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Investigators repeatedly succeed in striking individual dealers, but the operators are often difficult to grasp (archive image)
Photo: DPA / Customs Investigation Office Frankfurt
Doing business on the Darknet often works little differently than trading on websites such as Ebay or Amazon.
Dealers offer their illegal products such as weapons or drugs on special black market platforms and, after a successful deal, leave a rating in the form of stars and sentences such as: "Reliable customer, gladly again."
The operators of the criminal platforms often collect a fee for every deal, but as with Ebay or Amazon, they often do not know anything about the individual transactions.
Therefore, investigations against administrators of darknet platforms are often complicated and lengthy.
Although the platforms play a central role in the trafficking of drugs or child abuse videos, negotiations against the operators also sometimes end with relatively low fines.
All of that should change with a new law from the Federal Ministry of Justice.
According to SPIEGEL information, Article 127 is intended to create a new offense in the criminal code under the name of "criminal liability for operating criminal trading platforms on the Internet".
New law against darknet administrators
According to the new law, "anyone who operates a trading platform on the Internet whose purpose is aimed at enabling or promoting the commission of unlawful acts" is to be sentenced according to the draft law from Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD).
The perpetrators face up to five years imprisonment, in commercial cases even up to ten years.
However, the regulation should only apply to platforms on which certain particularly serious crimes are committed.
Among other things, it is about drug and arms trafficking, counterfeit money, hacking, the trade in counterfeit products or the distribution of child abuse recordings.
For all such crimes there are special criminal platforms in the Darknet, which in the past often have relevant names such as "Cannabis Road" or "Fraudsters" (from the English word for fraud).
The draft law, which is before the SPIEGEL, also provides that telecommunication surveillance is easier against operators of such criminal trading platforms.
The monitoring measure of an online search should also be allowed.
Popular statement from operators: Did not know anything about the individual criminal offenses
So far, those who enable illegal business on the Darknet have often been charged with aiding and abetting in Germany.
For example, this is the charge in the case of the alleged cyberbunker operator.
The defense of the main defendant rejected the allegations that his client knew about the illegal pages on his servers as "absurd".
The investigations into the cyber bunker also lasted so long because the investigators have to prove to the server operators that they deliberately support the crimes committed via their servers.
For example, lengthy interception measures were necessary.
Civil rights activists criticized the previous legislative initiative
As early as March 2019, the Federal Council voted for a bill to operate darknet platforms.
At the time, civil rights activists criticized the fact that "rubber paragraphs" also criminalized journalists, dissidents or whistleblowers who also use the anonymization options of the Darknet.
Because the legislative initiative explicitly mentioned services that take special technical protective measures, the hacking association "Chaos Computer Club" warned against legal uncertainty for anyone who operates or uses anonymization services.
In order to prevent this, the new legislative initiative from the Ministry of Justice restricts that only trading platforms with a clearly "criminal orientation" should be punishable.
There is also no distinction between pages in the Darknet and the regular Internet.
In fact, some of the crimes at stake are also committed via special platforms on the normal network.
Platforms “with a legal business purpose”, on the other hand, should not be affected by the law, even if they are misused for criminal offenses in individual cases.
The criminal orientation should be recognizable, among other things, by how a page is structured and whether it has relevant sales categories, for example for various drugs.
In many darknet black markets, this is clearly the case.
On the other hand, there are seldom sites on the Darknet such as »Germany in the Deep Web« through which the gunman from the OEZ got his weapon.
In addition to drug offers and a weapons forum, political issues and right-wing extremist conspiracy myths were also discussed here.
More revenue through more seizures
The Federal Ministry of Justice also hopes that the law will enable it to confiscate more money from Darknet criminals.
It is expected that the law will lead to more investigations and trials for Darknet crimes.
The expected increase in asset seizures will also mean that the additional costs for the increase in investigations will be compensated.
The corresponding ministerial draft was recently voted on by ministries and is to be passed in this legislative period.
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