Translated material
Virtual boundaries
In society
Virtual boundaries
February 13, 2013 Irina Borogan
Are Russia international initiatives to regulate the Internet a real danger, and what can the worst scenario look like? The issues that, after the adoption of the law on the register of prohibited sites last year, began to worry not only Internet publicity and journalists.
For a long time we have enjoyed complete freedom on the network. Despite the fact that the authorities took a lot of anti -democratic steps during this time, Runet remained a wild field until 2007, where complete freedom reigned. This was possible only because Vladimir Putin did not believe on the Internet for a long time and considered the network available only to the minority, assuming that all problems in which case can be solved by pressure on the owners of Internet media or sites. Therefore, even when the authorities thought about the restriction of freedom on the network, the proposed measures at first affected only “propaganda of terrorism and extremism”, and since 2007 sites began to block according to court decisions, mainly in the province.
But the Arab Spring and the mass protests in Moscow in 2011, when activists used social networks to mobilize and coordinate their actions, forced the Russian authorities to dramatically change their attitude to the Internet. The Kremlin began to perceive the Internet as an information and communicative resource controlled by the West. Obviously, it cannot be closed, but it is somehow necessary to regulate it.
In June 2011, Vladimir Putin, at a meeting with the General Secretary of the International Electric Union in Geneva, Hamadun Tour, said that he approves the "Internationalization of the Internet management with certain control and with certain supervisory functions from the International Electric Union."
Supervision and control by a certain state body - the whole Kremlin policy in the field of Internet regulation is reduced to this. Judging by the statements of the members of the Council of People's Commissars of Russia, representatives of special services and officials, they imagine the Internet as a vertical hierarchical structure, which is controlled by the main one, that is, the United States. Accordingly, the struggle is being carried out to take away the network control from the United States as much as possible, at the same time erecting virtual boundaries around the national segment of the Internet, as if it were the territory of the state that must be guarded from the enemy.
The latest initiative of Russia to change the “Vertical” management of the global network failed in December last year in Dubai at the conference of the International Electric Union (ITU). Russia, enlisted the support of China and other countries, proposed a new Internet management mechanism: to transfer the functions of NGOs, which now control the distribution of domain names and IP addresses and are engaged in the development of technical standards (ICAAN and others), which includes 192 states.
In addition, Russia has proposed, for example, to limit the right to use the Internet in cases where “telecommunication services are used to interfere with the internal affairs of the state or to undermine sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity and public security of other states.” It was also proposed to transfer control of the security of the network from the operator special services who would thus get the ability to control the contents of the information transmitted.
These initiatives blew up world public opinion, and Google launched a special campaign against them.
However, the failure does not mean that Russia will not make new attempts in this direction. On the contrary, everything indicates that the Kremlin will continue to promote their global initiatives in the field of Internet regulation. As the special coordinator on the political use of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Andrei Krutskikhs who had just passed in the Moscow Information Security Forum told me, Russia will continue to promote its initiatives in the field of Internet regulation in a wide variety of places, for example, at the approaching G8 summit.
In addition to direct attempts to change the Internet management system through ITU, which, apparently, has no chance, Russia uses another tactic in this area - to promote its ideas about the regulation of the Internet through the topic of cybersecurity.
Here, the main document is the draft of the Convention “On Ensuring International Information Security”, prepared by the Security Council and the Institute of Information Security of Moscow State University, which Russia promotes at the UN. It is supported by India and China, against the USA and the European Union. The Convention calls on the states to “refrain from slanderous statements” and propaganda for interfering in the internal affairs of other states, proposes to criminalize the “unlawful dissemination of information”, as well as to consolidate the unconditional right of the countries to regulate the national segments of the network.
The fact is that Russia is not satisfied with the Budapest Convention of the Council of Europe on Cybercrime Council of 2001, which it did not join, since it did not like the item on cross -border access to computer data stored in the other side, as well as the fact that the Convention is discussed exclusively about criminal crimes, and not the acts of cybergression against other states.
The Russian approach is to present cyberspace by the territory where virtual boundaries corresponding to the boundaries of real states must exist and transfer the effects of international laws to the Internet space, that is, to consolidate the principles of state sovereignty and non-interference in its internal affairs.
In addition, Russian officials are trying to introduce the term on the military-political use of the Internet to international legislation, which does not find understanding among the United States and other Western countries.
In the prospects of Russia and China, few people believe in the network, since the possibilities of affecting Western countries are approaching zero. However, if it is impossible to change the global rules, they can be changed within the country.
The idea of a sovereign Internet can be tried to be embodied on the territory of one state. In this case, the worst script will not be the creation of a national firewall following the example of China. The authorities may try to “land” the most popular global services on the Russian territory. To do this, you just need to adopt the laws obliging Yahoo, Google, Gmail or Facebook to be available in Russia only in domain zones controlled by Russia (.ru, .SU,. RF). And then to oblige all sites and services in these domain zones to walk in Russia.
In this case, they will be subject to local legislation, and not only anti-extremist, but also regulating operational-search measures, that is, surveillance, and then they will be forced to open their services-the national system of interception of telecommunications.