Digital profile: the concept, regulatory mechanisms and enforcement problems

The subject of the research is the legal nature of the digital profile of a citizen, as well as a set of legal norms regulating digital profiling relations in Russia.

The comparative method, the method of system analysis, as well as the method of legal modeling are used in the article.

The purpose of the article is to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that legal regulation is not the only mechanism for regulating relations in the field of digital profiling.

The main results, scope of application. The article studies the phenomenon of digital profile, the main approaches to the digital profiling as well as the circumstances that have caused the state's interest in digital profiling. The creation and operation of a digital profile should be aimed at achieving the goal set out in the legislation. The digital profile is a set of relevant, reliable information about individuals and legal entities formed in the unified 

identification and authentication system or other information systems of state and local government authorities. The formation of a digital profile is carried out in order to provide data to authorities, legal entities and persons who have requested access to this information through the digital profile infrastructure. The analysis of the Russian legal regulation of relations in the field of digital profiling is presented, the problems of enforcement practice are identified. The analysis revealed the main differences between the digital profile and related categories, including social scoring, the unified population register and others. The comparison of a digital profile with a digital avatar and a digital character was carried out. It is extremely important to pay close attention to the problems of digital profiling both at the level of fundamental and applied scientific research. At the state level, it is important to strategically determine what a digital profile is, as well as formulate the main directions of the digital profiling development, challenges and risks. The importance of the development of digital profiling for unified system of public authorities in the Russian Federation is outlined.

Conclusions. The analysis of the emerging practice of digital profiling in contemporary society shows that legal regulation does not always allow us to keep up with the rapidly developing relations in this area. The possibility of using other mechanisms should be considered. The use of mechanisms of regulatory experiments can also be considered as special mechanisms for regulating relations in the field of digital profiling. The goal of the research has been achieved, the legal nature of the digital profile has been revealed, approaches to regulating this phenomenon in the conditions of digital transformation have been proposed.

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