There are concerns that such a digital document will create risks for storing personal data of citizens.
The document, according to Legislators have been preparing for the introduction of electronic driver's licenses in Russia, which will receive the status of a full-fledged replacement of conventional plastic licenses, for several years. Now the future of the corresponding project is in question: the fact is that the Federation Council began to doubt the security of such virtual identities.
< p>Back in the summer of this year, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications, together with the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate, prepared amendments to the traffic rules, according to which drivers will be able to present inspectors with a vehicle registration certificate and license in the form of a QR code (they are generated by the State Services.Auto application ).
This opportunity can be used now, however, traffic police officers have the right to require a paper driver’s license. If the motorist does not have the document with him, he will be given a fine of 500 rubles. If the amendments are approved, such QR codes will receive legal status, in which case the rights and STS can be left at home.
As reported by Kommersant, independent experts and lawyers invited to the Federation Council to discuss “legislative aspects” «implementation of the project suggests that electronic driver's licenses will create risks for the storage of personal data, and will also open up new opportunities for “attackers.”
Thus, Natalya Zhirnova, Associate Professor at the Department of Digital Technology and Biolaw of the Faculty of Law at the Higher School of Economics, speaking about the problem of personal data security, recalled the “not very successful” experiment that was conducted in Australia from 2019 to 2021. According to her, security experts were able to “infiltrate” the digital identity database and make changes. She also added that “our public services website is not a standard of security and can be subject to any of the attacks, which has already happened more than once.”
Associate Professor of the Department of Administrative, Financial and Information Law of the State University of Justice Oksana Shevchuk supported the idea that virtual rights are unsafe and noted that “the introduction of digital identities requires security measures to prevent unauthorized access or damage to data.” In addition, she assumes that changes will be resisted by civil servants and citizens who are accustomed to using paper documents.
At the round table in the Northern Fleet, other problems related to the introduction of electronic driver's licenses were also raised. For example, there is no possibility of bringing to justice those who use fake QR codes, as well as uncertainty about what inspectors should do if the traffic police information base is frozen.
According to the source publication, traffic police officers do not access the database to check the QR code: the fact is that it contains an image of real rights, and the inspector’s tablet contains a key and a decoder. As a result, law enforcement officers see the document, and in better quality than on plastic “from hand.” He also noted that this code is constantly changing, so it is “almost impossible” to fake it, according to the source; He also ruled out a leak of personal data. The Ministry of Digital Development emphasized that the immutability and reliability of the database loaded into the information database is confirmed by the electronic signature of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.