Digital Profile: Main Risks for Constitutional Human Rights in the face of Legal Uncertainty

Abstract

The paper considers the main threats to human rights in connection with the introduction of digital profiles in the Russian Federation. Rights such as the right to privacy and the right to dignity are most at risk. In addition, the risk of discrimination increases. Analyzing the current legal regulation of the digital profile, the author concludes that it does not meet the criterion of legal certainty and creates increased risks of intrusion of the state and private structures into the sphere of a person’s private life. Despite the fact that currently digital profiles of citizens are only a set of official information contained in some state information systems and public registers, according to the author, in the future, this infrastructure can be used for profiling people, in-depth analysis, monitoring and forecasting their behavior, as is already done today by some other states and nongovernmental organizations.

The legal regulation of the digital profile should be based on special guarantees of human rights in connection with the collection and processing of personal information about citizens available to the state. Among such guarantees, the author includes, in particular, the establishment in the law of a list of information that cannot be part of a digital profile of a citizen or be otherwise related to it, a list of unacceptable purposes for using digital profiles, as well as the establishment of the obligation of operators to inform subjects in an accessible form about the facts and legal consequences of profiling, about the principles and logical schemes underlying profiling.