The dissertation covers a comprehensive solution of scientific and practical
tasks, aimed at clarifying the content of the secrecy of communication and
procedural methods of its limitation in criminal proceedings.
The scientific novelty is that the dissertation is one of the first researches on
the limitation of the secrecy of communication in criminal proceedings. The
formulated provisions are aimed at solving an important scientific and practical
task, which is to determine the procedural methods of the secrecy of
communication limitation and use the results in proving, and the findings of work
determine the prospects for scientific support of crime prevention and training for
the National Police of Ukraine.
The dissertation’s recommendations may be used both in the educational
process and practical activity of the National Police of Ukraine.
The status of scientific development of the issue was analyzed, the notion of
this principle was formulated and it elements were divided in Section 1 «The
secrecy of communication as principal of criminal proceedings».
According to Art. 31 of the Constitution of Ukraine everyone is guaranteed
the secret of correspondence, telephone conversations, telegraph and other
correspondence. The exceptions may be determined only by court in cases,
determined by law in order to prevent a crime or to reveal the truth during
investigation of a criminal case if it is impossible to obtain information in other
ways.
The list of communication types, which are under the constitutional
protection is open and includes not only correspondence, telephone conversations,
telegraph correspondence, but also other types of correspondence. The construction
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of this norm allows to correspond to the level of society technical development and
to guarantee the inviolability of new, unknown on the moment of Constitution
adoption types of communication.
The analysis of national legislation and scientific views on the notion of the
secrecy of communication allowed to formulate the author's definition of this
principle, in particular, the secrecy of communication is to prevent the disclosure
of information transmitted by persons through correspondence, telephone
conversations, telegraph and other correspondence, other forms of communication
provided that persons want to keep it in a secret.
The secrecy of communication may be divided into two groups depending
on the subjects of communication: the secrecy of communication of general
subjects and the secrecy of communication of special subjects. The singling out of
such a division is due to the additional procedural guarantees, which some subjects
are endowed.
It is made a conclusion that an international legal regulation of privacy,
including the secrecy of communication, had a direct impact on the national
legislation of many states. As a result, the right to the secrecy of communication,
being an international and European standard in the field of human rights
protection, is the object not only of international, but also of domestic legal
regulation. There is no comprehensive interpretation of the standards of the right to
privacy and the secrecy of communication in international legal and European acts,
that makes it necessary to research the case law of the European Court of Human
Rights. It was analyzed concerning the observance of admissibility criteria of
limitations of the right to privacy in the dissertation research.
