In late June, the Russian parliament approved controversial amendments to Russia’s anti-terrorist legislation. Drafted by lawmakers Irina Yarovaya and Viktor Ozerov, the new legislation may have deep consequences for people living and using digital networks in Russia. The amendments are yet to be signed by President Putin [which he did on July 7 update].
A substantial part of the new legislation — which Edward Snowden has called “Russia’s new Big-Brother law” — targets the Internet and telecom industry. The consequences may be summarized as follows:
- Telecom operators and “organizers of information distribution” — a category which may include any website — will need to store the content of their users’s communications for a period of six months, according to Article 14. This applies to the recordings of all phone calls and the content of all text messages. Metadata on these communications will need to be kept for three years by telecom companies and for one year by “organizers of information distribution.”
- Telecom operators and “organizers of information distribution” will be required to cooperate with the Federal Security Service (FSB) to make their users’ communication fully accessible to this organization. Thus messenger apps, social networks and email services encrypting their data will be required to add “additional coding” to transmitted electronic messages to help Russia’s secret service decipher them, according to Article 15.
- Law-enforcement agencies will be granted access to any user’s messages without any judicial oversight. Currently, a court order is required, taking into consideration Russian citizens’ constitutional right to the privacy of correspondence.
A flurry of criticism
Russian free expression advocates were among the first to campaign against the proposed legislation, which they believe is dictated essentially by the FSB’s repressive agenda.
As reported by GlobalVoices, RosKomSvoboda, an Internet freedom organization affiliated with the Pirate Party in Russia, set up an online campaign “No to Surveillance.” The organization launched a website called 1984.live as well as a social media campaign in which users addressed government officials asking them to nix the amendments.
But the parliament’s vote sparked criticism well beyond opposition-minded circles. Internet giants Mail.ru Group and Yandex, top mobile operators and industry associations also opposed the bill openly.
Implementing the legislation will entail huge costs and be virtually impracticable, industry representatives warned. The amount of communication data to be stored is so gigantic, according to expert arguments cited by Meduza, that “Russia would need every data-storage manufacturer in the world working for seven years straight before the country had the infrastructure necessary to accommodate so much storage and processing.”
More expensive phone bills, less tax revenues
What’s more, “the electrical grid in central Russia simply isn’t powerful enough to fuel the still-unbuilt data centers that will be required by the new legislation. The equipment and materials needed to build these data centers, moreover, isn’t produced in Russia, so companies will be forced to buy imported goods,” these opposition-minded experts claim.
The costs of building such infrastructure could exceed 5 trillion rubles (around $77 billion at the current exchange rate), according to them.
These costs will affect government agencies, which will need to upgrade the country’s data cables, while many businesses will be made unprofitable after they are forced to spend significant amounts on new data-storage equipment.
On their side, mobile operators will have to spend some 2.2 trillion rubles ($34 billion) to create the required message identification, data analysis and management systems, the heads of Russia’s top four operators wrote in a joint letter to the parliament in June, prior to the vote.
This is more than twice as much as the yearly turnover of these four operators combined. As a result, Russian mobile subscribers will see their bills increase up to three times while the state will deprive itself for years from any tax revenues from the industry, the operators warned.
IT experts also ridiculed the idea of disclosing all encryption keys to the FSB. Almost almost half the traffic on the Internet is encrypted, and the volume is only growing, they pointed out, while the “organizers of information distribution” do not always have the keys to decrypt their own data due to user privacy rules, Meduza wrote.
Amendments to the amendments
Ignored by lawmakers, these arguments seem to have had some effect in government circles. One week after the Duma’s vote, the ministry of communications announced possible amendments to the legislation. In particular, requiring telecom operators to store all user communications for up to six months might not be fully relevant, the ministry conceded.
The obligation to make all encrypted messages accessible to the security services may also need revising, Minister Nikolai Nikiforov stated.
“We believe that there will be serious issues with the application of this law. We are confident it will require a number of amendments,” The Moscow Times quoted him as saying.
Time for compromise?
Should the new legislation be adopted unchanged, the government will still need to engage a real dialogue with the industry, believe industry analysts cited by Russian business daily Vedomosti.
Operators will have two years to implement the legislation, which leaves sufficient time to find a compromise or seek alternatives to its impracticable provisions, these analysts hope.
For example, Big Data analysis could be regarded as an alternative to storing all communications, the business daily heard from industry and government sources. Such prospects were discussed by representatives of the telecom industry in a meeting with Vice Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich in mid June — even before the parliament passed the controversial legislation.
Russia’s free expression advocates have launched an online campaign against the controversial new legislation.
Among other provisions of the law
Not only is the new legislation severe against “international terrorism.” It also applies to anyone accused of financing acts of terrorism and even to “the failure to report a crime” (including terrorist attacks as well as armed rebellions and several other kinds of crimes).
Non denunciation will be punished by up to a year in prison. People convicted of “extremism” go to prison more often and for longer, while those “inducing, recruiting, or otherwise involving” others in the organization of mass unrest will face from five to ten years.
Russia’s religious life will also be affected. The new legislation creates a thoroughly broad definition of missionary work, which will be subject to rigorous restrictions.
Also worthy of note is the extension of criminal liability to adolescents over 14. People in this age group will now be potentially be prosecuted for 32 different criminal-code articles, up from 22 under the existing legislation. The crimes range from terrorism-related activities to “participation in illegal armed groups” or in “mass unrest,” to the new offense of failing to report a crime.
