Before the Russian parliament, the State Duma, began deliberating the second reading of the draft law “On personal data", President Vladimir Putin informed legislators that he viewed the inclusion of article No. 23 (on personal data identifiers) and article No. 24 (on the creation of a State Population Register) as inexpedient.
The main obstacle in the path of the draft bill “On personal data" is namely the creation and functioning of the State Population Register. Opposition parties have been attempting to halt the bill, suggesting the creation of a State Population Register would lead to totalitarianism. At the same time, a number of IT security experts, albeit less categorical in their opinions, have also raised concerns regarding the State Population Register because it would raise the possibility of Russian citizens' private details being leaked.
Despite all these doubts, the authors of the bill at the Ministry for Communications and Information Technology saw no danger in the creation of the register. “Nowhere is it stipulated that there will be a 'grand database' covering the whole country's population with details on political or religious preferences or biometric data. The State Population Register will only contain a citizen's surname, name, date and place of birth and links to other databases (the Pension Fund, Tax Inspectorate etc.). It is a purely technological system that will be used for revising and updating information stored in unrelated systems. Subsequently, the state register can in no way lead to the establishment of totalitarianism and control over people's lives," according to an earlier statement by the ministry.
The Russian president didn't reject the idea of a state register out of hand, but noted that it needed to be regulated, and required a separate federal law on personal registration. It is worth pointing out that a corresponding law was elaborated by the government back in 1998. Moreover, the Council of Europe Convention for the protection of individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data, which triggered the new law in the first place, states nothing about the creation of a register containing the personal data of the population.
“I'm certain that the exclusion of the State Population Register from the bill 'On personal data' will not detract from the positive effects of the initiative. In my opinion, the most important aspects of the law are the demands made of the operators of private databases to safeguard personal data and the ban on the sale of such records. For the sake of such commendable aims, the register can be sacrificed. After all, it presented an unnecessary risk to the private details of Russians," says Denis Zenkin, marketing director at InfoWatch.
