Investigating Cybercrimes: Theoretical and Practical Issues

Abstract

Communication technologies play an important role in society. Global cybercrime is one of the biggest underworld industries, much of this crime is unreported, new forms of crimes occur. In the light of the new EU directive (2013/40/EU of the European Parliament and of The Council on attacks against information systems and replacing Council Framework Decision 2005/222/JHA), the authors of the article discuss if and how the new instrument helps to solve some of the aforementioned problems. The first part of the article presents systemic and historic evaluation of the EU cybercrime policy in comparison with the Convention on Cybercrime. The second and third parts of the article focus on two specific issues related to cybercrimes. The second part evaluates changes in the material criminal law introduced by the new directive and their effectiveness in resolving the issue of harmonisation. The last part of the paper is answering if introduced procedural changes are successful in providing framework of law enforcement cooperation and capacity to investigate.

Keywords: Cybercrime, Convention on Cybercrime, Information system, Computer data, Illegal interception, Illegal access