THE DARK WEB – If I were to write a book called Seven Habits of the Highly Unsuccessful Criminal, right at the top of the list would be the tendency on the part of many criminals to tell other people about their exploits, and a related tendency to believe they understand things about “how the law works,” when they are, in fact, entirely ignorant of how the law works.

I’ll never understand this about a lot of hackers: They’re smart enough to acquire hacking skills, but too stupid to realize the likelihood of any given secret being kept is inversely proportional to the number of people who are in on said secret.

This common trait among half-smart criminals is born of hubris. Not only have they convinced themselves they are “the smartest guy in the room,” but they also come to believe they’re the smartest guy in any room they ever walk into. Unfortunately for the half-smart criminals, they’re generally wrong, not just about being really smart, but about many of the things that being overconfident in their intelligence has fooled them into believing they know.

Alexander Pope once observed that “a little learning is a dangerous thing”—and nowhere is Pope’s axiom more apt than within the world of law.

Many a criminal over the years has believed he’s found a “loophole” in the law, when in fact all he has found is a lesson-in-waiting about why he should not act on his beliefs about the law without first running those beliefs by an attorney.

For example, in the online space, many people function under the widely held delusion that if they operate their website(s) from a jurisdiction outside the United States, they needn’t trouble themselves with what American law holds or requires, even though they take transactions from, or otherwise make money off of, American customers.

Situated comfortably beyond the physical reach of U.S. authorities, people often believe they are, so far as American law enforcement is concerned, “untouchable,” like some sort of Cyber-Capone. This notion might provide some psychological comfort and a salve against legal anxiety, but as a legal proposition, it’s not just hopelessly oversimplified, it is flat wrong.

The most recent reminder of just how false is the idea of being “untouchable” online comes courtesy of “Operation Onymous,” a joint effort of the FBI, ICE, Europol and Eurojust.

In addition to shutting down Silk Road 2.0 and other entities distributing items like drugs and illegal firearms, Operation Onymous took down Pink Meth, as well. Pink Meth, a revenge porn website, had moved to the so-called “dark web” after being chased off the mainstream internet at the point of a lawsuit.

While the lawsuit filed against Pink Meth was itself problematic (as TechDirt and others have recounted), believing that moving their operations to the dark web would somehow preclude the possibility of shutdown displayed some fundamentally flawed thinking, too.

“Domain registrars unfortunately choose to suspend any and all of our domains after they get contacted by a threatening attorney like Jason Van Dyke,” the Pink Meth founder, who goes by “Olaudah Equiano”, said in July. “[A] project like Pink Meth is simply much more suited as a hidden service as opposed to a regular website.”

Or, then again, maybe it isn’t much more suited to being a hidden service, because there’s no such thing as a “hidden service”… you know, because of what those two words actually mean.

Since OldaDUH Equiano doesn’t seem to get it, let’s spell it out for him: Even on the dark web, your website isn’t going to receive much traffic if nobody can find it, and if people can find it, then the site isn’t particularly well “hidden,” now is it?

Too subtle? OK, try this: If some sick fuck can find your shitty little revenge porn site on the “dark web” for the purpose of uploading pictures of his ex-girlfriend in the nude, then any attorney who is coming after you, and/or the fucking FBI, sure as hell can find your “hidden service,” too, you fucking imbecile.

As Equiano likely has figured out by now, once the feds have decided your website is up to no good, it doesn’t much matter whether you run it as a “regular website” or scurry off into the recesses of the dark web. If the feds want to shut you down, and they have the (quite minimal, really) legal justification in hand to do so, you will be shut down. Period.

Beyond the revenge porn aspect, there’s another facet of this recent joint operation with potential relevance to the online adult industry: Similar actions have been taken in response to criminal copyright violation, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that sites willfully violating porn-related copyrights could meet the same fate.

Naturally, such action would require American law enforcement to decide it cared, at least a little, about the intellectual property rights of American porn companies—something I think we can all agree is unlikely to happen, sadly. Having said that, there’s no legal reason why it can’t happen.

So, the next time some criminal schmuck is shooting off his mouth about how he can’t get in trouble for what he’s doing because he has figured out how to game the system, don’t take his word for it and get frustrated. Remember: a) he’s most likely wrong, b) his little scam is probably living on borrowed time, and c) he’s just too damn ignorant to realize it.