of these actors involve old crimes, such as fraud and
theft, which have been adapted to the new possibilities offered by the emergence of the eeconomy. In other cases, jurisdictions with poorly functioning or nonexistent laws are used to
hide otherwise criminal activities, such as distribution of child pornography, out of the reach of
authorities in jurisdictions where such activities are clearly criminalized.
Globally, the incidences of reported cybercime is increasing in both developed and developing economies. In the Russian Federation, for example, acknowledged as a source of some
of the most imaginative forms of cybercrime, incidences reportedly grew by almost 300 percent between 2003 and 2006.
24 Yet accurate comparative statistics makes measuring global
cybercime difficult. For example, in the United States—an economy in which losses caused
by cybercrime were cited by one Treasury Board official as exceeding $105 billion—only in
2006 did the Department of Justice belatedly begin the process of establishing a baseline for
measuring cybercrime. In part, the absence of reliable statistics reflects the difficulty faced by
local police and justice institutions who have to police activities that may not be defined or
considered criminal in their jurisdiction (or against which they have few tools). Quite simply
the globalization of criminality has far exceeded the capacity of states to define or harmonize
an effective global mechanism to contain or police it. Consequently, despite notable efforts
such as the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime, criminal activity and networks
continue to multiply and expand into new regions and activities. Russian hackers are implicated with identity theft and credit card fraud in the United States and Europe. Nigerian gangs
have become omnipresent in a variety of scams and wire fraud, while Chinese and Israeli
gangs preside over a global distribution network of pirated DVDs and software. The result of
this criminal use of the Internet is that in local jurisdictions the first real awareness of Internet
use in their local community comes accompanied with a request for prosecution. In one particularly egregious case that occurred in the late 1990s, the entire ‘‘.tj’’ domain was registered
by a U.S.-based entity that used it to host child pornography. Local Tajik authorities were
forced to pursue legal action to claim the domain, a fact that did little to portray the social
benefits of an unregulated Internet to the morally conservative Tajik society.
A third dark net, and perhaps the hardest to define, consists of the multitude of private social networks that exist among migrant and diaspora communities and that play an important
function in supporting the economic and social ties that bind these communities to their kin
and communities of origin. These ‘‘private interest’’ networks are the least well known and
analyzed, as penetrating them requires gaining the trust of the communities. Often these
Global Civil Society and the Securitization of the Internet
131