The Legal Basis of Countering Cyber-Terrorism in Russia and in Other Countries from the Standpoint of Its Social and Political Dimension

Abstract

The authors discuss the legal specifics of counteracting cyber-terrorism in Russian and in foreign law at the modern stage of the development of information space. They show that such principles of telecommunication technologies as transparency and accessibility are used by terrorist organizations for criminal purposes. The analysis of foreign legislation shows that legislations of most countries do not have a special crime of cyber-terrorism. At the same time, the use of IT in disseminating terrorist ideology is included in these legislations as an aggravating circumstance. The authors conclude that Russian legal scholars do not currently have a common opinion on adding a new special crime of cyber-terrorism to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. They argue that such amendment of Russian criminal law is not necessary. The authors also single out different features of cyber-terrorism and present its classification that includes a hybrid type and cyber-terrorism proper. In the former case, the Internet is used for terrorist activities: propaganda, recruitment of supporters, their training, radicalization of society, collecting funds and data, connections, planning of actual terrorist attacks. In the latter case, there are direct attacks against cyber-infrastructure with political, religious and ideological purposes. The authors conclude that the dangers of cyber-terrorism as a threat to the whole infrastructure of society are overstated because ordinary cyber-crimes inflict a much greater damage on the economy of any country. However, as these crimes are not coordinated from one center and because of the ideology of extremism, this type of crime cannot strike a social fear comparable with the fears that could be inspired by references to the activities of terrorist organizations. It is shown that in the USA and in Western Europe cyber-terrorism is greatly politically charged, and the society is encouraged to evaluate the threat of cyber-terrorism though the prism of the level of security of each member of this society. Besides, the society is indoctrinated to believe that it is necessary to carry out cyber-attacks against those countries that might pose a threat. In this connection, the authors conclude that a high level of attention to the problem of cyber-terrorism has a prominent ideological and value component.