Digital Criminology: Lecture Three

OVERVIEW

Part 1: Understanding illicit drug cryptomarkets

• What are cryptomarkets?

• Clearnet, deep web, dark web

• Crypomarket buyers' practices

• Why cryptomarket vendors get into the business

Part 2: Responding to illicit drug cryptomarkets

• Drug policy models

• The 'gentrification hypothesis'

• The closure of Silk Road 1

• Cryptomarkets and harm reduction

CRYPTOMARKETS:

KEY FEATURES

• Cryptomarkets employ two central technologies:

• Anonymizing software (often The Onion Router or TOR)

• Cryptocurrencies (for example, Bitcoin)

• Whilst the selling of drugs over the Internet is not new, the affordances for anonymity provided by these technologies are new.

• The Onion Router = created in 2002

• Bitcoin = created in 2009

THE DARK WEB

• The surface web or clear net: Internet pages indexed by mainstream search engines

• The deep web: world wide web content that has not been indexed by standard web search engines

• The dark web: the world wide web that can only be accessed using certain technologies such as the Onion Router and the Invisible Internet Project Router

EARLY ONLINE DRUG MARKETS

OPEN VENDOR

DATABASE

2009

2011

2010

SILK ROAD 1

THE

DRUGSTORE

THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS: ROSS ULBRICHT?

EBAY FOR DRUGS?

• In 2016 there were around 30 multi-vendor drug cryptomarkets (Aldridge and Decary-Hetu, 2016).

• Cryptomarkets account for a very small amount of the world drug trade.

• Not all cryptomarket buyers are personal users: 31-45% of revenue on cryptomarkets is the result of high price-quantity sales - dealers buying wholesale off other dealers (Aldridge and Decary-Hetu, 2014).

• Cryptomarkets, Aldridge and Decary-Hetu (2016) argue, are a 'transformative criminal innovation.

BUYERS

• Most common drugs purchased are:
• Ecstasy
• Cannabis
• LSD (Barratt et al., 2016)

• Most buyers also purchase from friends and known dealers (in other words, closed drug markets).

• Open markets: drug markets open to any buyer.

• Closed markets: drug markets that are not open to any buyer, but only parties that have been vouched for.

• Drug crytpomarket are arguably hybrid markets, with features of both open and closed markets

AUSTRALIAN

CRYPTOMARKETS

• Australia has a disproportionately high level of cryptomarket drug trading.

• Australian cryptomarkets also trade methamphetamine at higher rates than cryptomarkets operating elsewhere (Cunliffe et al., 2017).

• Drugs generally sell at higher prices in Australian cryptomarkets - a product of Australia's strict border control policies (Cunliffe et al., 2017).

VENDORS: WHY DO THEY DO IT?

• James Martin (2018) interviewed several cryptomarket vendors.

• Social learning? Vendors often entered the trade when a friend introduced them to it.

• Strain? Several vendors began selling in order to pay for college tuition/student loans.

• Seductions of crime? (Katz, 1987): several vendors reported experiencing an emotional buzz from their work. As one put it,

'My inner reprobate buzzes from it’

DRUG

POLICY

MODELS

• Zero-tolerance model:
• Deterrence-based
• 'War on Drugs'
• Reducing the demand for drugs

• Harm reduction model:
• Public health approach
• Reducing the harms associated with drug use

• Decriminalisation
• The Portugal Model
• Decriminalisation =/= legalisation

POLICE

CRACKDOWNS?

• Traditional drug markets often are often disrupted through police crackdowns.

• Decary-Hetu and Giommoni (2017) = are police crackdowns effective in disrupting drug cryptomarkets?

• Not really:

• Cryptomarkets disrupted in the short term by Operation Onymous, but quickly bounced back.

ALBRIDGE,

STEVENS &

BARRATT

•  Will growth in cryptomarket drug buying increase the harms of illicit drugs? (Albridge et al., 2018)

• As Aldridge et al. (2018: 789) note, ‘most policy responses [to drug cryptomarkets] are based generally on the assumption that their rise will only increase drug harms’

• Cryptomarkets might reduce the harms associated with the drug trade through:

• Leading to increases in the quality of drugs purchased by users

• Decreasing the risks associated with purchasing drugs in person.

MARTIN: THE 'GENTRIFICATION HYPOTHESIS'

• 'The second perspective, which I term the ‘gentrification hypothesis’, posits that cryptomarkets are displacing potentially violent drug market norms in favour of more cordial relationships between market participants. Cryptomarkets facilitate this shift and reduce systemic violence by ensuring anonymity and physical separation between drug buyers, sellers, and other offenders’ - Martin (2018: 797).

• 'Cryptomarkets are tightly controlled by well-defined organisational hierarchies. These enforce clearly articulated rules which are developed and discussed by informed users in the context of broader philosophical, political and economic debates' - Martin (2013: 19)

QUALITY?

• Mounteney et al. (2018) question the use of the term ‘quality’ within drug cryptomarket studies:

• ‘[Drug] quality can be used variously to refer to: reliability, purity, potency, predictability of effect or indicate user satisfaction. Consequently, a high-quality drug might be a substance perceived as reliable (you get what you ordered), having high purity/potency or being predictable in its effects. It is clear that these factors can be both desirable and potentially harmful. … There is a risk that positive connotations associated with quality may lead some consumers to equate this with product safety’ - Mounteney et al. (2018: 799-800).

SAFER

SCORING?

• Cryptomarket vendors need a different skill-set to traditional drug dealers - one based on customer service rather than violence (Aldridge and Decary-Hetu, 2014)

• Whereas only 3 percent of cryptomarket buyers reported threats to their personal safety, 14.2 percent reported threats when they purchased from their friends and 23.6 reported threats when they primarily purchased from a known dealer (Barratt et al., 2016)

HARM

REDUCTION

• As Buxton and Bingham (2015: 2) argue, ‘official responses [to drug cryptomarkets] should give primacy to understanding how ‘ethical’ hidden drug markets that are regulated by their user communities and market forces might reduce the harms and violence of the ‘traditional’ drug trade and networks’

• Are cryptomarkets a more ethical infrastructure for purchasing drugs?

REFERENCES

Aldridge, J., & Décary-Hétu, D. (2014). Not an 'Ebay for Drugs': the Cryptomarket 'Silk Road' as a paradigm shifting criminal innovation. SSRN. Available at: http://

ssrncom/abstract=2436643.

Aldridge, J., & Décary-Hétu, D. (2016). Hidden wholesale: The drug diffusing capacity of online drug cryptomarkets. International Journal of Drug Policy, 35, 7-15.

Aldridge, J., Stevens, A., & Barratt, M. J. (2018). Will growth in cryptomarket drug buying increase the harms of illicit drugs? Addiction, 113(5), 789-796.

Barratt, M. J., Ferris, J. A., & Winstock, A. R. (2016). Safer scoring? Cryptomarkets, social supply and drug market violence. International Journal of Drug Policy, 35, 24-31.

Barratt, M. J., Lenton, S., Maddox, A., & Allen, M. (2016). ‘What if you live on top of a bakery and you like cakes?’—Drug use and harm trajectories before, during and after

the emergence of Silk Road. International Journal of Drug Policy, 35, 50-57.

Buxton, J., & Bingham, T. (2015). The rise and challenge of dark net drug markets. Policy Brief, 7.

Cunliffe, J., Martin, J., Décary-Hétu, D., & Aldridge, J. (2017). An island apart? Risks and prices in the Australian cryptomarket drug trade. International Journal of Drug

Policy, 50, 64-73.

Décary-Hétu, D., & Giommoni, L. (2017). Do police crackdowns disrupt drug cryptomarkets? A longitudinal analysis of the effects of Operation Onymous. Crime, Law and

Social Change, 67(1), 55-75.

Martin, J. (2013). Misguided optimism: the Silk Road closure and the War on Drugs. The Conversation, Oct.7. Available at: http://theconversation.com/misguided-

optimism-the-silk-road-closure-and-the-war-on-drugs-18937

Martin, J. (2014). Drugs on the dark net: How cryptomarkets are transforming the global trade in illicit drugs. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Martin, J. (2018). Cryptomarkets, systemic violence and the ‘gentrification hypothesis’. Addiction, 113(5), 797-798.

Markoff, J. (2006). What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. London: Penguin Books.

Mounteney, J., Cunningham, A., Groshkova, T., Sedefov, R., & Griffiths, P. (2018). Looking to the future—more concern than optimism that cryptomarkets will reduce drug‐

related harms. Addiction, 113(5), 799-800.