Illariya BACHILO

Head of Sector of Information Law Institute of State and Law Russian Accademy of Sciences

Professor

Ph.D. (Law)

The use of information technologies opens up new vistas for social development. Informatization has basically laid down a foundation for globalization processes. With information turning into one of the key social resources, it would be necessary to reconsider the issue of all human rights in relation to and from the perspective of the right to information.

Information has for a long time remained a sort of shadow, a subsidiary and accessory (and frequently concealed) means of controlling the state and economy. Development of production, science, arts, education, culture rests on assimilation of the already created and perceived information, yet the power of information as a resource of influencing large masses of people and government policies became most evident in Cold War years, starting with the middle of the 20th century.

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Electronic technologies and development of cybernetics turned information into a social resource of a special kind, which is not depleted, unlike natural and material resources, and which acts as a system-forming factor. Possessing information means wielding power. Information as a controllable resource strengthens all levers of power and business, constituting a means of accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. Simultaneously, it may act as a commodity of rather high value, an object of competition, and frequently a destruction tool, too.¹

It is information technologies that raised the role of information resources as the basis for formation of the information society. This gave rise to a mythologeme of transformation of modern society into a society with an enhanced level of freedom, equality and creativity. High hopes in this regard are laid on the Internet as the global net for turnover of information in time and space.

How does in this situation the right to information affect the entire spectrum of human freedoms, rights and interests? Information is not only a new and inexhaustible resource, but also a burden of global responsibility². The two most acute problems arising in connection with this are those of the right to information, and utilization of private information.

What are the specifics of functioning of mechanisms providing for individual social rights in the information society?

The progress achieved in development of communications means - radio, TV, line and wireless telephone, satellite communications,

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etc. - very quickly resulted in creation of a new infrastructure covering the entire planet. Communication was increased in all parameters of social life. It is evident, however, that introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) brought the society to a standstill.

It would seem that new technologies and programs for their utilization in education, health care, in all segments of state and business life, in life support systems constitute a step to the future, a basis for a new development paradigm. Theoretically, this is really so. However, there emerged a disproportion between ICT achievements and the society's ability to assimilate them.

Information technologies have not only become an element of industrial and post-industrial economy, but are now its most profitable sector, as far as money-making in the "information capitalism" environment is concerned³. Another thing, however, was revealed, too - the crisis of assimilation of the new opportunities by the man, society, and state. What became evident was the enormous material and cultural stratification of the society, the emerging and constantly growing chasm between the wealthy and poor, who constitute the overwhelming majority of the global population. The concept of "information for all" clashed with that of the "golden billion".

Influenced by the theory of civilitarian state, its sovereignty is now measured not in the degree of independence in execution of its functions or equality in international relations but, for instance, in competitive power. In international relations, unilateral actions whose effects may not be predicted have become increasingly more tempting. Decades of active use of information and communications technologies have not yielded any noticeable

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results in what concerns reduction of social inequality or easing of ethno-national contradictions. With the 33 billionaires, which figure brought Russia in the first quarter of 2006 to the third highest position in the world in this indicator, the country is down around the 90th position as to the per capita national product. The whole world suffers from terrorism, famine, declining educational level, human traffic, inequality in remuneration of immigrant labor, etc. There is an absolutely new kind of inequality emerging, "digital inequality".

The law as the key regulator of social relationships has been in a grip of crisis for quite a long time. The processes of globalization, coupled with informatization, exacerbate the issues of the nature of relationship and interaction between the state, individual and society as a whole. It is the man that gets hit in the first place. His relationship with state institutions, his sense of law obedience are subjected to severe tests. He expects state entities to provide for his rights and interests. Atop the wave of social self-regulation, there emerges and strengthens an ideology of having the rights of the man and citizen protected - protected from the state, too, among others.

Information technology experts often refer to the ability of information to withstand deletion. However, there is yet another information property that is more essential for keeping the society alive - its completeness, reliability and, the main thing, timeliness.

Programs adopted by many governments in the field of informatization, which are referred to as programs for formation of an "electronic government", seek to provide for, firstly, a wider scale of innovations based on information technologies, and,

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secondly, orderly procedures for the use of information resources by governments and other public administration subjects⁴.

Personalization and identification of the individual in the society and in the system of state controlling mechanisms constitutes not only a key indicator of his interaction with state and municipal authority structures, employers, but also an indicator of the status of activities of public institutions themselves. Every form of authority relationships within a socium rests upon certain characteristics of personalities involved in its orbit. Relationship between the individual and the state authority system is a most acute issue, as far as the problem of information is concerned.

The constitutional concept of a democratic, law-based and social state inevitably calls for greater clearness in defining the role and tasks of the state with regard to its citizens. Time has given point to the question, "What is the state?": 1) a "watchman", supervising over enforcement of established procedures? 2) a paternalist subject, responsible for the well-being of its charges? 3) a moribund institution, hampering free development of individuals and their associations?

There are other questions of a similar nature, related to mechanisms of state authority and its attributes: should it only be engaged in "compulsion" and "coercion", or should it also settle issues related to organization and consolidation of the socium, realization of policies that suit the population and every individual? Unfortunately, the theory of state and law gives no clear answer, though this is something that affects the level of the individual's information relationship with public and, in the first place, state authority structures; it also affects the extent of the

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individual's openness to the authority, confidence in and cooperation with it in the process of solving his personal, family and general problems of social and economic nature. This, in its turn, determines the extent to which the individual and his associations control the state's actions.

The key issue here is the level of the state's sociality in processes of processing, analysis, utilization and protection of information. This is a matter of multi-subject and multi-dimensional relations within the civil society and its interaction with the state. It should be noted there is still no clear understanding of "civil society" as a working institute. Another issue is the magnitude of the institute of the right to information. The Declaration of human and civil rights and a range of international conventions establish the rights and freedoms of citizens, safeguarded by the law, including the right to information. The Russian legislation matches this nomenclature of rights and freedoms, which received a statutory confirmation in the 1993 Constitution.

There are three issues related to realization of the right to information, which call for new conceptual solutions:

1) is it possible to provide for the right to information using only mechanisms of access to government information?

2) how can one ensure legal protection of personal information (personal data, under the 1981 Convention) and its utilization in the interests of the man and society?

3) how can one ensure protection and regulation of intellectual property rights, including copyright, in the Internet and global informatization environment?

The right to information or just access to information? Following adoption of the Freedom of Information Act in the US

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in 1966, all European states adopted their own legislation of this sort. David Banisar provided a detailed overview of fifty-eight such laws⁵. These are good national laws, which, however, in most cases fail to fully accomplish the task of providing for "freedom of information", being limited to regulation of interaction between state agencies and citizens with regard to access to government, official information.

This subject of legal regulation is definitely very important. Firstly, this legislation regulates relationships between the responsible state and the citizen realizing his right to search for and retrieve information (in some laws, this right is also accorded to juridical persons). It is an essential characteristic of the information function of a democratic state. Secondly, this legislation regulates relationships arising with respect to the openness of activities of state structures, the setting of limits for the communication between the state and citizens; in Russia, for instance, access to information on activities of authority bodies is regarded as a form of public control.

The right for access to information (including the search for and retrieval of needed data, documents) is restricted in a number of ways. These restrictions are due to security considerations, which is natural, though it is increasingly recognized that the criteria for restrictions on open access are not explicit enough. Thus the Lord Chancellor's Department in the UK noted in 2002 that the British legislation has 381 regulations restricting the right for access to information under the Freedom of Information Act. In view of this, it issued instructions to introduce changes in 97 laws and revise about 200 other laws⁶.

As the Internet develops, the problem of openness,

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transparency gets largely addressed through the web, which extends the practice of written and oral petitions of citizens to state and local authority bodies. It should be noted that this simultaneously results in increased information leaks from state bodies.

As state bodies create their websites, which is one of the natural ways of supplying information without excessive bureaucratic procedures, one has to break with decade-long traditions, sometimes even by going to court.⁷. But no less important is the problem of website content. For instance, the Institute of development of information freedom (based in St. Petersburg) suggested that websites of Russia federal executive agencies should be analyzed as to the following criteria, availability of data and means of access to them; completeness of information on all aspects; updating frequency; reliability; and accessibility of information. It is possible to compare the most open and the most closed federal executive agencies from the perspective of information openness⁸.

At the same time, interpretation of the right to information as "freedom of information" focuses exclusively on the right of access, which is obviously insufficient. In Russia, as in other countries, there is still no law that would cover regulation of all forms of the right to information in a systemic manner. The legislator does not yet deal directly with relationships, which realize the right to collect, transmit, produce and disseminate information.

Information interaction of all institutes of civil society with state structures and among themselves is also left outside the sphere of regulation. Emphasis is only laid on openness of state entities. At the same time, mass media are

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actively opposed to state-controlled media. This is one of paradoxes of our time.

Stereotypes of post-industrial thinking are oriented to business interests - profit and competition, which leads to monopoly of the strong. Information resources fall within this orbit, too. But the information society raises the issue of searching for more adequate means and mechanisms of regulating relationships on all levels. As the right to information is reduced to just access, the model of relationships between "owner" and "petitioner" gets sort of imprinted in the subject's legal consciousness. The receiver of information, on becoming its owner, finds himself in the position of uncontrolled proprietor. This results in yet another paradox of our time.

The emphasis on access to information through resources of only state structures, bypassing obligations and responsibility of other institutes of the civil society, and the fragmentary and unsystematic regulation of other forms of realization of the right to information may be compared with the method of "blowing off steam" in the process of regulating the right to information. However, as information turns into a resource for development, this imposes duties upon the entire society, all institutes, it calls for an integrated approach to determining relationships between and interdependence of various forms of realization of this right.

The man is not just someone living in dependence on authority and other structures. He is also a voter, entrepreneur, an expert in a certain professional field, an artistic individual, a family man, etc. - in a word, he is a many-sided and active personality. He must possess internal attitudes, compatible with public interests, about the rules of creating an information product, protected or not

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protected by copyright or other institutes of intellectual property; attitudes about the rules of utilization, application of information technologies and various forms and kinds of information, along with awareness of the ones that may be dangerous for himself, for other people, or the society. The man should be aware of ways of exchanging information, utilizing electronic documents with electronic and digital signature, should trust this kind of legal relationships.

Regulators of relationships in the modern society should have a primarily moral and legal nature, should be perceived not as an outside force aimed at coercion and restriction of personal freedom, which originates from the "state", but as an instrument enabling to correctly arrange processes involved in realization of legal obligations of every subject. This is an issue of formation of an environment of trust and respect for human dignity in a new type of society; it is most pronounced in the case of legal regulation of personal data and their protection.

On information portrait of the individual in the system of his rights

Who and why needs information about the individual, what kind of information is it, to what extent and in what capacity is it needed for the state and the individual himself? The interests of the citizen and state in this regard are reciprocal.

The Constitution defines the Russian Federation as a social state. However, it is unable to fully perform this function for objective reasons. It is believed that the Russian state is only on its way to a social state. Adoption of a package of national programs aimed at improving the situation in the shortest terms indicates

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understanding of the importance of this problem and the search for solutions on the basis of not just state mechanisms.

This is a serious problem for every state. In vast numbers of sources, the level of sociality of most developed states, including the US, is defined as poor. "There exist numerous factors which lead the global society to a future with low wages, slow growth and high profits, growing polarization and social degradation. Another consequence (of the process of corporate globalization) is the decay of meaningful democratic decision-making processes, for decision-making is devolved to private organizations and quasi-governmental structures merging with them,... which act secretly and keep no records". As this happens, national interest gets shifted to individual groups, whose desires and objectives have little to do with the population's interest.

In connection with this, it is important to understand what role "personal data" play in the system of the information resource of the state and other structures, why and how they need to be protected.

Various sources provide different definitions of the subject of personal or individual data. The Convention defines this subject as a "concrete" person. More recent Directives of the European Parliament and of the Council of the EC "On the Protection of Individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data"¹⁰ refer to an identified physical person or information that enables identifying him. The terms "definite", "concrete", "identifiable" have different connotations. Even more serious problems arise in the process of collection and utilization of personal data. Regulation of this sphere is often perceived and interpreted as infringement on individual freedom,

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an attempt to establish control over his private life. These suspicions are not groundless, especially in what concerns the Internet.

Kenneth Neil Cukier, an observer for The Economist weekly, cited rather interesting facts on the activities of ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - in an article published in Foreign Affairs (November-December 2005, Nб)^и. The private non-commercial organization, 'which was headed for thirty years by professor Jon Postel from California, is now controlled by the US Department of State, though it remains a private organization. It has four forms of collecting information about Internet users:

1) domain names - com, net, info, whose assignment brings handsome profits, and two-letter country-code suffixes (e.g. "en");

2) Internet Protocol numbers - invisible to users web addresses assigned to every computer, required for establishing links between computers;

3) Root servers. This database is the world's most important "Rolodex". There are a total of 13 root servers. Ten of these are operated from the USA (including NASA), and one each from Amsterdam, Stockholm and Tokyo;

4) technical standards.

Collection of this amount of personal data, stresses the author of the article in Foreign Affairs, constitutes a violation of privacy.

A UN working group chaired by Kofi Annan in November 2004 called for transfer of control over the Corporation's activities to the international community. The US administration, however, decided to preserve this control in its hands. "Foreign critics think

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a shift to multilateral intergovernmental control would mark a step toward enlightened global democracy; Washington thinks it would constitute a step back in time, toward state-regulated telecommunications. Whether and how these perspectives are bridged will determine the future of a global resource that nearly all of us have come to take for granted", writes Kenneth Neil Cukier¹².

Where collection and processing of information for social purposes, for the purpose of ensuring human rights does not bring expected profits, this work loses attractiveness. The use of personal data that were illegally obtained, or lawfully collected yet utilized as a source of income or a means of exerting pressure on the individual, leads sometimes to rather tragic results, adversely affects perception of the objectives of state agencies in dealing 'with this kind of information.

On one hand, the extensive and intricate work aimed at assessment of requirements of the population, its individual groups and individuals is often referred to as increased control and an instrument of personal oppression. What we have here is an emerging conflict between a legitimate objective and misperception of the collection of personal data.

On the other hand, if expansion of work with personal data is combined with divergence from public concern about well-being of people, based on the concept of "freedom of choice" and principles of the era of "personal responsibility", this is an alarming symptom. For instance, the transfer of funds for medical care of aged people in the USA to insurance companies triggered off a wave of criticism. The attempt to realize this in the state of Nevada ended in failure. "Not a single insurer licensed to operate

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in the state has shown any interest in offering coverage"¹³, writes well-known contemporary economist Paul Krugman.

The sphere of activities focusing on "sociality", i.e. reduction of social inequality, has itself been for a long time a sphere of business and rising inequality. This is yet another indication of an ambivalent nature of the formation of large arrays of personal data and manipulation with them.

It is evident that, to ensure conditions for realization of the entire complex of citizens' rights, the state requires complete, reliable, timely information about its population, its categories and groups, in order to be able to reach every individual, yet there is also another aspect of this problem. To what extent and why is the individual interested (or not interested) in supplying his data to the system of state bodies or other subjects with whom he maintains relations?

Creativity and social activity of the individual are most closely linked to his openness to the society and state. This is not equivalent to disclosing information about the individual's private life, which under all conditions belongs only to himself and constitutes his resource. This resource becomes accessible to public or state bodies only when it is voluntarily supplied and disclosed in the interests of the individual himself. It is also important to point out the significance of drawing a distinction between standard personal data, which are needed by state structures, just as they are by the citizen himself, - and strictly personal, private information, which may be included in other information fields only at the individual's desire and under his control.

Formation of personality as a qualitative characteristic of the individual is not only a psychological and social problem, but also

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a legal one. What should be done to keep presentation of every individual ego within the limits set by law and morals?

Finally, there is a problem of the purposes of collection and utilization of personal data. Owing to specifics of the Russian national character, Russian society seeks to be not just law-based, but also humanitarian¹⁴. This, however, exacerbates the issue of the purposes for collection, processing and utilization of personal data by the state and other subjects. In this connection, it is necessary to pay attention to the traditional concepts of state authority and legislation as its main instrument.

Influenced by the liberal (as a rule, negatively biased) approach, there has emerged an interpretation of state authority as a corporate system, a variety of business, and at the same time a mechanism of a primarily repressive, coercive nature. The uncompromising attitude to drawbacks and failures of the executive authority is necessary for improvement of public institutes. However, unless healthy, productive tasks are assigned to the entire system, this may exacerbate citizens' distrust of their state, distrust of the local self-government system, which citizens address with their problems in the first place. This biased interpretation of state authority runs counter to the perception of formation of a new type of society and a new, creative type of personality. It would be more appropriate to raise the question of the priority of interests of the population, citizens of the country, the priority of human rights, interests of the state and society, which is what is currently done in Russia.

There is yet another aspect of the problem. The ongoing fight against terrorism calls for more stringent control over citizens' behavior. This leads to inevitably increased interference in private

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life and control over contacts, including information ones. At the same time, it is important to bear in mind the remaining need for transparency and the sound grounds for realization of more stringent regulations. The US, for instance, extends its national norms in this sphere of regulation to the Internet. Is the objective of ensuring all human rights through the right to information changed?

Law is a key regulator of social relationships, based on authoritative methods, and at the same time it is now the kind of information that concerns the entire population and is accessible thanks to development of information technologies. Informatization creates conditions for a real interaction between the authority and social institutes PRIOR TO passing the law and AFTER its becoming effective. This brings to the foreground the need to educate and develop the legal consciousness of legislators themselves. One of the issues here is the attitude to social and legal categories used in law and legislation. For instance, as the legislator leaves outside the regulated sphere the forms of communication that are essential for both the society and individual, focusing only on the principle of freedom, perceived exclusively as the RIGHT with no RESPONSIBILITY to other subjects, the legislator thus inevitably imposes the principle "everyone against everyone else" on the regulated sphere of relationships¹⁵.

The issue of the moral and educational basis and function of law was raised in the past, too. It may be sufficient to refer to what L. I. Petrazhitsky said, "In representing a product of no conscious calculation and individual devising to satisfy any goals and interests, but a product of unconsciously felicitous mass

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psychological adjustment, the law constitutes an essential psychological factor of social life and development of spiritual culture - namely, the law as a psychological factor produces a dual effect and is significant in two ways - both motivational and cultural, educational, pedagogic"¹⁶.

In this respect, it is worthwhile to refer to EALukashova's felicitous formulation of this issue: "Human rights as a criterion of moral dimension of politics and state authority"¹⁷. This criterion makes it possible to assess the balance of positive and negative in the activities of the state authority, it provides a proof of its social importance, emphasizes its relevance to challenges of the time¹⁸.

This information and educational mission gradually becomes an element of ideology of the public and state structures of Russian society. Thus, for instance, reports of the Council of Federation of RF Federal Assembly call for summarizing legislative realization of political directives set forth in RF President's message to parliament. As said in these reports, the emphasis on "the humanitarian and law-based strategy of Russia's development must be the basis for formation of major strands of state policies"¹⁹. And this is just an initial stage of the conversion to the true nature of law in the new conditions of Russia's development.

The progress of law over the entire centuries-long history of mankind has been a road from the first awareness of natural rules for interaction between the individual and collective to creation of first laws bearing the authoritative will in poetic (oral and written) form, back in the pre-state period of life of the society²⁰. This was followed by a transfer to the current state of law, with priority being placed on law externalized as a factor of force - and

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often even of violence. This has been a long and thorny road. It has resulted in emergence of the concept of unlawful law²¹, in domination of its positivist and dogmatic set of instruments, and in the long run, in a crisis²².

The issues of functional and targeted utilization of personal data in the activities of state and other public structures, viewed from the perspective of realization of the complex of human and civil rights, touch very sensitive spots of the socium. E. A. Lukashova gave an absolutely precise description of the essence of the problem. She writes that the lack of control over globalization is not the main thing. "To the contrary, this control is well coordinated and subordinated to interests of an insignificant segment of the world's population. The main thing is not the lack of control but evil goals, disregarding principles of solidarity, justice and equality. This control is exercised outside the legal field that is based on the said principles, which indicates, in the first place, the deplorable state of human rights, which are the key indicators of political, social, economic, moral, socio-cultural processes. Human rights constitute the human dimension of the development of social relations in the country and world. It is only ensured inalienable human rights that can provide a positive impetus for social dynamics"²³.

The entire process of globalization and determination of the man's role in it call for a more profound analysis of the activities of government structures, sectoral agencies, governmental and nongovernmental institutions, entrepreneurs, and the entire civil society. The main task of law here lies in ensuring targeted utilization of information resources²⁴. Attention should be paid to elaboration of special regulatory acts, especially the ones creating

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provisions for plans and steps aimed at realization of national projects and programs in the sphere of social development. Collection and summarization of information on requirements of regional population in what concerns social guarantees, down to assessing personal requirements of every individual, should get its legal basis in the form of both material legal norms and procedures for their implementation. Personal data constitute a link between the individual and society.

The law places a key emphasis on harmonization of norms that determine the lawful behavior, based on legal and moral norms regulating the kinds, forms and extent of responsibility in the event of law infringements. It is needed to perform several tasks simultaneously: inform people of the rules and necessary procedures, prevent law infringements, and ensure security of subjects in the information sphere.

It is not so easy to answer the question as to what exact kind of information, to whom, and in what sequence the subject must submit, because the problem of responsibilities is insufficiently well elaborated in the general theory of law. The norms specifying how a subject may manage vast amounts of information without inflicting harm to other subjects are also purely declarative. This subject should occupy an appropriate place in laws and other legal acts.

The present-day scientific and public discussion focuses primarily on ways of making the authority transparent, controllable by public and every individual interested in this kind of control. There is little or nothing at all said about the obligation of every subject, in performing his civil duties and seeking to have his rights ensured, to provide information about himself and

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ensure its reliability and relevance. Can one demand an account of adopted decisions and activities of public authority bodies without giving them the food needed for taking decisions?

Scarcity of information, its incompleteness and unreliability result in poor quality of adopted legal decisions. Of course, the information resource for activities of state agencies comprises not only citizens' personal data. It also includes information on juridical persons, events and social processes. It can be seen that threats to the quality of information interaction are concealed in realization of their obligations by both sides, the citizen and public structures.

It is important to establish who processes and analyzes information, what parameters are taken into account, and what it is utilized for. This is a matter of safety of personal information -but there are other things involved here, too. The work with personal data is conducted not by an individual occupying a certain post, but by an authority body or, on its behalf, by an official possessing a certain status and procedures for realization of his functions, so it would be important to rule out the personal approach in this work.

One should also refer, in passing, to the need for codification of categories used in regulatory activities. Besides giving an adequate definition of the terms "information", "electronic document", "information resources", "owner", "possessor of information", "exclusive rights of subjects in the information sphere", "personal data", it is also important to establish the links between such notions as "man", "individual", "person", "citizen", "persona", "personality". This group of terms used with regard to the man as subject of law is not just a collection of synonyms. Every term has

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its own meaning, possesses a certain connotation in characterizing the legal portrait of this subject, and defining the often imperceptible shades of meaning is a very important task.

Conclusion

1. Consideration of the role played by the right to information and personal data in realization of the entire range of human rights and obligations reveals the importance of information resources for development of the society, for attaining its new quality level on the basis of creativity and social orientation of the man and all his associations.

2. Information contacts between citizens and state and local self-government structures, firstly, help mobilizing public, corporate and private associations in active realization of citizens' constitutional rights. Secondly, these contacts, being of a positive nature, help creating an atmosphere of trust, creating conditions for assessing adequacy of behavior of responsible authority bodies. Having one's name entered in electoral register, having one's property registered, using insurance, tax obligations and guarantees, having one's enterprise registered, etc. is also an example of active behavior of the citizen as a persona grata, a member of the society. In these situations, the individual acts not as petitioner asking for a service to be rendered, but as an active party, a participant in socially important processes. It is in these moments that one can note origins of formation of a new type of personality. But this also calls for reconsidering the role of law.

3. With modern technologies, information and the right to information - and, the main thing, the objectives of their utilization - constitute simultaneously a resource and an indicator

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of the state of the society. Information as an accumulator of real actions performed by political, military, economic, civil, cultural institutes, services and structures forms the infosphere of the planet and its individual areas.

4. The controlled information resource influences the state of infosphere (which is similar to influencing weather), which does not, however, absolutely obviate the need to protect ecology of this sphere. Ecology of infosphere is an objective factor. The man uses the information environment to determine the state of the outer world and plans his behavior accordingly.

5. The approach to information as a resource for development and conceptualization of the role of law in specifying procedures for dealing with this resource lead to substantial changes in attitudes to utilization, protection and safeguarding of information. Personal petitions and proposals do not simply constitute a resource of the agency to which they are submitted. They represent an active requirement of the individual that his position, rights, and conditions for realization of his obligations be protected. It would be advisable to consider citizens' petitions, complaints, registration processes from this perspective. They should be regarded not as an application for service to be rendered, but as grounds for taking an individual decision, an individual legal act on the initiative of the individual himself, based on his lawful application submitted to a responsible agency, as grounds for adopting general norms on the basis of summarized data. It is an act of cooperation with the state and other public structures for the sake of security of the personality and the sphere to which the citizen is referring.

This changed attitude to the procedure for presenting personal

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data makes it necessary to treat them not only from the perspective of "protection" or "safeguarding", but also from the viewpoint of their importance for active behavior of the authority. Personal data and all forms of working with information under the law constitute a flow of direct information from citizens, bearers of the rule of the people, under the Constitution of the Russian Federation and every other state.

6. The information space should be fully based on law. The world should focus on settling problems using only moral and legal methods and means. The infosphere is formed by the state and citizens themselves. In objectively filling the infosphere with concrete information and instruments for its dissemination, they enhance the potential of the society for self-regulation and development.

Mechanisms of ensuring security of individuals should in these cases be more often an object of international law, should be an object of law enforcement practices of administrative agencies and law enforcement structures. It is necessary to provide protection for not only personal information, but also for the person acting as its bearer. The shift in emphasis away from protection of just the secrecy of ministerial acts in what concerns decisions taken by individuals is going to open up new aspects of freedom and openness in communication between citizens and the state, enhance trust and security of their interaction. The focus on the information portrait of the individual, on obligations as to keeping citizens informed about all aspects of their rights and duties, about all matters of public interest, interests of the world community and international cooperation will help creating a sound basis for revising or changing standards that no longer meet modern requirements.

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Protection of human rights, including information rights, is a road to a new status of information, to a law-based and socially secure society, a key resource for development of the information society as a new form of human civilization.

RA

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1. F. Webster. Theories of the Information Society. M. 2004.

2. A. Adamishin. On the Way to the Global Government; Russia in global politics. 2002 N1. November-December, pp. 12 - 19; Helmut Schmidt. Burden of global responsibility. Ibid pp. 20 - 31.

3. Ibid pp. 20 - 31.

4. See, e.g. Improvement of state administration on the basis of its reorganization and informatization. World experience. E-Govemment Competence Center, US Chamber of Commerce in Russia. M. 2002.

5. David Banisar. Freedom of information and Access to Government Records around the World. Overview of Access to Information Legislation all over the world. M.: De-Novo, 2004. 160 p. Ed. S. Sheverdyayeva.

6. Ibid с. 36.

7. Pavlov I. P. Citizens' right for access to information on activities of government agencies and judicial practice of its protection. - In: Theoretical issues of information law. M. 2006. pp. 135 - 146.

8. Vasilyeva A. Rospatent website as the most accessible. Kommersant, 3 April, 2006.

9. See Noam Chomsky. Profit over People. Transl. from Engl. M.: 2002. p. 189; Paul Krugman. The Great Betrayal. Transl. from English. M. 2004. p. 237. See also pp. 137, 142, etc.

10. Official Journal of the European Communities L281/Vol. 38, 23rd November, 1995.

11. Kenneth Neil Cukier. Who will control the Internet? - Russia in global politics - Vol. 4. N 1 - January-February 2006. pp. 39 - 48.

12. Ibid. pp. 48.

13. Paul Krugman. The Great Betrayal. Transl. from English. M. 2004. p. 237.

14. Report of the Council of Federation of RF Federal Assembly M. 2004.

15. Theoretical issues of information law. IGP RAN M., 2005. 291 p.

16. Petrazhitsky L. I. Theory of state and law in relation to theory of morals. History of Russian legal thinking. M., 1998, p. 284.

17. Lukashova E. A. Human rights and political reforms. M. 1997.

18. See Information resources for development of Russian Federation. Legal issues. M. Nauka. 2003. 403 p.

19. See "On the state of legislation in Russian Federation in 2004. Legislative support for basic strands of domestic and foreign policy". M. 2005; "On the state of legislation in Russian Federation in 2005" M. 2006.

20. Lafitsky V. I. Poetry of law. Pages of law-making from antiquity to our days. M. 2003.

21. Nersesyants V. S. Law. Juridical encyclopedia. M. 2001.

22. Mirzoev R. R. Death of law. Legitimacy of orange revolutions. M. 2005.

23. Human rights and processes of globalization in the modern world. Ed. By E. A. Lukashova. M. Norma. 2005. pp. 6 - 7.

24. Declaration on human rights and the rule of law in the Information Society. CE Consultative Committee on the Information Society (CANSI). Russian Committee of the UNESCO "Information for All" Program. Foundation for civil initiatives in Internet policies. 2005.