Victor Monakhov and Anita Soboleva analyse the current development of legal standards in the area of access to information and protection of personal data in the Russian Federation. At the end of 2005 Russia ratified the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data. At the same time several new laws, intended to harmonize national privacy legislation with this Convention and to define the legal status of different databases, which are being created by the state for the purposes of registration of population and identification of persons, passed the first reading in the State Duma. The article reflects the ongoing debates on the scope of the right to know and the right to keep secret in the Russian context.