“The Internet is becoming the main crime scene related to sexual violence”

Johannes-Wilhelm Roerig, the Federal government’s commissioner for combating child sexual abuse, said at the European Police Congress in Berlin in early February.

And the shadow segment of the Internet darknet, in his words, has long been “a haven for the most inveterate criminals.”

Decentralized and encrypted Internet

The Darknet is an anonymous and uncontrolled part of the Internet, inaccessible to ordinary search engines like Google. It works in a decentralized manner, access to it is carried out through special browsers, such as Tor, which route encrypted messages through several servers to disguise the user’s location. Thus, users can maintain almost complete anonymity. In addition, it turns out that not one, but many darknets can actually exist at the same time.

There are additional obstacles along the way: new members of closed communities often have to be recommended by so-called “verified” users or persons with a special privileged status. All this makes the surveillance of the darknet by law enforcement agencies even more difficult.