Legal Protection of Personal Image in Digital Relations: Leading Trends

摘要

Development of digital technologies creates new opportunities for obtaining and using the image of a citizen without her or his knowledge. This creates serious problems in both public law and civil law relations. A study of domestic and foreign scientific legal literature shows that the content of the human right to own image remains insufficiently developed by modern legal science. Most often, the right to an image is narrowed down to protection from illegal distribution of photographs and video materials, as evidenced by both Russian judicial practice and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. An important legal problem is the use by state bodies of facial recognition technologies (FRT). These leading technologies are useful for finding people during disasters, identifying a person in the "smart city" system, identifying offenders and tracing criminals. However, there are doubts about the constitutionality of the use of FRT both for video surveillance in the real physical world, and for identifying individuals on online services and websites, since there is no sufficient legal regulation of the use of these information technologies. This can provoke violations of the rights of citizens by state bodies and officials. A comprehensive legal regulation of the implementation of the human right to own image, as one of the components of the right to privacy, personal and family secrets, is necessary. We conclude that modern states are obliged to develop and adopt legislative measures that do not allow the use of an electronic profile of a person without his consent.