To the law on biometrics of Russians there was a mass of disturbing questions

A serious legislative initiative is once again being promoted in an extremely short time frame. Accepted on New Year’s Eve. No public discussion. Why such a hurry? Where will the images of a citizen’s face and a sample of his voice, which are planned to be collected into a single database, disappear? Why collect them at all?

There is no clear answer to this fundamental question.

Whereas the law concerns 140+ million Russians directly.

Last year, as I recall, the bill on QR codes was also hastily pushed through, causing extreme tension and rejection in society. But then the speed was explained by the fact that if people are not urgently vaccinated, digitized and deprive all those who disagree of part of their civil rights and freedoms (of course, for our own good), then we will immediately die.

In the end, the law was not passed. And we are not dead. Dissolved. Coronavirus itself ordered to live long. And now biometrics is being promoted in the same way.

“To be honest, to this day it remains a mystery to me what kind of problem this scandalous law solves without a single biometric database of citizens of the Russian Federation,” says Pavel Parfentiev, chairman of the interregional public organization For the Rights of the Family.

“There has to be a purpose. And if we are talking about the fact that in the future in our society there is a place for digital, we can only talk about such digitalization, where biometrics plays the role of one of the keys of a citizen’s access to a certain information-state system,” said Yuri Lindre, an expert on issues of international regulation of artificial intelligence and end-to-end technologies, at hearings in the Public Chamber on the topic “Ensuring the security of the most sensitive categories of personal data of people with disabilities and mental disabilities”.

The deputies swear that the second version of the bill has been significantly improved. Now they promise that genomic information will not be stored. That parents can prevent the use of their children’s biometric data. That the person himself has the right to revoke his consent to the use of biometrics at any time. That it will be possible to control biometrics through the State Services.

The collection of biometrics is the same digitization of citizens in order to identify them. Side view. And when they say that the bill has been amended to the effect that it will become exclusively voluntary to hand over biometric data, so in order to hand over something voluntarily, a law is not needed.

Whoever wants, he now rents. And what in Russia is usually understood by the word “voluntarily” is probably well known to everyone.

Let’s remember, for example, how the implementation of public services portals took place. A few years after their implementation, citizens were denied access to the traditional method of submitting documents, although it was initially stated that this electronic method of receiving public services was additional and alternative. Without using the State Services portal and giving consent to the automated processing of personal data, it is now impossible to receive social assistance, or place children in educational institutions, or fully use medical care.

But how well it all began … And again the same song, but in a new way. They explain to us that a common database of biometric data is supposedly needed so that credit and financial organizations can have access to them. And no one else. Never.

Are you seriously? In Russia?

Today, the Russian Federation ranks second after the United States in terms of the number of massive leaks of digital user data from various Internet services.

They promise that this new biometric database will be contained exclusively on servers located on the territory of the Russian Federation. And that she will be protected at the highest state level.

Thus, 95% of computer hardware and software in our country is foreign-made.

Theft of “critical data” occurs regularly and from everywhere. Both from private traders and from state information systems. Millions of full names, dates of birth, cell phone numbers, email addresses, logins and SNILS now and then end up in the hands of scammers.

They promise that foreigners, especially in the current political realities, will not have an official opportunity to gain access to this information. What about unofficial? After all, in fact, as we all, alas, understand, the only question is the price.

Experts directly say that creating such a single database of biometric data is like putting information about all people into one box, locking it with a key and putting it in the center of the street. Yes, purely formally the box is locked, but anyone can climb in if they wish. “Such data is not stored in one place at all,” experts say.

If the protection of digital information is not clearly spelled out, and the punishment for stealing it is purely speculative and generally in the future (they want to introduce a criminal one), then why should citizens become extreme and substitute their biometric parameters? What do we benefit from this?

Yes, it is certainly necessary to restore order in the digital sphere. But, perhaps, at first it is required to put things in order in the storage of what is available, and not to collect a new one? Which is also likely to be stolen?

Experts note with concern that before the adoption of the bill on the formation of a digital biobank of Russians, no studies were conducted that analyzed the possible consequences of the massive introduction of biometric technologies in the public life of citizens. No financial and economic feasibility study has been proposed for the colossal cash injections that the implementation of this project will undoubtedly require in the conditions of the SVO and the budget deficit – and these are billions of rubles.

Work on the bill was carried out virtually blindly. After the first reading, significant amendments were made to the bill, including taking into account the position of the Russian Orthodox Church, formulated in a letter from His Holiness Patriarch Kirill addressed to Vyacheslav Volodin. The ROC is also against it, but primarily on ethical and moral issues.

“The consideration of the bill, which directly affects the constitutional rights and freedoms of tens of millions of our fellow citizens and directly affects the defense capability of our country, is taking place behind the scenes and in a hurry,” experts say. – In direct violation of part 2 of article 118 of the regulations of the State Duma. No comments were submitted to the State Duma on the draft law by state authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, no open public discussions were organized, as well as zero readings in the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.