“Digital” Element of Crimes as Vector of Criminalization (Comparative Review of Approaches of CIS Member States)
Digital technologies that create tremendous opportunities to increase the speed and change forms of information interaction between various subjects of public relations (informatization), give rise to a change in their content. The search, receipt, transfer, collection, processing, accumulation, storage, distribution, provision, use and protection of information, the use of digital and other telecommunication technologies for these same actions have formed a “super-institute” of information relations that requires adequate measures of protection against unlawful influence and respect for confidentiality. The legal regulation of information relations should ensure their development, taking into account the needs of various entities (individuals, legal persons, society, state, international community), and the criminal law protection should ensure the information security and information sovereignty of the relevant entities, preventing of violations of the legal status of relevant entities and opposition to the use of “digital” objects for criminal purposes. Intensive digital transformation is changing the way we understand, first of all, information security. Today information security firstly is an integral element of informational relations. Secondly, it is associated with ensuring information sovereignty and thirdly it acts as an additional object of all crimes against the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of individuals, society and the state, committed through digital exposure. This understanding of information security allows the authors to propose adjustments to the criminal law model for CIS Member-States and the criminal laws of some members of this integration association (for example, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus) regarding the revision of approaches to determining the object of criminal law protection from cybercrimes “in pure form”. The research is based on comparative, analytical and extrapolation methods. the article highlights the features of criminalization in the Model Criminal Code for the CIS member states and in the national criminal codes of the respective countries of two groups of criminal offenses - cyber offenses and informational offenses. The authors pay special attention to establishing responsibility for those acts, which include the designated groups of criminal offenses. They also have the necessary level of innovation and meet global challenges and threats from the justification of destructive ideology and disturbances in public order.