Legal Assistance in Criminal Cases in Digital Society

Abstract

The digital environment developing in our society is becoming a kind of platform that not only conditions the emergence of new types of crime, but also provides new opportunities in the investigation of crimes. Therefore, the use of information technology should not only help in the prevention, detection of crimes and the identification of persons who committed them, but also become a reliable guarantor of ensuring the rights of persons involved in the orbit of criminal proceedings. The author discusses not only the problems of application of information technologies in the production of certain investigative actions and the place of electronic evidence in the list of types of evidence, but also the transfer of criminal proceedings to electronic format, examines individual advantages and benefits that can be obtained from digitalization of criminal proceedings. The author carries out a comparative analysis of Russian and foreign criminal procedure legislation in the context of the development of digital technologies. The question of the possibility of using artificial intelligence in legal proceedings, including in criminal proceedings, is considered. These issues acquire particular relevance when the investigation is connected with the need to interrogate persons who are at the time of the investigation of a criminal case on the territory of a foreign state. The same applies to the production of other investigative actions. In this case, cooperation is carried out within the framework of providing legal assistance in criminal cases. A separate problem is the differences in the criminal procedural legislation of the states cooperating in the provision of legal assistance in criminal cases. Indeed, some foreign laws allow for the possibility of remote interrogation and remote search. All this determines the search for new vectors for the development of international cooperation with more detailed regulation of the production of remote investigative actions and in terms of securing the rights and obligations of its participants not only for simpler and faster ways of accessing electronic evidence, but also for granting and observing their rights and establishing and observing requirements for information technology, storage and transmission of data, as well as the use of the information received.