Today the new government of Ukraine, presenting its program, promises conducting a new informational policy guaranteeing a possibility of unhampered realization of the rights for freedom of speech and thought, citizens’ free access to information, right for free information circulation and exchange and actual ensuring citizens’ right for privacy.

In view of the declared democratic aspirations of the government, employees of enterprises and public organizations of information-communicative sphere actively supported “national movement for democratic reforms”. Yesterday at the forum “Informational society of Ukraine” they presented the report to the President of Ukraine “About immediate measures regarding the development of the informational society in Ukraine”.

In “The declaration of principles of the informational society formation” adopted at the Summit in Geneva the informational society is defined as a society where everyone can create information and knowledge, have access to them, use and exchange them, promoting stable development of citizens’ development on the basis of goals and principles of the UNO statute and fully keeping to the General declaration on human rights.

However, in Ukraine there is a range of obstacles on the way of development of the informational society that above all must be a democratic society.

In the opinion of the participants of the forum, one of the main problems still remains imperfection of legal regulation of the informational sphere.

Nowadays considerable part of the subordinate legislation is missing, their approving is presupposed by the acting legislation. In the opinion of Volodymyr Podharny, member of the commission for science and technologies of the Ukrainian union of manufacturers and businessmen, it hampers enterprises of the informational sphere to work efficiently according to intelligible and transparent rules.

The projects of the acts suggested by the corresponding state bodies are very imperfect, and some their norms even directly contradicts the acting legislation.

One of the immediate measures regarding the development of the informational society in Ukraine is, in the opinion of the report’s authors, the necessity of ensuring legal interception of communication sessions, telecommunicational messages aiming at providing the efficient struggle against criminality, but at the same time to reach harmonization of the legislation with the norms of the European law and prevent human rights violation.

As it is known, in the Supreme Rada at present two bills are considered – No 4042 “About the monitoring of telecommunications”, elaborated by the Safety Service of Ukraine and No 4042-1 “About the interception of telecommunications”, elaborated by businessmen and public organizations.

In the text of the report the authors offer to recall the bill No 4042 since the bill “About the interception of telecommunications” has considerable advantages, particularly, meets the European norms and ensures citizens’ rights in the process of the telecommunication interception.

Volodymyr Podhorny supposes that substantial limitations of citizens’ rights are also contained in the norms of the acting legislation, since presupposes excessive interference of state bodies in the activity of enterprises of telecommunicational field. For example, the clause 63 of the Law of Ukraine “About telecommunications“ presupposes defining of the major requirements to the contract between the provider and customer of the telecommunicational services by the National commission for communication regulation, though these questions are regulated by the Civil and Economic codes of Ukraine and, in his opinion, don’t need additional defining on the level of subordinate normative-legal acts.

In the opinion of the participants of the forum the development of the informational society in Ukraine is also impeded by the lack of human rights and controlling bodies in the field of information. Say, yet in 2001 the decision was made about establishing Interdepartmental center on struggle against infringements in the sphere of high technologies. As it is known, so far such a center doesn’t exist.

In November 2001 Ukraine signed the Convention of the European Union “About cyber criminality”, but it’s not ratified so far. Amendments to the legislation, in the opinion of Andriy Fialkovsky, member of the All-Ukrainian public organization “Ukrainian Internet Community”, are introduced only formally and not fully.

“Legal indeterminateness of a considerable range of public relations on informational society issues and information-communicative technologies, inconsistency between the Ukrainian normative-legal base and the European legislation lead to system obstacles on the way of development of the informational society. To introduce principles of legal state into the informational sphere it’s necessary to pass a range of new bills, to harmonize the existing laws with the international legislation and in some cases to cancel normative-legal acts”, – supposes the authors of the report.

However, regulating the legislative base is to be effected in conditions of the transparent policy of the government with involvement of society in order to take into consideration as many interests as possible and ensuring citizens’ rights and freedoms.

Olena Holiuk,

RUPOR