Report of the Independent Surveillance Review
11
Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is
one of the services available over these networks.28
1.19
The decentralised and, it was perceived, egalitarian nature of the early Web was eroded
by commercialisation, which began in earnest in the 1990s. As a result, ‘The belief that
“peripheral voices” could move centre stage in the digital era – central to a naive mid
1990s view of the Internet – became increasingly implausible’.29 As commercialisation
increased and large Internet firms began to emerge, companies sought to track user
preferences and habits online in order to improve the efficiency of the system. One
means of achieving this was the development of ‘cookies’ – text files that were placed
on an Internet user’s hard drive by their web browser in order to log information about
their behaviour. In May 2011 a ‘cookie law’ was adopted by all EU member states that
requires websites to gain consent from visitors to store or receive any information on a
computer or web-connected device.30
1.20
The initial purpose of these kinds of user-tracking technologies was for companies to
better understand their users and improve services, as well as to prevent crimes such
as infringement of intellectual property rights. It was not long before crimes committed
on the Internet began to attract the attention of governments and law-enforcement
agencies, which could see the movement of traditional, ‘offline’ crimes into the online
sphere. An increasing proportion of crimes are perpetrated with an online component
– whether traditional crimes now conducted on a much bigger scale, such as fraud and
child sexual abuse, or those exclusive to an Internet environment, such as computer
viruses and other forms of malicious software (malware).
The Dark Web
1.21
When accessing information on the Web, most people use search engines. However, a
traditional search engine can only find information that is open and public to all, and
that has been indexed by the automatic programmes used by search-engine companies.
Known as the ‘surface web’, this represents a small percentage of the total content of the
Web. The vast majority of content on the Web is found on the ‘deep web’ – unindexed by
search engines, comprising protected websites such as the intranets of companies and
governments, and e-mail, document- and photo-storage sites.
28. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), ‘Description of W3C Technology Stack Illustration’,
<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/techstack-desc.html>.
29. Yvonne Jewkes and Majid Yar, Handbook of Internet Crime, p. 26.
30. The ‘cookie law’ was adopted in 2002, requiring notification to users. See European
Communities, ‘Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council’,
Official Journal of the European Communities (L201, 2002), Art. 5(3), p. 44. The addition of
a consent obligation was ‘adopted’ through an amendment in 2009, which came into force
in May 2011. See European Union, ‘Directive 2009/136/EC of the European Parliament and
of the Council’, Official Journal of the European Union (L337, 2009).