Thoughts about information operations and freedom of information space

Abstract

The aim of the study is to highlight that the development of information technologies and the information environment necessarily goes hand in hand with the intensified use of information to influence. The latter can be linked to the concept of information operations, which in the context of complex security can be defined in a broader sense than the military. Information operations in the broad sense may serve military, intelligence, political-diplomatic, economic or even various illegitimate purposes. These require effective protection, which implies both credible and active counteraction and the application of restrictions. However, in the modern constitutional states of the transatlantic area, freedom of expression is a fundamental right which, although it can be restricted, is of the utmost importance in the information space. The vast majority of contemporary states see the information space as a key dimension of freedom of expression, the development of individual and social relations and the development of the personality. Its freedom is therefore a fundamental value, which at first sight is limit­ed by the implementation of information operations and the protection against them. The aim of this paper is to point out, in principle, that the relationship between information operations and freedom of information space cannot, however, be described as a zero-sum game.