Cyber Patrol as a Crime Combatting and Evidence Collecting Tool: Legal Impacts and Potential Risks

Cyber patrolling refers to the systematic monitoring, collecting, processing, and analysis of data from online platforms for proactive (preventive) or reactive reasons, such as surveillance, predicting crimes, collecting crime evidence, etc.It can be understood as a digital form of physical patrol (traditional way of patrol) of law enforcement. Cyberworld now reflects the physical world, and not only the lawful human interactions but also unlawful interactions occur online. Therefore, law enforcement agencies must adopt online techniques efficiently to fulfill their purposes. Similar to physical patrolling, cyber patrolling is a technique of law enforcement to apply online.Cyber patrol conducted by states as a tool to combat cyber crimes is a significant issue worth examination due to its potential risks and benefits. The benefits of it may be preventing or reducing the number or frequency of cybercrimes. However, cyber patrol raises distinct legal and normative concerns. Its implementation may be problematic in terms of substantive criminal law, the people conducting it may present challenges under criminal procedural law, and the selection of the crimes to conduct it may give rise to concerns regarding crime politics and human rights law. In this study, the potential risks of cyber patrol are examined while presenting examples from several countries while explaining its essence and application forms.