Criminals are quick to use and adapt technology to their advantage and it must be assessed how police can equally leverage the capacities of the technology to fulfil their duties in this domain, taking into account their limited resources and the need to remain in compliance with national and European law.

This paper discusses three of the main current legal challenges in open source investigations of CSAE on the dark web, common to LEAs across the EU. It is the result of an EU-wide legislation monitoring activity of the ARICA project.

The three challenges discussed in this paper are the following:

• Challenge 1:
  the procedural legality of the use of OSINT in CSAE investigations on the dark web;
  
• Challenge 2:
  the rules of the recently adopted AI Act and their impact on AI-driven OSINT tools to be used for CSAE investigations on the dark web;
  
• Challenge 3:
  the impact of the data protection rules of the Law Enforcement Directive (LED) on the use of OSINT tools in CSAE investigations on the dark web.

The purpose of this white paper is to explain the essence of these complex issues in concise terms, in order to raise awareness and facilitate further discussions and debate on the topic, as well as to propose some policy actions that may help to remedy the current problems.

The overall conclusion of the white paper is that in open source CSAE investigations on the dark web, the amount of issues add up, leaving LEAs to navigate a complex, and at times uncertain and times unclear legal framework, in an area (the dark web) that is already at the very centre of the tension between secure societies and privacy. LEAs deserve more legal clarity on the procedural framework for using OSINT, as well as continued (and perhaps intensified) support in terms of awareness raising, training and resources to support them in the concrete implementation of a growing body of (complex) regulation on the EU and Member State level.