Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The elementary interest of every country is to maintain its inner security and stability. To achieve this goal the state must restrict within legal frameworks some fundamental rights of its own citizens. One of these fundamental rights is the right to privacy that can be breached only under certain circumstances. It is easy to see that it is unacceptable for a state not to control within the legal frameworks the communication of its own citizens so they can commit crimes, run terrorist rings, or spy rings or establish drug cartels without any consequences. Of course, the control over the communication is not the only means of the successful investigation but undeniably a vital one. That is why the Janus faced nature of the Dark Web is a real security risk nowadays. Although this new medium is the fruit of the last two decades its presence today is stronger than ever before and its popularity is growing day by day. Its most important features are anonymity, hidden geolocation and freedom from censorship. The Dark Web is very useful when it provides anonymity for political dissidents and whistleblowers, but is very harmful when it provides the same features for arm and drug traffickers and terrorists not to mention for pedophiles and so on. This article aims to shed some light on the effects of the Dark Web on the security and economy of the states especially in the aspects of organized crime and the terrorism.

The article deals with the study of the financial security of the state as a component of its national security. It has been established that financial security is state’s ability to react in an adequate and immediate way to internal and external negative financial influences in peacetime and in emergency situations, in particular in the context of a hybrid war. It has been established that the components of the financial security of the state are banking, debt, budget, currency and monetary security. It has been found out that corruption, financial and economic crime, hybrid war, fiscal decentralization, and lack of a strategy to protect the financial and economic interests of the state are threats to the financial security of the states in the present conditions. At the same time, proper protection of the financial security of the state against internal and external threats is possible only in case of quality management of the financial and economic sphere, first of all, this is the identification of threats to the financial security of the state, conducting of financial control, and counteraction and combating against financial and economic crimes, which is the task of law enforcement agencies. The development of the idea of creating a single law enforcement agency of Ukraine empowered to prevent, detect, suspend and investigate financial and economic crimes was considered. For comparison, attention was drawn to foreign experience, namely Italy, Romania, Macedonia, Austria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, for which the activity of such law enforcement agencies is already established practice. The positive aspects which can be implemented in Ukraine as well as in other countries, intending to create a new law enforcement entity, were emphasized.

The presence of organized crime strongly affects sustainable waste management in Italy. In particular, illegal trafficking of waste has become one of the fastest growing areas of crime and one of the most lucrative industries among organized criminal activities, which has now infiltrated both the Italian urban and hazardous waste management cycle. In this study, we aim to investigate the determinants of the illegal trafficking of waste using waste, economic, and enforcement data in a panel analysis over the period 2002-2013. The topic is particularly relevant, given the high heterogeneity across Italian regions which also relates, and eventually leads, to different environmental performances. Our main findings reveal that, in most Italian regions, enforcement activities do not exert a significant deterrence on criminal behaviors; a negative relationship between enforcement and illegal trafficking of waste can be identified only for very high levels of enforcement efforts. Moreover, we find that the major determinants influencing the rate of illegal trafficking of waste differ between northern-central and southern regions, confirming the existence of a regional dualism. In particular, while in the northern-central area the crime rate is positively related to the level of education and negatively to the adoption of environmentally sound policies, in southern regions the organized activities for illegal trafficking are negatively related to the degree of education attainment and positively to the endowment of waste management plants.