On the possibilities of using artificial intelligence and other technologies in the activities of the prosecutor for the supervision of the execution of laws

Karpysheva Yuliya Olegovna ORCID: 0000-0003-1111-0662 PhD in Law Associate Professor of Department of Prosecutor's supervision and Prosecutor's participation in civil and arbitration cases, Irkutsk Law Institute Affiliated with the University of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation 664035, Russia, Irkutsk region, Irkutsk, Shevtsova str., 1 jillianr@mail.ru

The effectiveness of state and municipal bodies directly affects the level of satisfaction of the population with their activities, the state of law and order in all spheres of public life, as well as the socio-economic and political situation in the country as a whole. In this regard, the importance of proper organization of effective activities of state and municipal bodies is beyond doubt. The Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation also plays an important role in the stable functioning of the state.

Recently, the state has been paying serious attention to the digitalization of managerial, supervisory and other socially significant processes. Throughout the activities of law enforcement agencies, public authorities and local self-government, various information systems are being introduced aimed at improving the efficiency of the activities of a particular body, the provision of state and municipal services is gradually being transferred to electronic form.

This circumstance determines the need for a more detailed study of those information resources that are currently already used by prosecutors, to assess their sufficiency and, if necessary, to suggest possible ways to improve them, as well as the creation of new products that allow processing a significant amount of information, isolating from the general array only the information necessary for a particular case. The application of the general dialectical method of scientific cognition, which has a universal character, as well as methods of logical deduction, induction, cognitive methods and techniques of observation, comparison, analysis, generalization and description allowed us to fully solve the tasks set above and present the results obtained in this work.

So, the digital transformation of the prosecutor's office is taking place on the basis of the corresponding Concept approved by the order of the Prosecutor General of Russia dated 14.09.2017 No. 627 (hereinafter referred to as the Concept), and containing quite a lot of directions in which a number of tasks should be solved to achieve the goals set by the Concept. As such, it is called increasing the effectiveness of the prosecutor's office to ensure the rule of law, unity and strengthening of the rule of law, protection of human and civil rights and freedoms, as well as the legally protected interests of society and the state; creating conditions for the operational implementation of supervisory functions in connection with the digitalization of surveillance facilities; ensuring the sustainable and uninterrupted functioning of its own digital infrastructure, improving its information security; creation of conditions for readiness for changes in the socio-political and economic situation associated with the transition to the digital economy; gradual transition from the service model to its own (balance) digital infrastructure in terms of automated workplaces, organizational equipment, scanning equipment, video conferencing and IP telephony to ensure its sustainable and uninterrupted functioning and improvement of information security; as well as the development of free, sustainable and safe interaction of the prosecutor's office with citizens, organizations, civil society institutions, public authorities and local self-government.

Within the framework of this work, I would like to dwell in more detail on such a direction of digital transformation of prosecutor's offices as "High-tech supervision", which, in accordance with the Concept, means the formation of a unified secure digital platform based on comprehensive optimization of the performance of supervisory functions to ensure electronic interaction of prosecutor's offices at all levels among themselves and with other state bodies, the introduction of modern mechanisms and technologies for countering cybercrime and offenses in the digital environment (section 2 of the Concept).

One of the measures, the implementation of which is necessary to ensure electronic interaction of prosecutor's offices at all levels among themselves and with other state bodies in the implementation of supervisory activities, is the preparation of scientific and methodological, regulatory support and software and technological infrastructure for the implementation of the possibility of remote prosecutor's inspections (section 6 of the Concept).

It is worth noting that this idea fully corresponds to modern trends in the development of information technologies, including those introduced into the activities of the prosecutor's office, however, it runs counter to the current legislative regulation of the prosecutor's activities on supervision of the execution of laws, aggravated by additional requirements and restrictions set out as in the officially issued organizational and administrative documents of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, as well as in oral instructions received from higher prosecutor's offices to lower ones. Thus, the legally defined procedure for checking the execution of laws makes it difficult to use this form of work.

At the same time, there is certainly a need for remote inspections. So, the prosecutor today in his activity works quite a lot with information systems, both specially designed for use by the prosecutor's office and other bodies / organizations, and those that are freely available on the Internet.

First of all, this is the Unified Procurement Information System (UIS Procurement), which is actively used in conducting inspections of the execution of laws on the contract system, as well as the Unified Register of Control (Supervisory) Measures, used, among other things, when conducting inspections of the execution of laws on control and supervisory activities (ERKNM). Other information resources are also of great practical importance for prosecutors: the automated information system of state supervision and control over compliance with labor legislation (AIS GIT), the state information system of housing and communal services (GIS housing and communal services), the federal state information system of territorial planning (FGIS TP), and others. It is impossible to ignore the information system of interdepartmental electronic interaction (IS MEW), which was put into operation in the prosecutor's office in 2018. With its help, you can quickly obtain the necessary data from the Treasury of Russia, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, the Ministry of Finance of Russia, the Social Fund of Russia, Rosleskhoz, Rosreestr, the Federal Tax Service of Russia, Rosfinmonitoring ^{[1, p. 23]}. At the same time, the list of bodies from which information can be obtained through the use of the IEV IS small, which necessitates its further development and improvement ^[2].

Prosecutors actively use such non-governmental information resources as "Marker", "Spark" and the specialized publication "X-Compliance". Despite the fact that access to them is paid, these information systems are included in the register of software used in prosecutor's offices and organizations approved by the Order of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation dated 01.07.2022 No. 364/11r.

It is also important that the prosecutor's office receives only the necessary information that is useful for the prosecutor's activities. The problem of oversaturation of the prosecutor's office with information, often meaningless for performing the functions assigned to it, was noted back in Soviet times ^{[3, pp. 52-53]}. Today, the flows of information are huge, and the above-mentioned problem of "oversaturation" with it is becoming more and more urgent. It seems that at present, taking into account the trend of digitalization of the work of state bodies, it would be possible to cope with this problem by introducing artificial intelligence technologies into the activities of the prosecutor's office, which would undertake the study and analysis of incoming information, evaluating it from the point of view of necessity and usefulness for use by the prosecutor in the work, providing users with only the really necessary data.

The term "artificial intelligence" is actively used in many countries, but there is no clear answer to the question of what it is. Such uncertainty is due to the lack of a unified legal approach to establishing the essential characteristics of artificial intelligence and the fact that the technical devices in which artificial intelligence is embedded may be different both in terms of the tasks performed and the availability of certain capabilities of the device itself. For this reason, there is no single definition of artificial intelligence in the national legislation of many countries ^[4].

At the same time, there is such a definition in the Russian Federation, it is fixed in the Decree of the President of Russia dated 10.10.2019 No. 490 "On the development of artificial Intelligence in the Russian Federation" (hereinafter – the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 490). Artificial intelligence in it is understood as "a complex of technological solutions that allows to simulate human cognitive functions (including self-learning and search for solutions without a predetermined algorithm) and to obtain results comparable, at least, with the results of human intellectual activity when performing specific tasks. The complex of technological solutions includes information and communication infrastructure, software (including those using machine learning methods), processes and services for data processing and solution search" (subparagraph "a" of paragraph 5 of Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 490). Within the framework of this work, we will adhere to the above definition, since in order to solve the tasks assigned to the prosecutor, it is necessary to use information products based precisely on the imitation of human cognitive functions.

First of all, the use of artificial intelligence is seen as necessary for the study of information posted in information and telecommunications networks, including the Internet, since almost all sectoral orders of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation concerning the issues of supervision of the execution of laws contain a clause prescribing appropriate monitoring. For example, the Order of the Prosecutor General of Russia dated 08/31/2023 No. 581 "On the organization of prosecutorial supervision over the observance of the rights of business and investment entities" prescribes daily monitoring of mass media, the Internet (including social networks, messengers), and other publicly available sources to identify information about violations of the rights of business entities requiring prosecutorial intervention. The Order of the Prosecutor General of Russia dated 04/15/2021 No. 198 "On the organization of prosecutorial supervision over the implementation of legislation in the environmental sphere" directs lower-level prosecutors to actively use the Internet information and telecommunications network, data from federal state information systems as a source of information. The Order of the Prosecutor General of Russia dated 14.03.2019 No. 192 "On the organization of prosecutorial supervision over the implementation of legislation in the implementation of national projects" notes the need to systematically collect and analyze information characterizing the state of legality in the implementation of national projects, including monitoring publications in the media and on the Internet. The examples given are not exhaustive, and since the prosecutor has quite a lot of areas of activity within the framework of supervising the execution of laws, he must spend a lot of time monitoring the media and the Internet in search of the necessary information. It seems that artificial intelligence could help in this, selecting for the prosecutor's employee using it only those data that relate to the area of interest to the prosecutor, as well as supervised persons and territories. Subsequently, such information can be used both for analyzing the state of legality, and subsequently for planning the work of the prosecutor's office, and as a basis for conducting specific inspections by the prosecutor.

In addition, the use of artificial intelligence would facilitate the organization of more effective supervisory support for the implementation of national projects, as well as, in general, the supervision of the implementation of laws on the contract system and on the military-industrial complex. At the same time, artificial intelligence could work in this area in two directions. Firstly, it is the search and processing of information necessary for supervisory support on the implementation of a national project in the supervised territory, since now problems arise periodically with the receipt of such information related to the refusal of supervised persons to provide information with the necessary frequency to the prosecutor, operating on the fact that they are not obliged to send the relevant data outside the inspection, which, however, has already been mentioned in other works ^[5]. Secondly, artificial intelligence could work with the documentation posted in the Procurement EIS, in particular, to investigate information of interest to the prosecutor about the procurement activities of the supervised person, contracts concluded by him, possible agreements to him, compliance with deadlines, etc. Prosecutors could introduce specific supervised persons into the program, who may act as customers, and receive information directly about their procurement activities. Such automated continuous monitoring of documents placed in the Procurement EIS for compliance with the requirements of the law would allow to promptly identify possible violations and improve the efficiency of the prosecutor's work to eliminate them.

In addition, prosecutors complain that in many information systems they do not have access to all the information posted in them. Especially often in this regard, the unified state automated system of accounting for wood and transactions with it (LesEGAIS) is mentioned, in which prosecutors do not see all the necessary information on wood transactions, and the Procurement EIS mentioned more than once, in which not all the information necessary for the prosecutor is freely available, some of which is in the personal accounts of customers and it is not visible to the inspectors. It seems that this problem should be solved by providing the prosecutor, along with other law enforcement and supervisory authorities, with full access to information posted in state information systems.

The Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation is actively engaged in the implementation of artificial intelligence systems to assist prosecutors in solving the tasks assigned to them. Thus, the development of the information resource "Electronic Prosecutor's Office" is in the process, in which it is supposed to accumulate various information used in supervisory activities and distributed by artificial intelligence into blocks in accordance with the subject of memos, violations identified by prosecutors, and acts of prosecutorial response. Such distribution will allow to systematize basic information about the work of the prosecutor and facilitate the compilation of generalizations, analytical materials in specific areas, information on the results of the analysis of the state of legality in the supervised territory.

In addition, such an information resource as the "register of Internet resources with illegal information" (hereinafter - RIPI) has been developed and is gradually being introduced into the activities of the prosecutor. This system allows you to see whether other prosecutors have taken measures against a particular Internet resource, and to avoid duplication of work when blocking the same site requires several prosecutor's offices at once.

Despite the importance of the use of RIPI, the key issue of the search by prosecutors on the Internet for prohibited information for the purpose of further implementation of the powers to restrict access to it remains unresolved. Currently, such a search is carried out manually, which requires a considerable waste of time. If artificial intelligence performs this task, it will allow responding to such violations much more efficiently – not only faster, but also with greater coverage of information resources.

By the way, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) and its subordinate legal entities (in particular, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Main Radio Frequency Center") have been using such resources since 2023. This is, for example, the Oculus automatic search system for prohibited content, which is aimed at identifying information, photos and video materials that are unacceptable for distribution in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. Similar information presented in text form is revealed using the information system "Boar". The use of these products, based on the use of artificial intelligence, allows you to process 1000 times more resources daily than it was done by humans.

In conclusion, we note that the above problems of searching and processing information received by the prosecutor are not exhaustive. With the passage of time and the development of digital technology, such problems only multiply, and this happens quite quickly, which requires the prosecutor's office to respond promptly to eliminate them. It seems that the proposed ways of using artificial intelligence in the activities of the prosecutor for the supervision of the execution of laws can contribute to improving the effectiveness of the prosecutor's office in this area. In addition, the Concept, as one of the tasks of the digital transformation of the prosecutor's office, provides for "improving the effectiveness of supervision by introducing modern and promising information technologies for processing primary information in all types of supervisory activities", as well as "ensuring timely, including remote, obtaining objective, complete and reliable information about the state of legality and prevention work offenses and crimes", which, in our opinion, is quite consistent with the above proposals.