Territoriality in the context of global crime: Reflections of the impact of cyberspace on jurisdictional delimitation

Abstract

The article elaborates on the problem established by new technologies and their impact on the law, more specifically with the narrowing of distances facilitating the perpetration of practices in territories of multiple states. A problem whose complexity is amplified by the context of the global world, of expanding the spaces of interaction and of approach between individuals provided by cyberspace. The emergence of new technologies introduced changes of necessary importance to legal analysis. In this context, we seek to answer the following question: are the traditional categories of territoriality and jurisdictional delimitation sufficient, in the international context, to solve the complex problems introduced by the Internet? From the bibliographic review on the subject, and the support of chosen cases, we conclude that territoriality, supported by extraterritoriality, is not enough to solve these problems; being, in the enforcement jurisdiction, the main barrier of action of state power in the international scope.