Darknet and the Political

Cover Page

Cite item

Full Text

Abstract

The Darknet is becoming an increasingly visible structural unit in the political sphere and at the same time remains a little-studied area of cyberspace. Therefore, the article aims to determine the conceptual prism for its consideration and its actual significance in the measurement of the political. With the help of comparative historical analysis, the study reveals the causes and time of the political birth of the Darknet, characterizes its resources and political role through system and content analysis, systematizes and clarifies the concepts of power and politics in the Network based on the provisions of R. Gel, M. Castels, K. Schmitt, etc. The author names the expansion of states (especially autocracies) in the digital space as the main factor in the politicization and transformation of the Darknet. The pressure of power and dominance systems aimed at maintaining sovereignty and control in cyberspace caused “digital resistance” of programmers and users seeking free data exchange and confidentiality, as well as civil activists who strived to avoid prosecution for dissent, which led to the renewed architecture and functionality of the Darknet, its transformation into an alternative space of informational interaction and a database to build up the opposition potential. Criminals also took advantage of the opportunities of the new network for their own purposes. The main result of the research is the thesis that the Darknet is being transformed into a special socio-technical system that is outside the sphere of international and state law, where all interactions are carried out exclusively through private agreements between clients, with an alternative world payment system based on cryptocurrencies.

About the authors

Maksim V. Yakovlev

Lomonosov Moscow State University

Author for correspondence.
Email: maxvuz@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0127-5642

Doctor of Political Science, Professor of the Department of Philosophy of Politics and Law

Moscow, Russian Federation

References

  1. Acar, H., & Pekcandanoglu, M. (2020). Analysis of Russia’s cyber security and cyber espionage policies. Turkish journal of Russian studies, (3), 167–189.
  2. Alexandrov, A.G., & Safronov, A.A. (2021). Use of Darknet to prepare and commit crimes. Vestnik of St. Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 1(89), 156–160. (In Russian).
  3. Anjum, A., Kaur, Ch., Kondapalli, S., & Hussain, M. (2021). A Mysterious and Darkside of The Darknet: A Qualitative Study. Webology, 18(4), 285–294.
  4. Archakov, V. Yu., Makarov, O.S., & Bankowski, A.L. (2021). Darknet in the context of national security risks. Pravo.by, (6), 5–10. (In Russian).
  5. Arquilla, J., & Ronfeldt, D. (1999). The Emergence of Noopolitik. Toward An American Information Strategy. RAND Corporation.
  6. Bachrach, P. & Baratz, M.S. (1962). The two faces of power. American political science review, 56, 947–952.
  7. Bartlett, J. (2017). Underground Internet: the dark side of the World Wide Web. Moscow: Eksmo. (In Russian). [Bartlett, J. (2014). The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld. William Heinemann Publishing.]
  8. Biddle, P., England, P., Peinado, M., & Willman, B. (2002). The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution. Microsoft Corporation. The Wyndham City Center Washington DC: ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management.
  9. Bilton, N. (2017). Cybercriminal No. 1. The history of the creator of the underground network empire. Moscow: Eksmo. [Bilton, N. (2017). American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road]
  10. Bronnikov, I.A. (2020). Self-organization of Citizens in the Age of Digital Communications. Outlines of global transformations: politics, economics, law. 13(2), 269–285. https://doi.org/10.23932/2542-0240-2020-13-2-14 (In Russian).
  11. Castells, M. (2004). The Internet Galaxy: Reflection on the Internet, Business and Society. Yekaterinburg: U-factoriya. (In Russian). [Castells, M. (2001). The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. https://doi.org/10.2307/40252194]
  12. Castells, M. (2016). Communication Power. Moscow: HSE Publising House. (In Russian). [Castells, M. (2009). Communication Power. Oxford University Press]
  13. Chernyshev, R.S., & Rashkovan, A.A. (2021). Cyberspace — a new sphere of military operations in international relations. Ethnosocium and interethnic culture, 3, 134–159. (In Russian).
  14. Devine, J., & Egger-Sider, F. (2021). Beyond Google: The invisible web in the academic library. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30(4), 265–269.
  15. Gayard, L. (2018). Darknet: Geopolitics and Uses. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
  16. Gehl, R.W. (2016). Power/freedom on the Dark Web: A digital ethnography of the Dark Web social network. New Media and Society, 18(7), 1219–1235.
  17. Hamilton, N. (2003). The Mechanics of a Deep Net Metasearch Engine. Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference on e-Society, 1034–1036.
  18. Mansfield-Devine, S. (2009). Darknets. Computer Fraud & Security, 12, 4–6.
  19. Moore, D. & Rid, T. (2016). Cryptopolitik and the Darknet. Survival, 57(1), 7–38.
  20. Puchkov, O.A. (2020). Motivation of hackers’ actions in the modern digital environment: an interdisciplinary approach. Problems of modern pedagogical education, 67(3), 306–309. (In Russian).
  21. Schmitt, C. (2016). The concept of the political. St. Petersburg: Nauka. (In Russian). [Schmitt, C. (1932). The concept of the political]
  22. Tormosheva, V.S. (2020). Political activity of the postmodern audience: the communicative aspect. Via in Tempore. History and Political Science, 47(3), 647–657. (In Russian).
  23. Tzanetakis, M. (2017). The Darknet’s anonymity dilemma. Encore. The Annual Magazine on Internet and Society Research,118-125.
  24. Wood, J. (2010). The Darknet: A Digital Copyright Revolution. XVI Rich. J.L. & Tech. 14. URL: http://jolt.richmond.edu/v16i4/article14.pdf (accessed: 04.05.2022).
  25. Zakariye, M.O., & Jamaluddin, I. (2020). An Overview of Darknet, Rise and Challenges and Its Assumptions. International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology, 8(3), 110–116.
  26. Zhmurov, D.V. (2020). Darknet as an elusive sphere of legal regulation. Siberian Criminal Process and Criminalistic Readings, (1), 89–98. (In Russian).

Copyright (c) 2022 Yakovlev M.V.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This website uses cookies

You consent to our cookies if you continue to use our website.

About Cookies