I am Mariam. My name exists in the traditions of almost all nations and this is why it is clear and known for everybody.My second name is Cacanashvili. What about the second name, it is rare and difficult to pronounce. In one word, I am global by name, and the representative of a small country, daughter of Georgia by second name, by education I am a lawyer, I am small for elders than me, and old for younger than me, for some people-professional, for others-unprofessional,for few people-bad, for more people-good, for some people-known,for the majority-unknown. In this case, I mean the world, but in Georgia you rarely can find someone who has no opinion about Mariam Cacanashvili, there for I am known.They know me, but during the last time I am often asked: Where are you?
I am here,with people,don’t be lazy and look for me;in cyber space at the moment. I am also looking for you and when I get you I am fascinated by the law on eternity. This law was taught by my ancestors with the charity of motherly love and the ethic of political culture. Motherly love is the love,for others it is the form of behaviour,which defines your desire of behavior with other.A Political culture is needed for existence in the world. Do not consider that the political culture is a white muffler or for politicians,it is the responsibility to save the independence from globalization every one of us and the world.
Do not consider me as an opponent of globalization,if it was so,I would not have started blogging in cyber space.I am interested in the destiny of my counrty and people like me,and do you know why? The theoretic,millionaire and pretty women can not see the facts after their noses, or are looking so far,that when stumble leg and break their noses;they loose the orienteer of seen far.And the other are often glad,hoping to get their places?!
In fron people; the charm of eternity and bear the reality,think so much as you need to take the decision,don’t hurry and don’t be late,tell no to informational war-this is the formula of my freedom in reading the book,in business and even while I am in the cyber space.
I am not a millionaire to appear in the “Goldem Billiard” while of looking for freedom,not so beautiful to be awarded with the title “Miss World”,neither I have the profession to appear next to (if not in front) the famous scientists because of a new invention I am not the politician to express the opinions in all you languages.But I am sure,that the global language has those ways to be able to make the humanity.To understand the national ideology.Someone who it,will feet as millionaire,pretty and as a great inventor.
Don’t think that I would deny any of these,or I wouldn’t fit,it but I have my own way to the freedom. This is the way of hospitality.This is why I choose as a accepting language motherly love and political culture.Be my guest in the cyber space and I will treat you in Caucasian, georgian way of hospitality.This is my feature recognized both, enemies and relatives…
Law for All
customs, morals, law
I received a number of questions concerning my first letter, however there was on common question: if justice is a rule of behaviour, are not customs and morals similarly rules of behaviour? What is the difference between them? Let us talk in this letter about similarities and differences of morals or morality, customs or habits and justice.
Ilia Chavchavadze said, “All people, Georgians among them, consider customs to be more resistant and lasting than religion.” Indeed, customs are the rules of behaviour, which are shaped and established within the society through a long period. They are transferred from generation to generation and the attempt to change them according to the laws adopted by the state will lead to no intended result. Not all customs are fair though. They can be unfair as well. However, these customs were practised by ancestors through the power of habits and their preservation often became obligatory. Morals, like customs, is the way of behaviour established through practising it for a long time. However, unlike customs, morals asks a question: What is bad? What is good? What is kindness? What is evil?
Let us recall Vazha Fshavela’s “A guest and a host”, “Though there is blood between us, he is my guest today, not an enemy”. This is the case when the choice between blood vengeance and the custom of hospitality is made according to the judgment – what is deserving, what is appropriate or acceptable? Not only customs and morals, but other types of rules of behaviour are established in the society through a long-term practice. For example, religious norms, which regulate the relations of believers among each other and the other part of the society (These religious norms are depicted in religious books, e.g. Bible, Koran, Talmud and etc.). “Don’t kill… Don’t steal”- these are morally approved norms and represent fundamental commandments of almost all religions. Unlike justice, morals and customs are often referred to as unwritten rules of behaviour. Sometimes it also happens so that customs and morals (other norms as well), become the source of law. Do you realise what it means? Some behaviours exist in the society as a norm of customs and morals and through state sanctioning they become laws. The cases when parents take care of their under-aged children and aged parents are looked after by their children are the norms of our customs and morals and they became a part of family law. It means that if someone does not follow this particular rule, he or she should expect not only a reproach from the society, but an obligation imposed by the law to pay alimony. Recent years have brought new rules and relations through the development of new technology. You frequently use a computer and should know that while using the Internet you should comply with certain rules. What should or should not we do to protect ourselves from a negative impact of information in the virtual world? These rules are referred to as code of internet behaviour. Via internet we are quickly linked to people with different morals, customs and law. We receive vast information. That’s why you should always remember – you need to tell the good from the evil, acceptable from unacceptable, trustworthy from violence, truth from a lie, freedom from depravity, literate from illiterate.
What is Law?
Mariam Tsatsanashvili – Doctor of Juridical Sciences, Professor
Law is a personal obligation along with freedom. If you want to be free, you should take care of it. If you commit conviction, you bear a responsibility for it. I have been asked many times: What is law and justice? Which is of more priority: protection of law and re-establishment of justice?
I would like to offer you a series of letters concerning this issue and let us judge together in order to clarify for ourselves that law is not only a system of prohibition or punishment, but the guarantee that your rights and freedoms are protected.
What do you think law is? What do you consider to be fair?
If you found a place for this question in your heart, please ask yourself, do you always act in the way consistent with your perception of justice?
An antique aphorism says: Law is an art of goodness and fairness. Yes, it is true, the law possesses a soul. This very soul of the law transforms a law into a rule of behaviour, business into profit; it makes a man a man. The law without a soul is like an axe (or a guillotine), business is a loss, and a man is only a flesh.
The level of juridical culture requires us to know that the law assists a person in everyday life and each of us is interested in its observation. Before you get to your educational establishment, please walk along the street and cross it, or travel by bus. These simple actions are described as freedom of movement in terms of law.
No one has the right to say that you cannot walk along the street. If you do not cross the road at the crossing, you break the traffic rules. If a bus driver does not stop the bus at the bus-stop and due to this fact you are late for your classes, this is the violation of your passenger rights. The constitution guarantees all these rights and it is constitutional law.
Accordingly, when a person abides the law, he/she acts legally. However, the question is – are all laws fair? This is a separate topic. What I would like to tell you now is that personal freedom and societal freedom, personal obligation and societal obligation are optional categories and the law determines when a person can be forgiven or punished. If freedom of movement is the personal right, your personal obligation is to cross the road at the crossing; it is the obligation to protect public order. That’s why personal freedom can be limited in order to protect public order. Thus, law is the system of commonly obligatory social norms. This is the unity of rules of behaviour, how we should or should not behave.
Please, try to provide your arguments to determine what law is.
The work is dedicated to the scientific research of the main aspects of legal regulation of information. The urgency of the theme is conditioned by the problem of legal governing of information and social relationships that arise on the basis of applying new equipment and technologies.
With the aim of resolving the said problem the analysis of philosophical and cybernetic views is given. The peculiarities of information documentation and transborder relationships are defined. The commodity and non-commodity nature of obtaining and disseminating information that asks for an independent system to regulate private and public legal relations is discussed. On the basis of the Civil Code of Georgia, contractual relations of modern information distribution facilities as well as the legal organizational forms supporting the information confidentiality mode are specified.
The work’s methodology is based on the eradication of applying “two intellects” (man-machine) and the preference of human intellect over the machine one. Such an approach ensures controllability of information processes and their keeping within the human rights domain.
The work is aimed at the establishment of an independent information law branch and the codifying of normative materials in the area of information relationships regulation. With the purpose of coping with this task the author considers such important propositions as:
1. Concept of information. Information, according to the author, is a reference, datum concerning facts and events regardless the form of manifestation being the basis for the origin, alteration or suspension of rights and obligations.
2. The traditional concept of documentary information (for example, paper) may be further supplemented with a technical process (for example, the “running line”, a television or radio broadcast) or a field (a polygraphic, crystallographic image). With the purpose of establishing the evidential effect of machine information, identification characters of an electronic digital signature should be identified.
3. The legal bases of computer information are established according to international principles and norms operating in the organization of telecommunication links to be concretized in the agreements made between the parties. As for the “international” nature of the Internet, it conditions the general character of regulation. Codes of ethics are generally applied in the sphere, although in the legal practice of some countries known are such acts as the Internet Protection Acts (USA) and Informationes und Kommunikationsdienste Gesetz (Germany).
4. The development of modern facilities and technologies gives rise to a problem in relation to traditional human rights institutions. On the basis of the existing technical evolution trend the author puts forward a hypothesis on the establishment of “technoinformation” rights (where “techno” indicates their origin, while “information” – the post industrial society nature).
5. The newest forms of information, such as a computer program and databases, pursuant to the Law on Author’s and Neighbouring Rights are treated as a literary work. It is substantiated in the work that databases are a collection of references and data rather than a collection of works and, therefore, they are attributed to know-how or know-knows. As for a computer program, it is an invention to which the patent law should be applied.
6. With the object of regulating the protection of rights in the process of mass information obtaining and dissemination, the author deals with the issues of legal regulation of the mechanism of balances, on which basis it would be possible to protect the public morality from defamation (libel). Such a mechanism, prior to claiming (legal action), constitutes in terms of prevention the self-regulation mechanism of mass media (mass media council, arbitrator, ombudsman, council of ethics, etc.)
7. The legal aspects of personal data are investigated in accordance with the privacy concept. On the basis of a comparative and legal analysis of acts of the common law and procedural law countries, criteria of legal regulation of individual categories of personal data are established; substantiated is the necessity for non-statutory data security means (e.g. codes of practice and behaviour, non-governmental data security body, etc.).
8. With the purpose of ensuring the security of citizens, the public or state the information secrecy mode limits are studied. The state, commercial, service, professional secrecy mode implies a restriction of free access to and distribution of information, which is linked to the protection of information security and the information environment.
9. Information security, besides the prevention of an information war, information terror, other information offences, together with other measures requires the perfection of legal regulation. Such criminal actions are especially notable in the management and industrial systems, in the area of banking operations and services. The work provides a disposition analysis of information offences which shall necessarily become an object to be regulated by the criminal code.
10. According to the author, information, because of its strategic significance, is an object that requires a unified codified act “the information code”. Such an act is unknown in the world legal practice, however, its drafting is quite possible in the course of the legal science development. The work presents the said code’s outline: the object of information relationships, information types and its access regime, principles, special rights of subjects, legal organizational means of information security, etc.
The author does not lay claim to the all-round coverage of all the aspects concerning legal regulation of information relationships. However he tries on the basis of systems analysis of the area problems to establish main trends to support legal regulation of rights and obligations in the sphere of information obtaining and distribution.
This work has been made possible just on the basis of the realization of the author’s right of free access to information, for which he wishes to express his deep gratitude to the information centers of Georgia, Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, US for the information kindly provided by them.
The scientific work “Informatio Law” presented by Ms Mariam Tsatsanashvili,doctor of Law,professor at Tbilisi state University,is an educational and analytical book.It is intended to privide the students and postgraduates with the knowledge in the new field of law.It is also popular with investigators,judges,legislators and the people engaged in producing and applying information technologies.
In this book the author systematized the problems of International relations: concept of information,informational society and entire informational space (legal and philosophical analyses),the role and the place of information technologies as the object of law,the rights and obligations of the subjects of law in the process of receiving,working,preserving and spreading of information,open and public information (its value in the process of owning,using and despoting),mass media,personal data as the guarantee of inviolability of private life,secret and confidentional information,informational culture and informational security.
The above mentioned problems are reviewed theoretically by considering international practice and condition of informational relations in today’s Georgia.
Both methods general (historical,systemic analyses and synthenses) and specific (allowing,delegating,recommending,sanctioning),as a means of ensuring of peculiarities of informational activities are used in this book.
The author reviews legal problems together with informational policy and organizational-technical measures and expresses her opinion that informational rights and freedoms are fragmented not only in informational rights and freedoms are fragmented not only in international acts but in the constitutions of the democratic countries as well.According to the recent technique and technologies these rights and freedoms should be supplemented with the rights to receiving and spreading of information and protect them from bad influence.Since the right to live is inviolable,informational inviolability is considered a person’s natural right.In view of this thesis the author offers a new group of constitutional norms of human rights and freedoms.
From the aspects of civil law the author draws her attantion to the problemsof informational documenting and electronic signature,also to the peciliarities of rights and obligantions of receiving,working,spreading of information with respect to the tradithional institutions of owning,using and disposing.The thesis goes that in the process of civil regulation there is no mechanism of legal protection of data but only guarantee of confidentiality of data.This thesis is proved by analyses of practical application of “know-how”,”know-know”,”copyright”,”patent”,”license”,”Sui Generies” (as an idea) and other instutitions.
In this separate chapter of the book the legal regulation of relations rising in the process of applying and spreading of mass media is considered.This regulation is based on two principles :
1) Freedom of receiving and spreading if information
2) Protection of others’ rights in the process of information circulation.
In this book the constitutional regulations of press and mass media are compared with those of the USA an according to them the constitutional regulations of Georgia’s mass media are also reviewed.
The author’s attention is directed to using of the social institutions (ethic codes of journalists,journalists councils of self-regulation) for preventive inspection of libel and assault and battery till the law suit.Absence of these institutions in Georgia gives way to censure and tabloid and is dangerous for democratic development of freedom of speech.
Legal regulation of personal data is a guarantee of the constitutional right to private inviolability.As for the legal problems according to the permisible rate of interference in private life,privarcy,the author reveals freedom of the former and obligations of the latter respectively.On the basis legislative analyses of other countries (France,Austria,Great Britan,Finland,Belgium,Japan,Germany,Estonia) on protecting of personal data,the author offers basic principles of making the similiar bill in Georgia concerning the formation of the national organ and special measures for protection in the process of collecting,working, and spreading of data (requirement of Euconvention 108).
In chaptar “Legal regulation of secret and confidential information” the author reviews the right to limited acces to the information and characterizes the criteria and mechanisms of defence of state security,and principles of restiricting and disclosing (organisational,legal engineering-technical,cryptographic and operative arrangments.)She also expresses her opinion about terminological accuracy (on the example of the instruction to article 24 of Euroatomagreements-July 21.1958) and considers that the rates of secrecy determine the regimes of confidentiality and imply the limits of access right.Here she also reviews contents of commercial,banking,professional and official information,their intersection points and legal regulation of limited access to them by proposing of working up the relative norms in legislature og Georgia.
Forms of influence are characterized by analysing of criminal aspects of informational war,informational terror and informational crimes,(illegal access to computer information,programming damaging software,infringement of exploitation rules of computer system or computer network).The object crime,the subjects of crime (hackers,injured party),aim and couse of crime (self-interest,encroachement on financial and monetary policy of government,interest of invention,hooliganism,vengenace),place of encroachemnt (taking into accaunt transborder problems) as indespensable condition for qualifyng of crime,also the meaning of value,and actuality of information as the main thong for determining the losses caused by computer crime.The author expresses her ideas on methods and tactics of investigation of computer crime and also about rules of arbitration and court consideration.
In chapter “Informational culture and Informational security” the author formulates the aims of informational policy,principles and system of virtual reality,the methods of revealing informational danger taking into account informational,phsychological environment.The models of influence on the state security of Georgia (including informational security) without military interference ara analysed in this chaptar together with issueof security informational systems.On the basis of internatronal practice (Internet as entire standards of infranstructure).The author offers to work up organisatronal,technical arrangments and normative base ensuring security of Georgia.In her monography the author offers her readers to cooperate with her on evry disputable issue,to hold seminars,lectures and workshops are she considers that informational age is just getting start as dynamic age with contradictions.And information law in such situation is the way of combining informational technologies with the institutions of law.It is also the way regulating of the influnce on the hottest sphere of the planet – infosphere and modern society.
“State and Religion“ is the first publication in the Georgian science of law related to the legal saguarantees of the religious liberty.
The work is based on the theoretical analysis of the concept of religious equality, comparison of various international models of relations between the State and religion as well as the assessment of the foreign legislation and practices in this area. Based on the historical, cultural and statistical data, author of the work elaborates a political and legal model of the freedom of religion in Georgia.
The work comprises the following chapters:
What is the freedom of religion?
Legislative guarantees of the freedom of religion;
Religious organisations in Georgia;
Historical religions in Georgia;
Developments related to the religion in Georgia since 1990;
Modern models of relation between the Church and the State;
State and religion in post-communist countries;
Assessment of the freedom of religion (supporters and opponents);
Political and legal model of the freedom of religion in Georgia.
Freedom of religion is not only an individual, but also a public (collective) right. Therefore, equality of all individuals before the law in respect to their right to religion does not necessarily mean the equality of religious organisations. From the practical point of view, one cannot consider all religious groups in one plane due to the historical, social, ethnic or cultural reasons. Consequently, legislative guarantees of the freedom of religion should ensure the right of an individual to belong or not to belong to a religion, to consent or to deny the participation in religious services, etc. Some restrictions can be set to the exercise of the right to religion in the context of collective appreciation of this right, in the interest of public security, public order, protection of health and moral of others.
From the point of view of the history of religion and the geographical distribution 70% of Georgian population is Christian Orthodox. Christianity has been declared to be a State Religion of Georgia in 4th century A.D. Judaism, Catholicism and Islam are the other traditional type confessions. Since the 19th century Molokans and Dukhobors settled in Georgia, followed by Baptists, Subotniks and Pente costals from the 1st half of the 20th century. Since the nineteeth Jehovah’s witnesses, Evangelists, Krishna and Bahai came to the scene.
Under these circumstances the necessity of providing the constitutionally recognised legal guarantees of the freedom of religion to the religious organisations comes on the agenda. The Georgian legislation develops in line with those foreign models, where the State and religion are separated and the traditional religion is given a priority.
A new notion is introduced to the Georgian law – a Constitutional Agreement (Coucordat), which grants the Georgian Orthodox Church the status of the entity of public law and determines the rules of regulation of the matters of common interest. As an entity separated from the state, the Church is free in deciding on its organisational matters, religious ceremonies and services.
Corporative partnership is launched between the State and the Church in educational and social spheres as well as the matters related to the protection of cultural heritage.
A Commission on the parity basis is established in order to ensure the obligation of transfer of property to the Church, which is to determine the part of the religious treasury that is to stay in the possession of the State, and the part that is to be transferred to the Church. On this basis respective legal regimes of the corporative interrelation will be established and the interests of private owners will be taken into account.
The State does not finance the Church, except for protection of the cultural heritage. Non-profit organisations of the Church are exempted from paying property and land taxes.
As far as the other religious organisations are concerned, the latter are allowed to take the form of the entity of private law pursuant to the provisions of the Civil Code. The bill on “Religious Organisations” is under preparation, which will enable them to receive the status of the public law entity. Under the bill, religious belief may not become a reason for a discrimination of a person. Right to registration is restricted in the principles and actions of the organisation represent a danger to the health of others, State order and breached upon the public moral. Registered entities depend on their incomes and donations. Donations are exempted from taxes. Furthermore, the State will support them in restoration of their religious constructions and items, as the part of the cultural heritage.
This model does not exclude the possibility of concluding the agreements with other confessions, but not in the form of the Constitutional Agreement. The organic Law determines conclusion of the Constitutional Agreement and the parties to the latter.
The presented model will facilitate the creation of the legal guarantees to the separation of the Church from the State and establishment of corporative relations between them.