Compliance with the Secrecy Regime During Online Training in Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs' Educational Organizations

Minzyanova Dilyara Farilevna Senior Lecturer, Department of Operational Investigative Activities, Kazan Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia 429140, Russia, respublika Tatarstan, g. Kazan', ul. Magistral'naya, 35 Dilyara_444@bk.ru Other publications by this author

*Previously published in Russian in the journal Pedagogy and Education.

Introduction

In modern society, educational organizations (institutions) constantly use information technologies to help and support them. At a particularly unstable time during the pandemic, we are forced to optimize the methods of organizing continuous training, observing measures for the non-proliferation of COVID-19 infection, and increasing the intellectual potential of the internal affairs bodies.

Information technologies play an important role in maintaining a high level of the educational process. Teachers with an age qualification over 60 are often involved in academic activities. During a pandemic, this category is more at risk. Restrictions also apply to students during quarantine when identifying cadets and trainees infected with COVID-19 in training units. At the onset of a peak and extreme epidemic situation, educational institutions or their individual units are forced to switch to a remote form of education using online learning.

Departmental universities of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs are also introducing information and telecommunication technologies in relation to students undergoing advanced training in various subjects of the Russian Federation on the job. This reduces both economic and social costs. Police officers combine their official activities with training, do not leave their places of permanent residence, and do not part with family and loved ones. Also, resources are not spent on travel payments.

The system of continuous education for employees of internal affairs bodies assumes familiarization with information containing state and official secrets. It requires appropriate access to it and skills in its processing and storage ^{[1, p. 73]}. Within the framework of the traditional training system, work with documents requiring special access is carried out in the special libraries of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ universities, where preparation for training sessions in special disciplines is carried out, and notes and notebooks with student records are stored. In the online learning format, compliance with the secrecy regime when working with documents requiring special access is almost impossible and is not regulated. On the other hand, the employee's personal data (especially operational units), including their external data, voice, etc., also requires protection.

Thus, the organization of distance learning, particularly within the online framework, requires compliance with the secrecy regime, and its implementation in modern conditions of the development of information and telecommunication technologies creates many difficulties, both in the organizational and legal fields.

Research results

The presented research is based on the process approach's provisions in analyzing the educational process in the online learning format. The personality-developing (practice-oriented) paradigm forms the basis of educational impact in departmental universities of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. As the academic institutions in question fulfill the social order of society and carry out continuous education of police officers, the author relied on the methodology of the functionalist approach when developing this topic.

The transfer of educational information in Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs system requires compliance with the requirements prescribed to prevent leakage and loss of official information (compliance with the secrecy regime). The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia has developed and uses special information and telecommunication technologies to organize the protection and secure transmission of information.

Ensuring the secrecy regime in Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs’ educational institutions is characterized by the presence of several features due to the very specifics of their activities ^{[2, p. 271]}. Distance learning as a form of organization of the educational process has a fairly long history. The main distinguishing feature of the training format under consideration is the territorial separation of the learners. Initially, due to the need to reduce the cost of education and improve the level of employee qualification, it was supposed to transmit information by mail (printed materials were transmitted), the implementation of educational programs based on radio and television broadcasting. The widespread development of information and telecommunication technologies and the availability of cellular communications created the basis for a new information revolution. They brought distance learning to a new level through online communications. Asynchronous distance learning has given way to online synchronous educational processes. Thus, online learning is today the most accessible and developed form of distance education ^[3].

In 2020–2021, educational institutions most often used the capabilities of the following main software products for online learning: Video Most, True Conf Server, and Zoom.

In the process of using these programs, teachers and students aim to conduct training sessions through webinars and video conferences. Software products used by educational organizations have been created both in Russia and abroad. So, the Zoom service was developed by an American communication technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. The software product in question allows you to combine a video conference, an online meeting, a chat, and mobile collaboration within a video call session ^[4]. The Zoom service is not included in the Ministry of Communications Register of Russian software, unlike the VideoMost and True Conf applications. Russia’s Universities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs cannot use software created by a non-resident company in the educational process.

VideoMost is a software product by the Russian company Spirit for multipoint video conferencing for corporate clients on personal computers, tablets, and smartphones. It includes a mobile messenger, document collaboration tools, a whiteboard, the ability to conduct voting, and more ^[5].

The True Conf Server videoconferencing server was created by the eponymous Russian company True Conf by order of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. This service works on Windows and Linux operating systems. True Conf Server software is based on the principles of scalable video encoding, which is its competitive advantage. This significantly reduces infrastructure costs and allows the application to adapt easily to each device.

The above software products do not guarantee stable and secure transmission of information and personal data of video conference participants. The analyzed software products cannot provide equally high-quality transmission of educational information throughout Russia, which is unrelated to the stability and speed of the Internet traffic itself. Therefore, when conducting training sessions through Video Most, True Conf Server, and Zoom, problems arise for the effective and efficient implementation of online learning.

The preservation and protection of information is an area of research developing extremely rapidly. The progress of information technology development increasingly causes the need for information protection. Problems related to information security are becoming more urgent and complex every year ^{[6, p. 37]}. Information technologies have also been widely introduced in the activities of internal affairs bodies. A huge amount of information rotates inside the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia's system (open, confidential, official, personal data, state secret). These flows of information are of great interest. They are the object of close attention and interest for criminal groups, extremist and terrorist organizations, as well as the mass media, which seek to use them for their own purposes.

Information resources, such as service information and information containing personal data, are transmitted only through secure communication channels. The procedure for transmitting information is carried out strictly in accordance with the algorithm (procedure) approved by departmental regulatory legal acts.

Currently, Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs uses the information field of the "Unified System of Information and Analytical Support for the activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia" (hereinafter the ISOD of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia). Specialists of Russia’s FSB and FSTEC were involved in developing and implementing this information protection system ^{[7, p. 51]}.

Departmental universities of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs are recommended to conduct online distance learning using services included in the Register of Russian software of the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation, i.e., this is Video Most, True Conf Server or ISOD of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.

Such information, as confidential information and state secrets, is not transmitted through open and unsecured communication channels. This procedure is caused by the need to comply with the secrecy regime.

Considering the possibilities of conducting online training in educational organizations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, it should be noted that information constituting a state secret is handled only with the use of special technical means, such as categorized computers and special removable disks. It is forbidden to transmit this information through any other communication channels. The procedure determines the use of special services to transfer it on purpose on paper or using removable media.

Thus, the secrecy regime can be defined as a set of requirements, rules, organizational, technical, and other measures aimed at preserving information constituting a state secret ^{[8, p. 20]}.

It is also not possible to observe the secrecy regime when conducting online training in educational organizations of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs within the framework of Russia’s Video Conferencing Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (SVKS-m) (hereinafter SVKS-m ISOD of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs). SVKS-m ISOD of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs is one of the services of the ISOD system that provides employee communication using video communication. The service was developed to optimize and accelerate the process of transmitting and processing information in Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs divisions, including when making and implementing management decisions.

At the present stage, this service allows for operational communication between employees and departments of Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs, simplifies procedures, and reduces travel and transportation costs during regional and federal meetings, conferences, and seminars, as well as during training using the system of distance educational technologies (hereinafter SDOT), which significantly increases labor productivity due to accelerated exchange information in real-time. Unfortunately, SDOT is used in the educational process only for current Department of Internal Affairs employees, mainly as part of retraining or advanced training. Within the framework of the implementation of educational programs of vocational training and higher education, the possibilities of the SDOT of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs are not applied.

The capabilities of the SVKS-m ISOD of Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs are partially realized during the organization and holding of scientific and representative events (scientific and practical conferences, round tables, etc.) by universities of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs system ^[9].

It should be recalled that criminal, administrative, civil, or disciplinary liability is provided for non-compliance with the requirements of the secrecy regime, committed intentionally or not, resulting in the leakage or loss of confidential information or state secrets.

So, in particular, criminal liability can occur only for those to whom the state secret has become known within the framework of official activity or, in other cases, provided for by law. In this case, a citizen who has never been officially admitted to state secrets cannot be brought to criminal responsibility.

Article 283.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for liability for illegally obtaining information constituting a state secret, for example, by kidnapping, deception, blackmail, coercion, threat of violence, or any other illegal method. They will also be severely punished if they use a technique designed to secretly obtain information or if information that constitutes a state secret has fallen outside the Russian Federation ^[10].

Conclusion

Thus, the educational process in universities and institutions of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs during the teaching of special disciplines containing information constituting a state or official secret cannot be conducted remotely. The lack of information and telecommunication systems that protect information from its leakage and loss creates great difficulties in studying special disciplines online at all forms of training and advanced training in Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs’ universities.

Consequently, the protection of educational information constituting a state or other legally protected secret, as well as ensuring the availability of this data in terms of distance and online learning for the entire circle of people studying at Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs universities, require the creation of an educational portal based on the ISOD of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs with the following features:

– a special electronic library containing normative legal acts of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, educational and special literature requiring special access;

– personal accounts of students, where the necessary educational, methodological, and other materials are stored, as well as the work they perform within the framework of mastering competencies in special disciplines;

– personal offices of teachers for working with educational, scientific literature, and regulatory legal acts requiring special access, as well as for organizing feedback with students;

– video conferencing service includes the following tools for implementing online meetings (for performing teacher assignments in a working group), chatting, etc.

– training versions of software products (for example, various accounting registers and databases used in official activities by police officers);

– various business games, simulators, and software products that allow you to form the professional skills of police officers, etc.

Thus, compliance with the secrecy regime for Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs will always be the primary measure of information protection. Violation of it may entail negative consequences for Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs system and society as a whole.

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