Some Issues on Forensics Digitalization

Amid forensics digitalization, an extremely urgent issue is to find a reasonable balance between private and public interests, between preserving the secrecy of correspondence, privacy, etc., guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the availability for obtaining information remotely without the user knowing about it, intercepting information transmitted over computer networks, and studying the memory of electronic devices. Illegal actions with electronic digital information can cause serious and irreversible consequences associated not only with property damage, but also with physical harm to people. The peculiarities of high-tech crimes are their high latency and the constant growth of their number. We should note that the scale of cybercrime has changed. The possibility that «cyber attacks» will be automated reduces the requirements for the qualification of the violator and increases the number of crimes. The current situation necessitates a comprehensive study of not only the investigation of crimes in the field of computer information, but also the digitalization of forensics in general. The technological progress of the 21st century in the field of cyberspace and electronic document management, the specifics of electronic information and methods of its seizure, production tactics persistently require the expansion of forensics objects, as well as the range of investigative actions regulated in the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation. However, such an expansion of the range of investigative actions should be approached very carefully.

The methodological basis of the study was: dialectical method as a general scientific method of cognition; general scientific and private scientific methods of theoretical and empirical cognition (features of the reflection of digital information in the information environment): description; analysis and synthesis of criminologists’ points of view; comparative legal method and method of system research.

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