A figura do agente encoberto no mundo digital

: desafios e obstáculos à necessária inversão de paradigma

Abstract

Criminal investigation is constantly changing due to continuous technological developments, posing new challenges (in terms of crime prevention and investigation) and requiring the law to respond accordingly. Nowadays, traditional investigative methods seem unable to respond to the "new" crime, which is becoming increasingly specialized, organized, and particularly serious, thus giving rise to the need to resort to covert investigative methods. The Legal Framework for Undercover Actions for the Purposes of Criminal Prevention and Investigation (Law n.º 101/2001, of August 25), which is the subject of this dissertation, emerged precisely as one of the mechanisms for the state to respond to this new global paradigm, especially with regard to combating organized and violent crime. Nevertheless, there has been a gradual increase in the complexity and sophistication of criminal organizations that use new technologies to carry out their illegal activities. With the spread of the Internet, cyberspace emerged, leading not only to new forms of crime but also to the development of existing crimes. Therefore, the legislature was compelled to adapt the existing legislation to the legislation on cybercrime, which led to the creation of the Cybercrime Law (Law n.º 109/2009, of September 15), which regulates digital covert actions in Article 19. With this in mind, we have tried to provide a brief framework for covert actions, carefully analyzed the aforementioned legal regimes, and set out to answer the following questions: how can/should these laws be combined? Is the application, by analogy, of the regime laid down in Law n.º 101/2001 to the gaps in Law n.º 109/2009 sufficient to regulate the modus operandi of the digital undercover agent? Or, on the contrary, should there be autonomous regulation of digital covert actions? What is the future of covert action? To what extent can generative artificial intelligence contribute to the actions of covert agents? With all due scientific humility, our aim is to help drive the necessary winds of change in the digital age and to better operationalize the application of this hidden method of criminal investigation.

Date of Award	8 May 2024
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Germano Marques da Silva (Supervisor)