On July 21, the members of the Russian State Duma approved in the third reading three bills to regulate Internet and telecom services in Russia. After the almost unanimous vote of Russia’s senators today, the laws are now pending approval by President Putin. [Update: The President signed the laws on July 30.]
- No more access to blocked websites via VPNs and anonymizers
The new law aims to establish state control over technologies that make it possible to circumvent Internet censorship. Thus anonymizers and VPN systems should get state registration and may be requested to restrict access to the blacklisted resources. Should anonymizers and VPN not comply with such requests within three days, they will be banned on Russian territory.
In addition, search engines such as Yandex and Google are required to withdraw all the links to the blacklisted websites from their search results.
If adopted, the law is set to go into effect on November 1, 2017.
Earlier this year Roskomnadzor, the Russian telecom and Internet regulator, has already begun to put pressure on online anonymizers and VPN services while the Russian parliament passed a new law to set fines for Internet service providers (ISPs) who fail to restrict access to blacklisted websites.
Dozens of thousands of sites or pages are currently blocked in Russia. Among them are DailyMotion, LinkedIn and Pornhub, as East-West Digital News reported previously.
- No more anonymity in instant messengers
According to this new legislation, instant messengers operating in Russia will be required to support the authorities’ effort to control message content, and to prevent the transmission of unauthorized information, if requested by authorities. But the law does not specify how such transmission should be blocked.
To use instant messaging, individuals will have to be identified by a telecom operator through their phone numbers. Users may be banned from messengers if ordered by a court.
On their side, instant messengers will be requested to sign a special identification agreement with telecom operators to be able to deliver their services. Messengers may be requested to distribute messages from the authorities in certain situations.
If and as long as they fail to comply with the new rules, instant messengers will be blocked on Russian territory.
If adopted, the law will take effect January 1, 2018.
In an exchange with East-West Digital News, legal experts from legal firm Noerr also drew attention to the fact that the requirements of the “anti-terror” law adopted last year will apply to the messages exchanged via instant messengers as this new legislation will come to force starting from July 1, 2018. The legislation, known as ‘Yarovaya’s law’ or ‘Big Brother law,’ requires Internet and telecom companies to store the content and the metadata of all their users’ communications for a significant period of time. They also provide the FSB, Russia’s secret service, with transparent access to all the messages, even encrypted ones.
Instant messengers have drawn suspicious attention from the Russian authorities over the past few years. Since 2014, messengers have been considered as online services that “organize the dissemination of information” — a category which is subject to specific registration and other legal requirements.
Thus Threema, “the world’s favorite secure messenger,” was officially registered in Russia earlier this year, followed by Telegram, in spite of the reluctance of its founder Pavel Durov to collaborate in any way with authorities in any country. Several other messengers have been blocked by the Russian authorities for failing to comply with this legal requirement.
- Verified passport information required for SIM card usage
The State Duma has also adopted a law to regulate the usage of SIM cards in the country. Telecom operators will have to request verified passport data before selling SIM cards and to accept only cashless payments from their corporate clients.
Users can also be disconnected upon a request from Russian law-enforcement agencies and Roskomnadzor.
