Necessity of criminal law protection of information

The development of information technologies has resulted in the emergence of the “information society”. The basis of the latter is the turnover of information of different content and legal significance, which is the subject of social relations, as well as atypical social and legal value. However, along with the increase in the socio-legal value of information, new threats arise, directly related to the use of information for criminal purposes. The emergence of threats and risks for the individual, society and the state need legal regulation, in particular with the involvement of criminal law means. Criminal law, acting as a legal response of the state to trends in society, establishes the unlawfulness and punishability of acts related to the use of information. However, lawmaking actions (which are associated with the criminalisation and decriminalisation of acts in the criminal law) are not always accompanied by their qualitative content, which directly affects the effectiveness of the protective criminal legal mechanism. In this regard, it is necessary to carefully study the prerequisites for the emergence and disappearance of criminal-legal prohibitions, in particular, information prohibitions. These prerequisites, revealing the necessity (or social conditionality) of criminal-legal protection, are designed to give a comprehensive and objective assessment of the phenomena occurring in society, possessing the sign of public danger. It is this assessment that should be the basis for legislative changes arising in the criminal law. The social conditionality of criminal-legal protection of information consists in the increased nature and degree of public danger of acts in the information sphere, expressed in quantitative and qualitative criteria.