Pre-digital era : how did terrorists migrate to the dark web?

Abstract

Terrorism refers to the unlawful act of harming individuals, or even buildings, to show power against government bodies and/or political organisations (Sheldon, 2021). The main purpose of such criminal activity tends to be because of control and religion. Furthermore, in today’s postmodern society, terrorists have resorted to online means, specifically the Dark Web. Communication, planning, purchasing and/or selling illegal materials and services usually now take place on the Dark Web to be hidden from authorities. However, Travis (2008), found that spreading propaganda and even radicalizing individuals still may take place on the Surface Web due to the fact that aspiring amateur terrorists do not tend to access the Dark Web. The Dark Web has been a major problem that authorities have been trying to control for the last few years (Besheer, 2017). Terrorists have been taking advantage of this space because of the high amount of anonymity and confidentiality. Hence, authorities find it extremely difficult to catch terrorists on the Dark Web and prevent any attacks. It has been found that because of such level of difficulty, authorities would rather focus on larger well-known criminal activity that is being committed by terrorists on the Dark Web than the smaller criminal activity as there is more of a chance of catching the bigger, more well-known, transactions, messages, disinformation and so forth (Belcic & Nelson, 2022).