'Dark' Net sites under scrutiny

Shoichi Yamashita Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Police and private organizations have been strengthening oversights on online "dark sites" following the kidnapping and killing of a 31-year-old woman in Nagoya late last month by three men who got together to plot the alleged crime at the suggestion of one of the suspects through a cell phone-accessible Web site.

Kenji Kawagishi, 40, an unemployed man who made the suggestion, turned himself in to the Aichi prefectural police on Aug. 25, the day after the trio allegedly kidnapped and killed Rie Isogai, a contract employee, who was on her way home.

Kawagishi sent a message from his cell phone to the Web site, on which people recruited accomplices to help them commit crimes, about a week before the trio allegedly committed the crime. The so-called Dark Employment Security Web site was closed after the incident.

Tsukasa Kanda, 36, a sales promotion agent for The Asahi Shimbun, and Yoshitomo Hori, 32, unemployed, responded to Kawagishi's proposal. The trio, who were all hard up for cash, met on Aug. 22 in Nagoya to plot a crime to rob a woman.

According to the police, they abducted Isogai by car, robbed her of 70,000 yen in cash and killed her before abandoning her body in the forests of Mizunami, Gifu Prefecture.

There are numerous so-called dark Web sites that list "help wanted" and "situation wanted" ads for illegal acts or suggest transactions of cell phones, bank accounts and drugs. Such sites have been closed or suspended whenever found to be used as channels for illegal acts but frequently resurface under new names. The National Police Agency said it is hard to grasp the exact number of dark Web sites.

Entrusted by the NPA, Internet Association Japan in Tokyo opened Internet Hotline Center Japan in June last year to receive reports on illegal or harmful information. The number of such reports totaled about 60,000 as of the end of May. Most reports were about sites providing p 0 r n o g r a p h i c images. Reports about online messages for undertaking or mediating illegal activities such as drug transactions amounted to about 6,000.

But many dark sites avoid using direct expressions, making it difficult to gauge their criminality. According to Joji Yamauchi, head of the management planning section at Pitcrew, a Tokyo-based private Net patrol company, "The only possible way to check them is [to hold them up] against [Web] site oversight standards, key words and context." In other words, the only way to confirm the real intention of an online message is to contact its writer.

In the wake of the Nagoya incident, the NPA decided to bolster its patrol of dark Web sites, in addition to child p 0 r n o g r a p h y and dating sites. The agency asked for about 148 million yen in its budgetary request for the next fiscal year. While entrusting cyber patrol to Pitcrew, the agency will allocate more personnel to monitor dark sites, increasing the number of full-time staff assigned to the Internet Hotline Center Japan from the current six to 11.

The most effective measure is to continuously monitor sites filled with such murky messages. After these kinds of messages are deleted, the center will ask the site manager to post in their place such a phrase as "This message has been removed upon receipt of [police] notification."

"Illegal messages can be controlled only by making those involved feel they are being monitored by police," said Seiji Yoshikawa, deputy director of the center.

Prof. Keiji Takeda of Carnegie Mellon CyLab Japan pointed out the difficulty in regulating Web sites. "Some people argue that regulating sites runs counter to freedom of expression or communication guaranteed by the Constitution. It's a sensitive issue because too much control may lead to censorship," he said.

Police authorities have asked providers and others to eliminate 5,596 online messages based on reports received by the Internet Hotline Center Japan. The manager of a Web site similar to the Dark Employment Security online bulletin used in the Nagoya abduction-murder case expressed an aversion to regulating Web sites, saying, "It's regrettable that our Web sites are labeled as hotbeds for crimes."

Similarly, in Britain, France, Germany, South Korea and the United States, there are no laws obligating deletion of online messages soliciting illegal acts. Such decisions are left in the hands of site providers or managers.

For this reason, the Ireland-based International Association of Internet Hotline Providers (INHOPE) was established in 1999 by organizations in different countries to deal with reports of online postings advocating illegal acts through international cooperation.

The Internet Hotline Center Japan joined INHOPE in March, exchanging reports on illegal Net information with other member country organizations.

Despite stepped-up efforts by police and private organizations to deal with shady Web sites, it is impossible to grasp the extent to which such sites have proliferated. For the moment, the only way to deal with the issue is for individual users to sharpen their watchful eyes on such sites.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070914TDY04001.htm