Chapter 4 - Facilitators and relevant factors

4.3 Internet governance - Law enforcement considerations

EC3 has a thematic project aimed at researching these governance arrangements and architecture of the Internet, which identifies significant vulnerabilities exploited by organised crime groups (OCG) and identifies opportunities to affect and influence current and future developments of the Internet. EC3 works closely with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) and other Internet stakeholders who can influence and advise on Internet governance. The project aims to achieve real impact on the significant Internet governance bodies through ongoing law enforcement representation in this multi–stakeholder process.

The abundance of IPv6 addresses has both benefits and disadvantages for law enforcement. The re-use of IPv4 addresses resulted in attribution problems for law enforcement. This will not be an issue under IPv6 as there are enough IPv6 addresses for every person on the planet to be assigned trillions of addresses each. However, this will also give rise to occurrences of criminals using addresses for a single session or communication and then discarding them for a fresh one, which may complicate investigations considerably.