IL REATO INFORMATICO

This work aims at evaluating the criminal-law approach to the digital age.
Between the analysis of the theoretical constructs provided by the best Italian doctrine and the jurisprudential application of the law, we try to understand if everyone’s fundamental rights are protected by today’s complex criminal system, in light of the profound innovations that tecnology has brought to the society.
First of all, we take on a sweeping journey of the basic legal interests that anyone is entitled to in the digital world (personal identity, honour, privacy and freedom), along with a historic view of the evolution both of computer science and computer crimes.
On these basis, we proceed to examine both the “strictly cyber-related” provisions, or laws that have been enacted specifically for computer-related crimes, and the “wider cyber-related” rules, that have seen themselves applied to computer-related crimes, although they never received an update to better comply with the so-called digital age.
The research conduct us to depict a clearer view of how today’s computer-related provisions oversee and protect people in the technological world: looking through a different point of view (the so-called “Digital Self”) it emerges that the criminal system should update itself as soon as possibile, by systematically enhancing its set of rules as well as by providing the judge with more specific provisions.
This approach is ultimately the only option to adequately protect anyone’s Digital Self, without violating the fundamental principles of criminal law.