The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse refers to those who use the Internet to facilitate crime or (pejoratively) to rhetorical approaches evoking such criminals.
The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There is not a universally agreed definition of who the Horsemen are. Terrorists, pedophiles/child molesters, organized crime like drug dealers, intellectual property pirates, and money launderers are cited commonly.
One of the most famous definitions is in The Cyphernomicon by the cypherpunk writer and engineer Tim May, [1] which states:
8.3.4. "How will privacy and anonymity be attacked?" [...]
- like so many other "computer hacker" items, as a tool for the "Four Horsemen": drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles.
17.5.7. "What limits on the Net are being proposed?" [...]
- Newspapers are complaining about the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers
Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists". [2] [3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities.
The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.". [4] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "Think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools. Connotations related to such argumentation continue to be attached to the phrase, and it is more commonly used by those who wish to deride various restrictions on Internet activity than by those who support such restrictions.
The four supposed threats may be used all at once or individually, depending on the circumstances: [5]
In 2015, the UK Conservative party claimed that their proposed “new communications data legislation will strengthen our ability to disrupt terrorist plots, criminal networks, and organized child grooming gangs”, [6] echoing the "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc." quote of Timothy C. May.
Later in 2015, Gamma Group released a statement claiming that their surveillance technology is used "against terrorist threats, drug cartels, other major organized crime, and paedophile rings." [7] as justification for concerns that it was being used to target opposition politicians and media groups in Uganda. With money-laundering treated as a major organised crime, this quote matches very closely with the list given in the Cypherpunk FAQ.
In 2022, European Commission proposed the Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse, nicknamed "Chat Control", which includes a requirement to scan private communication on the endpoints, leveraging the Think of the children argument for effectively bypassing end-to-end encryption. Efforts to pass the measure continue through 2024.
Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, underground sex work, terrorism, corruption, embezzlement, and gambling, and converting the funds into a seemingly legitimate source, usually through a front organization.
Organized crime is a category of transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a form of illegal business, some criminal organizations, such as terrorist groups, rebel forces, and separatists, are politically motivated. Many criminal organizations rely on fear or terror to achieve their goals or aims as well as to maintain control within the organization and may adopt tactics commonly used by authoritarian regimes to maintain power. Some forms of organized crime simply exist to cater towards demand of illegal goods in a state or to facilitate trade of goods and services that may have been banned by a state. Sometimes, criminal organizations force people to do business with them, such as when a gang extorts protection money from shopkeepers. Street gangs may often be deemed organized crime groups or, under stricter definitions of organized crime, may become disciplined enough to be considered organized. A criminal organization can also be referred to as an outfit, a gang, crime family, mafia, mob, (crime) ring, or syndicate; the network, subculture, and community of criminals involved in organized crime may be referred to as the underworld or gangland. Sociologists sometimes specifically distinguish a "mafia" as a type of organized crime group that specializes in the supply of extra-legal protection and quasi-law enforcement. Academic studies of the original "Mafia", the Italian Mafia, as well as its American counterpart, generated an economic study of organized crime groups and exerted great influence on studies of the Russian mafia, the Chinese triads, the Hong Kong triads, and the Japanese yakuza.
Bruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society as of November, 2013. He is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and The Tor Project; and an advisory board member of Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography and is a squid enthusiast.
A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. Cypherpunks have been engaged in an active movement since at least the late 1980s and early 1990s.
An assassination market is a prediction market where any party can place a bet on the date of death of a given individual. This incentivises assassination, as parties with foreknowledge of an assassination can profit by placing bets on the time of the death. Because the payoff is for accurately picking the date rather than performing the assassination, it is substantially more difficult to assign criminal liability.
Crypto-anarchy, crypto-anarchism, cyberanarchy or cyberanarchism is a political ideology focusing on the protection of privacy, political freedom, and economic freedom, the adherents of which use cryptographic software for confidentiality and security while sending and receiving information over computer networks. In his 1988 "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto", Timothy C. May introduced the basic principles of crypto-anarchism, encrypted exchanges ensuring total anonymity, total freedom of speech, and total freedom to trade. In 1992, he read the text at the founding meeting of the cypherpunk movement. Most Crypto-anarchists are anarcho-capitalists but some are anarcho-mutualists.
Timothy C. May, better known as Tim May was an American technical and political writer, and electronic engineer and senior scientist at Intel. May was also the founder of the crypto-anarchist movement. He retired from Intel in 1986 at age 35 and died of natural causes at his home on December 13, 2018 at age 66.
"Information wants to be free" is an expression that means either that all people should be able to access information freely, or that information naturally strives to become as freely available among people as possible. It is often used by technology activists to criticize laws that limit transparency and general access to information. People who criticize intellectual property law say the system of such government-granted monopolies conflicts with the development of a public domain of information. The expression is often credited to Stewart Brand, who was recorded saying it at a Hackers Conference in 1984.
A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency exchange can be a market maker that typically takes the bid–ask spreads as a transaction commission for its service or, as a matching platform, simply charges fees.
Terrorism financing is the provision of funds or providing financial support to individual terrorists or non-state actors.
The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada is the national financial intelligence agency of Canada. FINTRAC was established in 2000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act to facilitate detection and investigation of money laundering, FINTRAC's mandate was expanded in December 2001 following amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act to also disclose financial intelligence to other Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies with respect to suspected terrorist financing. FINTRAC's mandate was further expanded in 2006 under Bill C-25 to enhance the client identification, record-keeping and reporting measures, established a registration regime for money services businesses and foreign exchange dealers, and created new offences for not registering.
The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 was a United States bill designed with the stated intention of increasing enforcement of laws related to the prosecution of child pornography and child sexual exploitation offenses. Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), sponsor of H.R. 1981, stated that, "When investigators develop leads that might result in saving a child or apprehending a pedophile, their efforts should not be frustrated because vital records were destroyed simply because there was no requirement to retain them."
Eric Hughes is an American mathematician, computer programmer, and cypherpunk. He is considered one of the founders of the cypherpunk movement, alongside Timothy C. May and John Gilmore. He is notable for founding and administering the Cypherpunk mailing list, authoring A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, creating and hosting the first anonymous remailer, and coining the motto, "Cypherpunks write code".
CryptoParty (Crypto-Party) is a grassroots global endeavour to introduce the basics of practical cryptography such as the Tor anonymity network, I2P, Freenet, key signing parties, disk encryption and virtual private networks to the general public. The project primarily consists of a series of free public workshops.
"Think of the children" is a cliché that evolved into a rhetorical tactic. In the literal sense, it refers to children's rights. In debate, it is a plea for pity that is used as an appeal to emotion, and therefore may become a logical fallacy.
The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets: overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communicate and conduct business anonymously without divulging identifying information, such as a user's location. The dark web forms a small part of the deep web, the part of the web not indexed by web search engines, although sometimes the term deep web is mistakenly used to refer specifically to the dark web.
Monero is a cryptocurrency which uses a blockchain with privacy-enhancing technologies to obfuscate transactions to achieve anonymity and fungibility. Observers cannot decipher addresses trading Monero, transaction amounts, address balances, or transaction histories.
A cryptocurrency tumbler or cryptocurrency mixing service is a service that mixes potentially identifiable or "tainted" cryptocurrency funds with others, so as to obscure the trail back to the fund's original source. This is usually done by pooling together source funds from multiple inputs for a large and random period of time, and then spitting them back out to destination addresses. As all the funds are lumped together and then distributed at random times, it is very difficult to trace exact coins. Tumblers have arisen to improve the anonymity of cryptocurrencies, usually bitcoin, since the digital currencies provide a public ledger of all transactions. Due to its goal of anonymity, tumblers have been used to money launder cryptocurrency.
DeepDotWeb was a news site dedicated to events in and surrounding the dark web featuring interviews and reviews about darknet markets, Tor hidden services, privacy, bitcoin, and related news. The website was seized on May 7, 2019, during an investigation into the owners' affiliate marketing model, in which they received money for posting links to certain darknet markets, and for which they were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. In March 2021 site administrator Tal Prihar pleaded guilty to his charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
United States virtual currency law is financial regulation as applied to transactions in virtual currency in the U.S. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has regulated and may continue to regulate virtual currencies as commodities. The Securities and Exchange Commission also requires registration of any virtual currency traded in the U.S. if it is classified as a security and of any trading platform that meets its definition of an exchange.
