The Verkhovna Rada has adopted a law that should introduce full-fledged electronic registration of conscripts in Ukraine. For a long time, these changes were persistently promoted by the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of the Armed Forces. Not least for improving mobilization.
On Tuesday, January 16, despite long discussions in the session hall, 249 deputies supported the law.
Although the first law on the creation of an electronic register of military conscripts "Oberig" was passed 7 years ago, the full digitization of the records of reserves of the Armed Forces has not yet taken place.
Because of this, for example, there were not rare situations when employees of the TCC (territorial recruitment centers, former military commissars) issued summonses to military personnel already serving at the front and even tried to bring them to justice as evaders.
In addition, conscripted citizens were forced to update their data at the TCC , bringing mountains of paper certificates on current marital status, place of work and residence.
Profile Deputy Minister of Defense Kateryna Chernogorenko stated that it was possible to significantly improve the quality of the military register only at the end of last year.
"Thanks to verification with other state registers, we increased the quality of data filling from 27% to 88%, deleted duplicates and irrelevant data."
However, in order to improve the mechanisms of verification and entering information into the register of the Ministry of Defense, it was insisted on the adoption of draft law No. 10062. The ministry called it "critically important".
"The document unlocks the digitization of the Ukrainian army and will allow it to operate more mobile and effectively both on the battlefield and in the rear," the agency .
What does the draft law provide for?
It should be noted that in the first reading, draft law No. 10062 was adopted at the beginning of November last year. But during the preparation for the second reading, hundreds of amendments were made to it, which significantly changed the text of the document.
However, the main idea of the legislative innovation was to significantly expand the personal data of citizens aged 18 to 60, which will be entered into the "Oberig" register.
In particular, information about phone numbers and e-mail addresses, information about foreign language skills, information about documents giving a citizen of Ukraine the right to travel abroad and return, as well as information about administrative offenses and criminal prosecution, will go there from other state registers.
Also, the register will contain information about the availability of a driver's license and the right to own a weapon.
In addition, "Obereg" will contain information about the results of the medical examination and about the citizen's participation in combat operations.
All this information will be available through the conscript's electronic account.
Personal data will be entered into the register without the citizen's consent, except for data about his family members.
An important innovation of the law is also the creation of a register of military personnel.
This is intended to simplify the process of obtaining UBD (combatant) status for eligible military personnel. For a long time, this procedure was complicated, time-consuming and required the collection of a large number of paper certificates.
The law proposes to translate this into an electronic format.
Information about a citizen's direct participation in hostilities will be stored in a separate program module of the register. He or his relatives will be able to submit the necessary documents for this not in writing, but in electronic form.
The UBD status will automatically be acquired by the military after generating an extract from the register together with a unique electronic identifier (QR code, bar code, digital code).
It will also be possible to establish the status of a person with a disability as a result of the war in electronic format.
Too much data?
The main legal department of the parliament, analyzing the draft law, stated that some of its provisions are inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution.
It is about the fact that Art. 32 of the Constitution of Ukraine prohibits the collection, storage, use and distribution of confidential information about a person without his consent, except in cases specified by law, and only "in the interests of national security, economic well-being and human rights".
"Personal data subject to automated processing must be adequate, appropriate and not excessive in relation to the purposes and purpose for which they are stored," the conclusion of the legal department states.
Any processing of personal data must be legal and lawful, and individuals must be aware that their personal data is being collected, it emphasizes.
In addition, it is prohibited to process personal data related to the state of health, if the domestic legislation does not provide appropriate guarantees;
The same remarks apply to the creation of a register of military personnel and the storage and processing of confidential information about them.
Such sensitive information, the legal department notes, will be processed "for an indefinite period of time" and will not be "predictable and predictable" for the owners of personal data.
The parliamentary opposition also speaks about the disproportionate growth of personal data of citizens that will enter the register.
"Before the second reading, excessive interference in private life was strengthened in the project, for example, an amendment was made about the register of debtors, administrative offenses and received suspicions (before the court verdict)", - said the representative of "European Solidarity" Iryna Gerashchenko.
Servers abroad
Another controversial aspect of the law, which the deputies emphasize, is the provision on the possibility of using foreign "cloud technologies" for storing and processing data from the registers of the Ministry of Defense.
Previously, the legislation prohibited the storage of such information outside of Ukraine.
But during the preparation of the draft law for the second reading, the deputies made an amendment about the possibility of using "cloud technologies" of NATO countries:
"The processing of such information can be carried out exclusively on the territory of NATO countries on the basis of a joint decision of the Minister of Defense of Ukraine and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with immediate notification to the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence."
Roman Kostenko, secretary of the committee on national security, MP from the "Voice" faction, says that this is unacceptable.
"It is not possible to place secret and top secret information on servers abroad! The more so the system of combat management during the war!", he emphasized.
"This is an example of "simple decisions" that can lead to catastrophic consequences that will be impossible to correct later."
The Ministry of Defense, in turn, declares that the placement of Ukrainian electronic systems in the military cloud storage of NATO member countries will help Ukraine.
"Air defense equipment, which currently protects national data centers from constant missile attacks, will be released (instead, this resource will be used to cover other objects of military and civilian infrastructure)," the Ministry of Defense says.
Also, according to the Ministry of Defense, this will speed up and expand the access of the Defense Forces of Ukraine to intelligence allies and strengthen data protection against enemy cyber attacks.
Former Deputy Minister of Defense for Digitization Vitaliy Deinega also emphasized the problem with "foreign servers".
"With Law 10062, we sign our own inability to protect state secrets without corruption and give secret data to the clouds of other states. This law will really significantly simplify the digitalization of the army. We could do better, but this requires slightly more complex solutions," he said.
