April 24, 2012  - Today three non-governmental organizations "Institute for Development of Freedom of Information", "Transparency International - Georgia", and the "Georgian Young Lawyers' Association" will present their opinions to Georgian Parliament about the draft Law of Georgia on Information Security. Non-governmental organizations find this legislative initiative as justified and timely and believe the risks existing in terms of rapid development and application of information technologies must be reflected accordingly in the legislation of Georgia.  

The legislative initiative on Information Security, which Georgian Parliament is considering is very important, because of its influence on a number of provisions regulating freedom of information in the country. However, this draft Law still raises numerous questions and requires improvement.

1. Firstly, we would like to emphasize that the proposed draft Law establishes new types of closed public information, such as: confidential, restricted, and non-classified information. The above-described new types of closed public information go beyond the list of secrets established under the Constitution of Georgia (state, commercial, and private) and represent its illegitimate extension.
2. Administrative authorities will have the right to give the public information one of four classifications. That means deciding on which category (confidential, restricted, and non-classified) the public information belongs to. Granting this type of authority to them might cause some complications in terms of finding the information despite it being public.