Summary

This article continues the discussion held at the 2024 Estonian Lawyers’ Days on the topic ‘Surveillance and information acquisition in criminal proceedings’. This discussion has previously been addressed in two articles published in Juridica, one by Eerik Kergandberg and the other by Tambet Grauberg and Oliver Nääs (both in Juridica 2024/9–10).

Following the Russian Federation’s military aggression against Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the ongoing war against Ukraine, which escalated into full-scale warfare on 24 February 2022, it has become particularly important for the state to have the capability to use information gathered under the Security Authorities Act as evidence in criminal proceedings. This applies not only to crimes against the state but to a broader range of offences, such as war crimes or corruption offences. In a wartime context, information about the enemy’s war crimes is primarily collected through intelligence operations, with traditional surveillance, as a tool of criminal proceedings, inevitably remaining secondary. It can also be argued without dispute that the functioning of democracy and the capacity for military resistance are directly linked to the level of corruption within a state. This article reflects on the relationship between ensuring national security and criminal proceedings, and how and to what extent information identified in the context of national security should and could be used as evidence in criminal proceedings.