Explosives and arms trade in the cyberspace

Andrzej Skwarski ORCID 0000-0001-8961-7098 Akademia im. Jakuba z Paradyża w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim Explosives and arms trade in the cyberspace Summary Arms trade is a serious problem in the modern world, especially when conducted through the internet. Huge profits derived from this type of transaction and the ever‍‑growing demand for unofficial access to the means of inflicting death make this practice still valid. The international community is constantly taking new steps to limit this phenomenon, but in many cases, these are ineffective. The reasons lie on the one hand in the idea of the Internet itself, which in essence is not subject to control, and on the other, in the fact that people with weapons on offer make every effort to keep their activities hidden. In the internet itself, methods for additional concealment of activity,have been developed; namely Darknet. Therefore, all illegal transactions are carried out via dark websites. Keywords: illegal arms trade, internet portals, Darknet, European Union, police statistics 1. Introduction to the arms trade issue on the Internet On February 6, 1999, Pope John Paul II proclaimed St. Isidore the patron of the Internet. Why this church doctor and bishop living in the Middle Ages [554‍‑633] was chosen as the patron of the virtual world, which was created hundreds of years after his death. Isidore wrote The Etymologies, a kind of the first scientific encyclopedia of the general synthesis of knowledge in his time. The work contains 7500 entries and has been arranged in a similar way to today's databases, hence the idea for the announcement of St. Isidore as the patron of the Internet1. Was this enlightened man with the gift of predicting the direction of science development able to imagine what tools of communication on a global scale will be given to people living in the 20th and 21st centuries. One can venture to say that the saint's imagination did not reach that far because even modern living people are not aware of all the possibilities or threats of virtual reality, and above all we are 1 www.isidorus.net accessed [accessed: 10.01.2019 r.]. Studia Administracji i Bezpieczeństwa nr 8/2020 not able to predict what effects such rapid development of information technology will bring in the future. On the one hand, this technology makes our lives easier, provides information on events from around the world almost immediately, took over the performance of many jobs requiring precision of repetition or those dangerous for humans, replaces us in many daily tasks, allows us to learn phenomena inaccessible by other methods, but on the other hand it creates the possibility of committing crimes very often in a way difficult to detect, and what is extremely important, creates the conditions of apparent „invisibility". The Internet has also become a place of huge, impossible to accurately estimate, trade exchange, guaranteeing speed and ease of reaching a potential customer with little investment in advertising or marketing. On the part of the customer, it is easy to compare prices and descriptions of a given product, and it guarantees the omission of additional costs accompanying products purchased on the traditional market in stores, shopping centers or bazaars, such as costs of renting premises or service. At the same time, the apparent anonymity mentioned above encourages attempts to use networks for trafficking drugs, crime items or illegally produced items. Here is a problem of arms trade, which should be considered in terms of trade permitted by law as well as prohibited. To begin with, it is worth quoting the well‍‑known saying: “if something is not on the Internet, it means it does not exist”. This briefly and concisely explains why weapons appeared on the network. Arms trade ranks high on the scale of revenues from this source for many countries; it is enough to look at the site http://nisatapps.prio.org/armsglobe/ where in the form of an interactive globe you can track the export and import of weapons of all countries participating in the arms trade, both as seller and buyer. Over 74 percent of the world production of weapons is carried out by 6 countries, the USA 34.84%, Russia 14.86%, the United Kingdom 6.57%, China 6.29% and France 4%. It is interesting that all these countries except Germany are permanent members of the UN Security Council2. Amnesty International data shows that about 1,500 people die as a result of using weapons every day, while according to the organization's estimated data, there are 28 people with injuries per person killed. There are many grim statistics about adverse phenomena associated with the use of weapons, for example, child soldiers, displaced people living in extreme poverty due to armed conflicts in their area of residence. The European Union is not free from the threats of the illegal use of weapons either. In the first 10 years of the 21st century there were about 10,000 victims as a result of the illegal use of weapons in 28 EU countries3. In addition, Union citizens 2 3 http://amnesty.org.pl/index.php?id=224 [accessed: 12.01.2019]. Years 2000 – 2009. Source: UNODOC „Global Study on Homicide”, 2011. These are partial 216 Andrzej Skwarski, Explosives and arms trade... may be concerned about killings and suicides per 100,000 citizens, which is 0.24 and 0.9, respectively, from firearms4. There are about 80 million pieces of legally owned weapons in the EU. Legal trade is, unfortunately, a short route to illegal trade or import from third countries or the conversion of non‍‑firearms into products that meet the criteria. According to the Schengen Information System enabling Member States to use data on lost or stolen weapons by type or serial number, there is no information on about 500,000 thousand weapons from legal trade that have been lost or stolen. Another source of weapons’ origin are places of conflicts or events related to the movement of a large number of troops. And so heavy military weapons in the mid ‍‑90s went to the European market from the Balkans and the countries of the former Soviet Union5. For example, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has a population of around 3.9 million, around 750,000 families possess weapons illegally. According to data, nearly 90% of crimes in this country are committed using illegal weapons. Despite the fact that the return of illegally owned weapons to security authorities is not punished, the amount in private hands is still growing. Low prices are an incentive to buy; the Israeli pistol "Desert Eagle" costs around 2500 PLN. Additional concern may be the data on the number of suicides among former soldiers in this country using weapons from illegal sources amounting to 4,000 deaths since the end of hostilities in the Balkans. The possession of a weapon in Bosnia and Herzegovina by a private person is not regulated by law, and in the Republika Srpska it may be possessed by a citizen who is 21 years old, has no criminal rec (...truncated)