Constitutional guarantees in the technological investigation of the crime: legal provisions and quality of the law

Abstract

Abstract:
The guarantee of the right to privacy is one of the big challenges of
any modern system of law, and thus, it is also of our criminal court proceedings. For a long time, the Spanish Criminal Procedural Act, has lacked a regulation in relation to investigative acts that have been originated as a consequence of the appearance of modern technologies, and this has created not few procedural new problems. The legal reform undertaken by the Act 13/2015, dated October 5th, aims at solving this situation of lack of sufficient legislation. We study in this paper the demands arisen from the rule of law principle with the intention of determining whether the new Act 13/2015 properly defines the modalities and the scope of the power attributed to authorities, so as to afford individuals with an adequate protection against arbitrary exercise of authority. We intend to determine to what extent, and under what circumstances, intromissions in the constitutional rights recognized by Section 18 of the Spanish Constitution carried out as part of the above mentioned criminal investigations would be legitimate.