October 17, 2000 was the day when Information Technology Act 2000 (ITA 2000) became effective. The essence of ITA 2000 was the legal recognition for binary documents and authentication with the use of PKI based Digital signatures. Together, legally valid digital contracts became feasible and E Commerce and E Governance got a foothold. This should be considered as the birth of “Digital Society of India”. This digital society has now developed and become “Digital India”.
Let us therefore remember this day as the “Digital Society Day”.
In order to celebrate the day, we at Naavi.org and FDPPI are having a discussion on “Taming of the Dark Web”. It is a short virtual Round Table discussion on Zoom and all are invited.
In order to preserve the benefits of Technology to the society, we need to curb the activities of Cyber Criminals. The presence of “Dark Web” and the “Dark Currency” in the form of private Crypto currencies enable criminals to continue their criminal activities. Criminals reside in Dark Web and come out from time to time to attack the Netizens on the surface and vanish back into the Dark Web.
The entry door for moving in and out of the dark web is the Tor browser and the currency for living in the dark web is the PCC (Private Crypto Currency). The communication tool for Dark Netizens to communicate with surface Netizens is the mail services like the “Proton Mail” which is used for sending not only the bomb threats but also the ransomware demands.
Despite knowing the adverse impact on the society from Cyber Crimes, we have allowed free conversion of PCC like Bitcoins to legacy currency so that all earnings in the dark web can be used in the civil society. We also encourage use of Tor browsers in young technology users as a part of security training. Many of the VPN services like the Proton Mail are used by security professionals to have anonymous existence.
It is however necessary to recognize that the Dark Web eco system is killing the society for the benefit of the criminal. We need to recognize this and put a stop to it.
The regulators are currently unable to reduce Cyber Crimes and the society is moving into an era where Cyber Crime is becoming an acceptable way of life.
Our own Government is hesitant to curb Bit Coins and is shamelessly happy to make money through taxation of Bitcoin transactions. Our security experts are unconcerned about the adverse impact of technology crimes on the society. Given an opportunity wee would try to take the benefit of Cyber Crimes by creating products for handling the adverse impact rather than preventing the adverse impact.
It is time that we realize that we as a society need to go for a direct attack on the crime syndicates by attacking the Dark web entry tools and dark web benefit exploitation tools. We therefore need to introduce strict regulations on the use of Tor Browser, VPN mail services like Proton Mail and the Private Crypto Currencies like Bitcoin.
Let us by law make it difficult for the Tor Browser and Proton Mail to be used by criminals with following steps.
1.Let us ban Proton Mail and all other mail services that donot cooperate with the law enforcement agencies in identifying the senders of email.
2.Let us make all Tor browser installations “licensable”
3.Let us mandate that all Tor users need to be registered as “Ethical Hackers”.
4.Let us mandate that use of Bitcoins (PCCs) is an offence and considered as an attempt at money laundering.
I suppose we can discuss all these in today’s discussion on “Taming the Dark Web”
Naavi
