Union Minister Amit Shah at a regional meeting on drug trafficking and national security on Wednesday said that there has been an increase in drug smuggling through the darknet and cryptocurrencies that is responsible for terrorism. He also added that the narcotics are eating the youth and the money from the illegal trade is being used to nurture terrorism.
This comes around the time that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Income Tax Department (I-T Department) along with other agencies are looking into three digital asset management companies for illegal drug transactions. This was reported by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) after they found their involvement in illegal drug transactions worth Rs 28,000 crore.
What is the Darknet?
Dark web is a part of the internet that isn't indexed by any search engines and it has now become a hotbed of criminal activities. You can do everything from creating chess clubs to purchasing drugs. But navigating the dark net is not easy. This is a space where everyone is anonymous, increasing the risk for scams. You can access the dark web through an anonymous browser called Tor.
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The Tor browser routes web pages through a series of proxy servers operated by thousands of volunteers around the globe making it difficult to access your IP.
You can identify a darknet website through the naming structure and the dark net websites end in .onion. In fact, the dark net uses a scrambled naming structure that creates URLs that cannot be remembered.
Another interesting fact is that nearly all of the darknet web runs on bitcoin.
Drugs and Darknet
Just like the rest of the world, drug traffickers have gone hi-tech and are using dark web, cryptocurrencies and social media to carry out their activities. The first darknet drug market that is noteworthy is that of Silk Road which operated from January 2011 to October 2013, after it was seized by the FBI.
The functioning of this is simple: the darknet explorers enable customers to access their desired platform where they allow them to pay for the drugs in cryptocurrencies, in particular bitcoins. The delivery of the drugs that are purchased on these darknet platforms are then further carried out by postal services. These services are not aware of what is being sent in the parcel and on top of that these parcels are sent out by anonymous post office boxes.
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One of the reasons the darknet is used for drug dealing is the anonymity and the fact that there is no need for physical contact. Another advantage is that the seller and the buyer don't need to be in the same physical space for the exchange.
The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in February this year busted a high-profile international drug ring that involved financial analysts, medical students, businessmen, engineers and musicians who were allegedly trafficking LSD, magic mushrooms, hashish chocolates, cocaine, MD crystals and ecstasy on the Darknet. The NCB was successful in arresting 22 traffickers but not the 300 users in the Telegram group operated by the syndicate. According to officials, the cartel used the same technique of delivering through drop shipping or parcels.
The Dred module was a webpage on Darknet for review rating of Indian-based dealers and it used the couriers and India Post that did not require documentation. DarkNet Market (DNM) was an Indian-based web platform that was being used to buy and sell drugs, assess quality of product and locate suppliers or buyers. Both of these were being used by the traffickers that were caught.
