Almanac of law. Issue 15 (2024), pages 515–520.

DOI: 10.33663/2524-017X-2024-15-515-520

Gadeliia V. R.
Constitutional and Legal Provision of the Right to Privacy when investigating criminal offenses

The article discusses how the digitization of society has led to the refinement of methods for investigating serious and particularly grave criminal offenses through covert investigative measures involving personal data (confidential information). The Constitution of Ukraine contains a series of guarantees aimed at excluding cases of arbitrary interference with an individual’s privacy, including Articles 31 and 32 of the Constitution of Ukraine. Therefore, interference involves, on one hand, authorization (judicial or prosecutorial) for such interference, and on the other hand, mandatory notification of the conducted measures. However, in practice, there are cases where pre-trial investigation authorities do not provide all materials of the pre-trial investigation. The main issue is that the person whose privacy was interfered with may not even have the opportunity to find out that certain materials were not disclosed to them, even on legal grounds. The term «privacy» is a broad concept that lacks exhaustive character. This term implies the ability to freely shape one’s uniqueness and identity. An analogy is drawn to a garden, where an individual can shape and fill it with whatever they desire, setting boundaries that others must respect — that is privacy. In both national and international judicial practice, everything starts with basic information such as name, gender, age, marital status, and education. However, this concept continually expands over time. For example, with the emergence of genetic research, genetic information has also become part of privacy considerations. Thus, one of the constitutional guarantees protecting personal privacy is the special procedure for accessing such data. However, the focus is often on databases of private legal and natural persons. As for databases of state authorities containing personal data, access often occurs through routine requests from investigators or operational personnel, without mandatory justification or legal grounds for accessing the requested information regarding individuals. In the bestcase scenario, there are agreements (joint orders) between various agencies regarding access to databases, including automated ones. However, guarantees against abuses or negligence by officials are not always in place, posing risks to individuals’ privacy. Furthermore, individuals may often remain unaware of the specific information collected about them. The absence of any consequences in cases where individuals are not informed that their constitutional rights and freedoms — including the collection, processing, and use of personal data — have been restricted is notable within the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine. On the other hand, the law does not provide appropriate safeguards against abuses in accessing personal data. Nor is there mandatory documentation of documents marked «confidential». In practice, this leads to selective disclosure of materials of the pre-trial investigation, which harms both the individual’s privacy and the right to a fair trial.

Key words: right to privacy, confidentiality, right to private and family life, personal data, confidential data, covert investigative actions, identification.

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Vitaliy Romanovych Hadelia,
Postgraduate Student at the V. M. Koretsky Institute of State and Law
of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
ORCID: 0009-0003-8435-7989