Political Science Law
| Open Access |
DOI: International Legal Standards for The Digitalization of Investigative Activity and The Experience of Foreign States
Abstract
The article examines the international legal standards governing the digitalization of investigative activity and analyses the experience of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Singapore, the Republic of Korea and China in constructing electronic pre-trial proceedings. The author argues that digitalization is not a technical modernization of the work of the bodies of inquiry and preliminary investigation but a transformation of the procedural form itself, which for that reason requires an autonomous basis within criminal procedure legislation rather than within subordinate departmental regulation. On the basis of a comparative-legal analysis, two reform models are distinguished: the procedural-law-first model, in which the electronic form of proceedings is regulated by the code of criminal procedure before technical deployment, and the technology-first model, in which the information system precedes its own legal regulation.
Keywords
Digitalization of investigative activity, electronic criminal case, digital evidence
References
Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI (CETS No. 225), 5 September 2024.
CEPEJ. European Ethical Charter on AI in Judicial Systems, 2018.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689; Directive (EU) 2016/680.
INTERPOL. Global Guidelines for Digital Forensics Laboratories, 2019; INTERPOL–UNICRI. Toolkit for Responsible AI Innovation in Law Enforcement, 2023–2024.
OECD. Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence, OECD/LEGAL/0449; Recommendation on Digital Government Strategies, OECD/LEGAL/0406.
ISO/IEC 27037:2012; ISO/IEC 27041:2015; ISO/IEC 27042:2015; ISO/IEC 27043:2015.
Bundesverfassungsgericht, judgment of 16 February 2023, 1 BvR 1547/19, 1 BvR 2634/20.
Germany: Strafprozessordnung, §§32–32f, 100a, 100b, 110(3).
United Kingdom: Investigatory Powers Act 2016; Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984; Forensic Science Regulator Code of Practice, 2023.
Singapore: Criminal Procedure Code 2010, ss.39–40; Evidence Act 1893, s.116A.
China: Criminal Procedure Law, Article 50; Provisions on Electronic Data in Criminal Cases, 2016.
Estonia: Code of Criminal Procedure; regulations on the e-File (E-toimik).
Laws of Uzbekistan: On Personal Data; On Electronic Document Circulation; On Electronic Government; On Cybersecurity.
Stoykova R. Digital evidence: Unaddressed threats to fairness and the presumption of innocence. Computer Law & Security Review. 2021. Vol.42.
Quattrocolo S. Artificial Intelligence, Computational Modelling and Criminal Proceedings. Springer, 2020.
Download and View Statistics
Copyright License
Copyright (c) 2026 Boboev Mirshod Murotovich
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts, and all Open Access articles are disseminated under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC-BY), which licenses unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is appropriately cited. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations.