Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The elementary interest of every country is to maintain its inner security and stability. To achieve this goal the state must restrict within legal frameworks some fundamental rights of its own citizens. One of these fundamental rights is the right to privacy that can be breached only under certain circumstances. It is easy to see that it is unacceptable for a state not to control within the legal frameworks the communication of its own citizens so they can commit crimes, run terrorist rings, or spy rings or establish drug cartels without any consequences. Of course, the control over the communication is not the only means of the successful investigation but undeniably a vital one. That is why the Janus faced nature of the Dark Web is a real security risk nowadays. Although this new medium is the fruit of the last two decades its presence today is stronger than ever before and its popularity is growing day by day. Its most important features are anonymity, hidden geolocation and freedom from censorship. The Dark Web is very useful when it provides anonymity for political dissidents and whistleblowers, but is very harmful when it provides the same features for arm and drug traffickers and terrorists not to mention for pedophiles and so on. This article aims to shed some light on the effects of the Dark Web on the security and economy of the states especially in the aspects of organized crime and the terrorism.

The article presents the current patterns in education of Prison Service officers on the example of one of the largest penitentiary units in Poland, i.e. the Penitentiary Facility in Włocławek. The tendencies and changes in provision by qualified staff in penitentiary system as a prerequisite of societal safety were defined due to analysis of data about education of officers of the Prison Service and penitentiary department in the years 1999–2019. In order to investigate the role of rehabilitation staff in the penitentiary system, it is important to assess the current distribution and structural changes in penitentiary staff which, in turn, can be crucial for achieving the objectives of the execution of the imprisonment penalty. To achieve and maintain societal safety, particularly security in penitentiary system it is important to consider changes in the capacity of the prisons. In this regard main positive trends are: increase of number and share of staff with special tertiary education affects the quality of the social rehabilitation work at the penitentiary facility; gender distribution of Prison Service staff tends to reflect distribution on prisoners; professional qualification of officers grows steadily. The main challenge for current penitentiary system in order to increase its educational impact on prisoners is hiring process which should be directed on attracting graduates of rehabilitation pedagogy and penitentiary pedagogy to work in the penitentiary department.

The security in penitentiary system depends a lot on prison subculture. This subculture consists in adopting values, norms and principles that facilitate to fulfil one’s own needs in conditions of imprisonment. However, very often informal groups base their activities on patterns derived from the criminal subculture. The prison subculture often depreciates human dignity, being one of the most important factors disturbing the process of institutional rehabilitation. At the same time, there is a lack of scientific researches that can help to develop the field of behavioural studies in informal structures culture which have a significant influence on the state security due to the efficiency of penitentiary system and its rehabilitation function. To mitigate the gap in current investigations in this field, this research deals with prison subculture in Polish penitentiary system based on survey of penitentiary service officers. Our findings allow to conclude the significant changes in prison subculture during last decade. The most important are: increase of authority among inmates with a better material situation (23%), a greater degree of implementation of rehabilitation programmes by inmates (18.8%), as well as blurring the differences between prisoners mainly due to their joint participation in group activities (17%). To strengthen the further positive effect of penitentiary system on social norms and behaviour of prisoners it is advisable to eliminate potential sources and possibilities for obtaining, accumulating and transferring illegal income by convicted persons. This action defined as main tool to mitigate the subculture phenomenon and its impact of the rehabilitation process in penitentiary institutions.

The energy security of the Visegrad Group countries is a derivative of their energy potential resulting from the lack of strategic natural gas and crude oil resources, limited fuel storage capacity and limited access to the transmission network. This causes a dependence on supplies of raw materials from Russia, which is not even, but applies to each of these countries. The Czech Republic and Slovakia have small deposits of natural gas and crude oil. Hungary and Poland have greater potential, but it is still not enough to achieve energy independence. The energy market of the V4 countries is of interest to the Russian Federation, but it is not a priority for it as it accounts for a small part of Russian transmissions. Russia aims to keep the market for crude oil and natural gas at a uniform level, but the actions of the V4 countries in terms of diversification of supplies, aimed at increasing the level of energy security, effectively hinder the implementation of this goal. The threat to the energy security of the V4 countries is related to their dependence on gas supplies from Gazprom. The terms of the contracts contain unfavorable clauses that negatively affect the sale of surplus Russian gas, as it is necessary to pay fees for the ordered gas regardless of the scale of its use. The differentiation in the energy policy of the Member States is also worth noting. An example is the lack of clear opposition from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia to the plans to expand the Nord Stream and Turkish Stream gas pipelines. These states show interest in participating in projects, which, in fact, constitute the implementation of the Russian concept of building new transmission routes. Poland takes a different position, consistently preventing the implementation of Russian energy projects.

The sustainable, adequate, security and efficient operation of a central bank depends on many internal and external factors. New trends, challenges, and threats (which are associated with European integration, globalization, etc.) affect the sustainable, efficient, and security operations of the ECB, which can lead to economic or financial crises. Therefore, in the current situation, the concept of the Central Bank’s activities, its legal status and the institution of monetary policy should change completely. The purpose of this research was as follows: 1) to determine economic and legal aspects of sustainable, efficient and safe operation of the ECB, with a reflection on innovation and analysis of modern de lege lata trends to ensure sustainable development of the EU, 2) to prepare conclusions and to identify positive and negative aspects that affect the activities of the Central Bank, 3) on the basis of scientific and practical de lege lata research and its application, to develop de lege ferenda to improve the activities of the European System of Central Banks, the European Central Bank, national central banks and other institutions of the European Union.

This paper focuses on identifying risks in selected social facilities in relation to the possible occurrence of an emergency. Risks are dealt with for residential social facilities that provide meals all day long in the territorial scope of the city of České Budějovice. Via the application of the KARS method, selected risks are assessed using their correlations. In this way, the risks are divided into those that primarily threaten the examined social facilities, as well as risks that represent hierarchically-lower risks, or those that were assessed as relatively safe. The research investigated risks in relation to emergencies that occur when social services are provided within the cadastral territory of the České Budějovice. The KARS method was used to identify the risks that are most dangerous for social facilities. In the first stage of the analysis, group risks were ascertained that occur during the operations of individual facilities. The risks were divided into those that primarily threaten the social facilities, and to those which hierarchically represent lesser risks, or were assessed as relatively safe.

This article highlights the issue of national security through the lens of literature development. Since the information war has been going on against Ukraine for a long time, the instruments of influence on the consciousness of the population are constantly changing and the forms and methods of information dissemination are being improved, we decided to investigate the literary sources created during the Anti-terrorist Operation / Joint Forces Operation (further - ATO/JFO) period in order to highlight the trends of opinion formation. We used content analysis methods as a basis. The analyzed source base confirmed the thesis that fake and post-truth are artificially created and manipulative-imitation technologies that Putinists use for hybrid warfare. By imposing the post-truth era on the international community, the Kremlin regime creates a reality where emotions are dominated by facts. Thus, Russia's information strategy is based solely on the needs of the lower order.

The article deals with the problem of future development threats based on the methodology of industry foresight. As an empirical basis for this direction of forecasting, the authors study the mining and metallurgical complex of the Republic of Kazakhstan as a leading factor in the development of the entire national economy. The study is a pilot and focuses on assessing the risks that have formed that could pose a serious threat to the development of the industry, the economy and the country as a whole in the future. Summarizing the world experience in applying the foresight methodology, the authors use it to predict the security and sustainability of development in the medium-term. Using the risk mapping method, the authors identify safety zones in the development trends of the mining and metallurgical industry. The assessment of threats and risks also highlights the leading actors that affect the development of the industry. The main risks for Kazakhstan’s mining and metallurgical enterprises are the lack or shortage of local labor and its low skills. Automation of production processes and digitalization of production are becoming the leading trends in the development of the industry. The problem of improving the quality of workforce training and mastering the necessary skills by specialists is a serious threat to the development of the industry. The authors suggest using foresight tools not only to assess risks, but also to prevent their development into future threats.

Information technology is already widely used in inheritance legal relations. The most typical examples of their application are the preparation of a will with the use of technical means, the fixing of a will certificate with the help of technical means, a notary’s appeal to electronic registers in the process of searching for a property, and maintaining the inheritance register. However, it can be stated that the existing technologies are not sufficiently involved in the relations on the compilation, certification, and implementation of the will, which is explained by the tough mandatory regime established for the form of the will. The implementation of the electronic will institution and the expansion of the secret will regime are promising areas of scientific and legislative work in this area. Given the civil law nature of both the rights to individual IT objects and the obligations, which arise from such objects, the issues of inheritance of such objects should remain within the general permissive legal regime. The user should be able to independently decide the fate of their own assets in a virtual environment. Increasing the economic and social value of such assets makes it impossible to find them outside the legal field and therefore should establish a legal regime for their inheritance. It is these factors that affect the national security of countries.

The article is devoted to the study of the state environmental security in national and globalization aspects. It has been established that the environmental security of the state is a status of every person’s security, society, state and nature from excessive danger to the environment, i.e. the preservation and protection of vital activity, individual’s interests and his environment from negative anthropogenic and natural consequences, which is an important component of the state security. It is established that together with the concept of “environmental security” there is a concept of “environmental modernization” as overcoming of negative impacts on environment from the industrial society by transformation of the latter with help of the latest technologies. The existing threats to Ukraine’s environmental security, identified in the National Security Strategy of Ukraine in 2015 have been determined. The need for additional attention to the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine was emphasized as one of the threats to the states’s economic security, which is in line with the provisions of the United Nations Resolution “Environmental Protection in Areas Affected by Armed Conflict”. It is noted that the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources only formally fulfills the task of assessing the environmental status, unlike Finland and Sweden. The issue of public participation of Ukraine in environmental management is still debatable, as defined by the Law of Ukraine “On Environmental Protection”, it remains only formal, although, for example, the public is actively involved in the management of this field in China. Accordingly, it was proposed not only compliting tasks by the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources to develop a single list of indicators at EU level for assessing the environment status, but also to involve the public in full participation in environmental management.