Ensuring Human Rights Compliance in Cybercrime Investigations

This Guide aims to raise awareness among criminal justice practitioners of the implications that the investigation of cybercrimes and other crimes involving electronic evidence can have for human rights, and to support them to uphold human rights in their daily investigative work. It does so by focusing on those human rights that are particularly affected by investigations of cybercrimes and other crimes involving electronic evidence, namely:

• The right to privacy;
• The right to a fair trial;
• The right to freedom of expression/speech;
• The right to the protection of property.

The Guide draws on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and, occasionally, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to explain and illustrate how human rights apply in the context of cybercrime investigations and in the collection and use of electronic evidence

The guide was developed under the extra-budgetary project “Capacity Building on Combating Cybercrime in Central Asia” funded by the United States, Germany and the Republic of Korea.