Blocks from the mind

Guess what Roskomnadzor with the new site of Navalny about the tactics of protest voting

Roskomnadzor blocked the Internet page of Smart Voting 2019.vote. So the politician Alexei Navalny called the system a week ago, which should allow the opposition forces to be coordinated and in every specific elections to put a single candidate against the opponent from the authorities. Roskomnadzor sent a site on which this system began to work in black list, since the resource supposedly violates the law on personal data.

The department refers to the “indignant public”: some citizens saw that personal data processed without their consent, and this was very concerned about them. Who are these citizens who returned to active work after a criminal case of fraud by the press secretary of Roskomnadzor Vadim Ampelonsky did not explain, but added that on the website 2019.Vote there is no prescribed privacy policy, and personal data of people are generally stored abroad.

Alexei Navalny himself reacted expectedly caustically. “Roskomnadzor managed to hold some kind of secret court, where we were not called, which issued“ interim measures about blocking ”. Naturally, we do not have a single paper about this, ”the politician said. He recalled that his film about Sergey Prikhodko and Nastya was subjected to a similar blocking: then the court of Ust-Labinsk (Oleg Deripaska was spelled out in this city) declared the film “Information forbidden in Russia” and ordered to delete some photographs, texts and even the YouTube roller from the media. “We did not think that they ( the authorities. - V.P. ) are scared so much as to block it right now - after a couple of weeks of existence,” Navalny wonders.

Now the site administration is looking for a “solution to the problem” and still promises to conduct a “smart vote”, despite interference. These locks are not the most intelligent decision of the authorities, the political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin argues. He adds that in this case we are talking about a signal to all regional leaders: "This initiative is pressed to the maximum."

For Navalny, publicity is the only possible weapon, so blocking its resources and initiatives is almost inevitable, says political strategist Vitaly Shklyarov. “In authoritarian mode, people work within the framework of the task set from above,” the expert explains. “Within the framework of such a context, blocking is a normal chain reaction, since Navalny, in principle, is unacceptable for the current political system.” Smart voting could hardly cause great damage to the authorities as such, but we must play a pre -trial, adds a political technologist. The advantages for the politician himself are that he remains in the political field with such initiatives, continues to fight.

On the other hand, a new blocking from Roskomnadzor is a real gift for the Navalny team. The opposition politician is noted by experts, by their decision to launch a “smart vote” sharply increased its status. “Smart voting”, firstly, was a mechanism for political capitalization of Navalny, and secondly, was an instrument with which the opposition community could coordinate its activities and consolidate protest voices, ”says political scientist Abbas Gallyamov. Navalny actually put himself on one board with the presidential administration and offered his services as an alternative political center.

“Previously, it was like: there is a candidate from the authorities - and everyone else. Now, when there is such a system, the main candidates for second place will go to Navalny to bow, ”Dmitry Oreshkin gives their due strategies. - Purely mathematically, everything is perfectly calculated: if about a third of those who have arrived for “United Russia” is now voting, and this is a third of the entire electorate, then in fact only 10%acts for them. If Navalny calls not to the boycott, but to the arrival of dissatisfied citizens to areas under the banners of “smart voting”, then the number of voters increases to 40% - and at least a quarter of them automatically supports the opposition candidate. ”

The actions of the authorities on the blocking can be called rather rude - but it can be ill -conceived. Closing access to the Smart Voting website does not block the idea itself, but only creates the feeling that the power of this project is truly afraid. The creation of “mirrors” is a technically laborious process and takes time, but the game is worth it: now Navalny with like -minded people can run from Roskomnadzor on different sites countless times, and each new blocking will look like the war of Roskomnadzor with Telegram: a protracted and, in fact, lost at the very beginning.