Digital Intelligence: Regulatory Framework and Le- gal Regime for Use in Criminal Prosecution

The shift of criminal activity to the information and telecommunications environment has predetermined the need to adapt operational investigative activities to new conditions, in which technical literacy, analytical skills and the ability to work with digital traces are becoming the most important competencies of the District Department of Internal Affairs staff. The conditions of digital transformation require a revision of both the doctrinal and applied foundations of operational investigative activities and, above all, work with digital information of operational interest. Purpose: to form a system of arguments for recognising digital operational information as an independent object of legal regulation and deserving the establishment of a special regime for its documentation. Methods: comparative legal, doctrinal interpretation of the norms of operational investigative and criminal procedural legislation, study the court decisions in criminal cases, synthesis, formal and dialectical logic. Results: the study allowed us to analyse international legal requirements for processing digital traces of criminal activity, evaluate the legislative experience of Western European states in ensuring the admissibility of digital evidence and identify contradictions in Russian judicial practice in recognising digital information obtained operationally as procedurally significant. It is concluded that Russian operational–search legislation needs to formalise digital operational information as a special kind of data extracted by operational units from the information and telecommunications environment, subject to primary verification and capable of being transformed into procedurally admissible evidence. This will reduce the risks of violating the law and will allow us to formulate a common approach in law enforcement practice for documenting digital traces of crimes.