6-7 March there was a 2-days seminar “Security of information on the activities of human rights organizations” in Kazan’, organized on the initiative of the Interregional group “Human Rights Network” belonging to the Russian Research Center for Human Rights. Today the problem of personal data security in the human rights community is extremely important in connection with the preparation of a new bill “On information, informational technologies and protection of information” and because of increasing number of hackers attacks and attempts of authorities to control human rights web-sites. (25-MAR-06)
Text: HRH Moscow / Yanina Savenko
Representatives of ten human rights organizations from Moscow and seven regions of the country participated in the seminar aimed at the studying essential mechanisms of protection of information in computer nets. The main task of the seminar is to increase informational security of the whole human rights community and to create an atmosphere of trust in collaboration and communication, – said the organizer of the seminar, the coordinator of the Interregional group “Defending Rights Net” Sergey Smirnov.
Many web-sites were hacked in 2005
In 2005 a new technology of illegal influence on human rights and public organizations consisting of mass hacking of ‘alien’ web-sites began to spread. Here are only a few of the victims. The 21 April nationalists locked the mail-box of the informational analytic center “Sova”. The 6 June the web-site of the Moscow Helsinki group was hacked. In July an announcement that the resources are not available appeared on the web-site of the All-Russian public movement “For Human Rights”. The 11 September the web-site of the Russian-Chechen Informational Agency became subject of hackers attack. The whole database of the Internet-edition was deleted from the provider’s server. Nazi-hackers came out acting on the international level. They hacked the web-site of the informational analytic antifascist portal www.antifa.net and put in Internet a list of its users.
The authorities censorship of Internet
Recently the Office of Public Prosecutor has demanded of the international society Memorial to remove an opinion of an expert, the Co-chairman of the Muftis Council of the Russian Federation, the Chairman of the Moslem Theological Department in the Asiatic part of the Russian Federation, Nafigull Ashirov, in regard of a booklet published by the movement “Hizb at Tahrir” from its web-site in three days, according to the law “On resistance to the extremist activities”. – The statement of the Office of Public Prosecutor seems strange to us. Having published the conclusion of the expert Nafigull Ashirov, we have only made public his opinion, – said the Executive Director of the “Memorial” Elena Zhemkova.
A new bill infringes upon the freedom of speech
According to Sergey Smirnov, the last version of the bill “On information, informational technologies and protection of information” initiated by the head of the Duma’s Committee of the civil, criminal, arbitration and procedure legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov, forms the legislative basis of such actions of the authorities. The bill was given its first reading and passed in November 2004 together with a bill “On personal data”, which was met with criticism in the society. Lawful aspects of searching, keeping, data processing and distributing information, using informational technologies, organization and guaranteeing of the protection of information are described in this document. Krasheninnikov suggested to toughen responsibility for the propagation of extremist materials through the Internet and to introduce the responsibility of a web-sites owner for the information placed on his web-site. In this way any human rights web-site could be subject to provocation. Representatives of the “Human Rights Network” believe that the human rights community should organize a counteraction to this bill, providing for the security of information in Internet.
On informational security depends reputation of human rights activists
According to Sergey Smirnov, today it’s necessary to create a special atmosphere of dealing with information in the human rights community in order to avoid hackers and law-enforcement bodies’ attacks on the 
informational resources, in order to keep principle of confidentiality concerning personal data and in order to exclude a risk of losing data banks. In business such atmosphere of dealing with information has been observed for a long time, but in the human rights community it hasn’t been accepted yet. Meanwhile, in case of a loss or an exposure of any data the reputation of a human rights organization and of the whole human rights community is undermined. However, the human rights community isn’t ready yet to accept new rules of informational safety. According to the survey, conducted at the seminar, most of human rights activists share their computers with somebody else. Taking into consideration social-political situation in the country, information’s encryption must become the tradition in human rights organizations and grow into a habit in the course of this year. It’s one of the tasks put forward by “Human Rights Network “, the recognized leader in a sphere of using innovation Internet technologies for human rights activities.
