High-Tech and Criminal Challenges

Abstract

Achievements in high technologies are improving the standard of living and the quality of live, open up new opportunities for social activities, including business, and help counteract crimes. However, their downside is the emergence of new criminal threats, for example, the dependence of modern society on the global information network creates an opportunity for its criminal abuse. Such technologies could be used to commit traditional crimes (for example, property theft), or could lead to new forms of offences. A wider use of electronic document workflow results in a growing number of falsifications of «electronic proofs». The authors propose a more active criminal law reaction to cybercrimes, AIrelated crimes, and crimes in the sphere of biotechnologies. In this article, they show the necessity of looking for new, more effective forms of counteracting these crimes, including the develeopment of digital criminalistics. The authors analyze normative legal acts, research and journalistic articles dedicated to the use of assisted reproductive technologies in Russia and abroad. It is stressed that the criminalistic support of protecting assisted human reproduction against various forms of abuse, including criminal ones, should be researched in complex with moral and family values, reproductive human rights, development of genetic engineering. A multidisciplinary approach, which incorporates criminalistics, made it possible to state that current Russian legislation regulating legal relations in the sphere under consideration needs improvement. This situation opens up opportunities for abuse, including such crimes as falsification, fraud, corruption. The COVID pandemic worsened the situation as much graver crimes, including human trafficking, were revealed. The authors identified the possible directions of using criminalistics in the system of measures for ensuring the safety and protection of human rights in the sphere of assisted human reproduction.