Information and Data Correlation and Differentiation

Data is a fundamental object for the functioning of new digital technologies, artificial intelligence and the entire digital economy. For this reason, many legal acts use the concept of «data» rather than the concept of «information.» However, Russian legislation and the doctrine have not developed any criteria for distinguishing these concepts, which leads to the existence of three different approaches to understanding and correlating these categories. As a result, errors and inaccuracies can be found in the terminological apparatus. Having analyzed various points of view, we can state that data is unstructured and chaotic; information has a certain context and holistic content, while data can be transformed into information, and information into data. Data is always primary, because by combining them, a certain context and content are built thereby forming information. Proving this statement in the framework of the regulation of personal data, the author concluded that the main object of these legal relations should be called «personal information» rather than «personal data» since the data itself does not contain personal information, but if this data can be used for identification and associated with a particular individual, then it can be argued that they are converted into personal information and are subject to regulation within the framework of personal data. In addition, in the new edition of Art. 71 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation introduced a new concept of «digital data,» which had not previously been used in Russian legal regulation. Thus, it can be argued that digital data primarily refers to data processed using information technology and available for processing in digital form, for example, open data.