Kompjuterski kriminalitet - specifičnosti i savremeni izazovi

Abstract

Crime is a pathological social phenomenon of a universal character. Regardless of the degree of development and the form of organization of social community, crime is omnipresent. Viewed through the prism of the historical development of human civilization, the phenomenological features, forms and structure of crime changed over time. In addition to the existing incriminations, new forms of crime appear; concurrently, crimes that have been incriminated for a certain period cease to be prohibited and/or sanctioned. These processes are dynamic and not exclusively related to the temporal dimension; they depend on the level of development, tradition and culture, economic, legal and political system of individual states. The characteristic of the contemporary post-modern society is the emergence of a new form of criminality - cybercrime. As an inevitable consequence of the digital age and the application of information technologies in all aspects of social life, cybercrime entails new forms of criminal behavior resulting from the mass use and abuse of new technologies (computers, computer systems, electronic communication devices, the global network - Internet), as well as traditional offenses committed by using a computer. The provision of new criminal offences envisaged to provide protection of computer data security are only a small part of efforts to counteract cyber crime, particularly given the fact that computers are a potential tool for the execution of other criminal offenses. According to typology provided in the criminal law literature, cybercrime is most often studied as part of crimes against property. However, in addition to propertyrelated criminal offences, the distinctive featu­res and autonomy of the committed crimes show that cybercrime includes criminal offences which are traditionally part of general, political, economic or violent crimes. The paper provides analysis of the phenomenon of cybercrime and its specific features. The author discusses the challenges that have to be addressed by the modern society: the dynamic development of ample forms of cybercrime, the erosion of spatial and temporal boundaries in execution of these crimes, the specific profile of the perpetrators, the problems in detecting and proving these crimes, the high 'dark figure' and the massive exposure to victimization. The contemporary society has to provide an adequate response to all these issues.