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21.03.2007

On the problems of information security

   

Gagik Harutyunyan 

According to the “principle of interconnection”, making the basis of national security (NS), the reliability of national security is conditioned by how harmonious are represented the security issues of all the fields of state and nation existence in conceptual provisions and NS systems based on them. In this sense one should except that “RA NS strategy”, adopted not long ago and being of utmost importance, is the first document, which should yet undergo changes providing a chance to shape NS complex conception.

“Out of law” wars: It is known that the issues of Information Security have acquired urgent importance today1. One should only mention that according to the conclusions of conference of International Federation of Scientists held in 2000, the threats directed against information security are considered to be a considerable danger for humanity. Such a primacy is also conditioned by the fact that the information wars waged at the moment are not regulated by any international agreement, although a number of countries tried to represent the legal issue of that field to UN or other superior bodies. That’s to say, information operations, in comparison with traditional military operations, are not embraced in international law and there is no legal law or sanction provided in that field. Whereas, the wars waged by applying information-psychological weapons are not less devastating than the traditional ones.

The present situation has come to prove that the ides on “war” and “peace” have undergone considerable changes in the present information epoch: at present information wars are of continuous character and lack the mechanisms of “peaceful regulation” or “truce”.

“Information weapons”: in this connection it is worth mentioning that the conception of “information war” has become quite inclusive. It doesn’t suppose only special propagandistic means or less famous “neurolinguistic programming”, the application of which sometimes allows to physically exterminate unwanted people by means of electronic letters with inspiring content.

So called technical (radio electric, computer, electric, chemical, biological) species of information-psychological weapons are in impetuous development. Some of them, for example international viruses, are well known. There are also known some of physical methods influencing on electric and computer systems. However, today gradually come true the methods of controlling people and making them zombies by means of rays with ultrahigh frequencies as well as many other technologies to influence on a person physically and spiritually and seeming quite unbelievable from the first sight.

Policy of information epoch or “noopolicy”: the issues of information security are of utmost importance in economically developed countries - in the US, EU countries and especially China, where political-military importance of the information-psychological field has a history of more then two thousand years.

Such an attention is conditioned by the necessity to preserve security of information resources, but also by other purposes of principal character. According to American up-to-date approaches it has become urgent to reconsider the main provisions of internal and foreign policy as in the process of globalization competitiveness and the ability to succeed is mostly conditioned by the ability to carry out the strategy of forming information resources at the same time controlling and applying them practically.

In particular, noopolicy supposes that on the highest level of policy planning new kinds of provisions should be shaped, which are to be based on ideas, system of values, moral and ethnic norms and not on traditional “power policy”. If in the past the state and national interests made the cornerstone of politics, then in noopolicy special stress is put on “net of states”, state and pubic organizations and their interests.

Today noopolicy is widely implemented in the western policy. In this sense it is noteworthy the program speech of England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair in Los Angeles in 2006, where he announced: “We are waging Antiterrorist war for the purposes to show how the world should be ruled in the 21st century…and we will not win in the battle against global extremism if we don’t profit on that level of system of values”.

Conclusions: in spite of its not being a big nation and an important geopolitical unit and in comparison with a number of other not big countries and nations, today Armenia and Armenians (that’s to say RA and NKR) are included in global processes. One should only mention the issues of NKR conflict settlement and Genocide, which are the component parts of up-to-date international policy. It has come to prove that the above mentioned developments are directly connected with Armenia and Armenians in information field and dictate the RA political leadership to carry out a strategy in keeping with today’s realities.

Whereas, one should state as a fact that our information field is still far from being satisfactory. Information threats, needing appropriate response, can conditionally (as they are interrelated) be classified in the following way:

  • Threats directed against state and non-state information technical systems: communication, computer nets, radio-electronic means etc (technical sphere of information security).
  • Threats directed against Armenia’s rating and image in international, diplomatic and social instances and in general in a global information field (noopolicy field).
  • Threats directed against the human factor (individual’s, society’s, and in our case also the Armenians’),(spiritual-psychological security and noopolicy field).

Certain research-practical methodology should be applied to solve the above mentioned problems. In particular it is necessary to study:

  • The present information problems of Armenia’s state and non-state departments and structures and their classification according to the fields and the extent of urgency.
  • International experience in the field of IS (in the noopolical and technical fields) and its comparison with the Armenian reality.
  • The legal field of RA and NKR information field from the standpoint of inserting it into IS national system.

The results achieved from such researches will allow the RA authorities to make necessary steps to solve the informational field’s urgent problems and undertake the elaboration of IS conception and later on IS system inserting works.

1 According to the classification accepted in international practice, the component parts of NS complex doctrine are military-political, social-economic and information security conceptions, which are interconnected and in their turn are multibranch.


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