CONCEPT AND ESSENCE OF ELECTRONIC (DIGITAL) TRACES OF CRIMINAL OFFENSES

Abstract

The proposed article is devoted to clarifying the essence and formulating the concept of electronic (digital) traces of a criminal offense. It is emphasized that the disclosure and investigation of criminal offenses committed with the use of computer technology requires finding out and recording the actions performed by the offender and other persons with such devices. The offender's operations with computer equipment can be monitored by changes in computer data generated in the memory of electronic computing machines, which, in turn, can be considered specific electronic (digital) traces of a criminal offense. It was established that the mechanism of formation of such traces is related to the change in the magnetic-electric properties of substances in the memory device of the elec-tronic computing device as a result of the execution of pre-set algorithms and commands entered by the user. Electronic (digital) traces of a criminal offense are defined as computer data that were created or changed in the memory devices of electronic computing equip-ment as a result of user actions related to the commission of a criminal offense. It is emphasized that electronic (digital) traces, as computer data, have certain foren-sically significant properties, which are essential for their understanding and use during the investigation of criminal offenses. According to the author, the named traces: carry infor-mation about the state and results of a certain computer system; cannot be directly per-ceived by human senses and always require interpretation (transformation into a form ac-ceptable to humans) using computer technology; are accompanied by metadata, that is, ad-ditional information characterizing the basic computer data; correspond to the general fea-tures of the document in its forensic sense; contain information structured and encoded ac-cording to a certain format; the information carried by such traces can, in most cases, be completely reproduced by displaying (copying) the relevant computer data; electronic (dig-ital) traces are not rigidly linked to the computer data carrier.