A Qualitative Evaluation of Two Different Law Enforcement Approaches on Dark Net Markets

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a qualitative study on discussions about two major law enforcement interventions against Dark Net Market (DNM) users extracted from relevant Reddit forums. We assess the impact of Operation Hyperion and Operation Bayonet (combined with the closure of the site Hansa) by analyzing posts and comments made by users of two Reddit forums created for the discussion of Dark Net Markets. The operations are compared in terms of the size of the discussions, the consequences recorded, and the opinions shared by forum users. We find that Operation Bayonet generated a higher number of discussions on Reddit, and from the qualitative analysis of such discussions it appears that this operation also had a greater impact on the DNM ecosystem.

Out of control online? A combined examination of peer-offending and perceived formal and informal social control in relation to system-trespassing

“…In an era when online communication clearly limits the prevention of such offending by controlling a person's online criminal social ties, it is interesting to see that it may also be effective to focus on that person's perceptions of formal social control, rather than informal social control. Results from take downs of drug markets, show how the offenders' perceptions of the level and scope of formal control increases as a result of these police interventions (Bradley and Stringhini 2019). It would be interesting to test the effect of such take downs and other police interventions in the context of system trespassing.…”

Policing the Cybercrime Script of Darknet Drug Markets: Methods of Effective Law Enforcement Intervention

“…More to the deterrent side of things, law enforcement has also employed information from the market use stage of the script to engage in what are known as "knock and talk" operations (Bradley, 2019;Bradley & Stringhini, 2019). In these operations, law enforcement leverages details gleaned from previous investigations to approach individuals who used a cryptomarket in the past to engage in a drug exchange.…”

Modelling the Cybercrime Cascade Effect in Data Crime

“…We carried out an inductive examination of the 33 cases based on a combination of news reports of court cases 9 and, where available, sentencing remarks, and collated them into a dataset (Annex I). Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) 10 [43] we qualitatively investigated "intermediate-N" with three objectives in mind. The first was to ascertain the presence of the cascade effect we earlier conceptualized in our TalkTalk case study.…”

“…The data are, we argue [4], then used for committing further cybercrime (e.g. phishing, spamming, scamming, doxing) [6,7] or for use in developing the cybercrime ecosystem, for example, targeted spamming in cybercrime-as-a-service [8][9][10][11][12].…”

“…As newspaper records are a matter of public record, this research and the cascade findings can be replicated. Note that the articles may no longer be available on the web, as discussed at[48] 10. The method is inspired by QCA because, for this paper, we did not rely on QCA software.…”