Call and climb

The State Duma has submitted a bill to regulate instant messaging services. The initiative card is published on the website of the lower house of parliament.

It is proposed to make a number of amendments to the law on information. In particular, the concepts of "information and communication services" and "information and communication services for instant messages" are introduced. The second definition refers to messengers who do not imply the possibility of publishing public messages, but allows you to exchange information only between users.

Messenger users authors of the initiative want to oblige to undergo identification. The ban for the owners of messengers to transmit anonymous messages is established by paragraph 1 of part 4.2 of Article 2.1 of amendments to the Law. Identification will have to be carried out by communications operators by the number of the contract, which they conclude with subscribers.

A number of requirements are imposed on messengers: services users should be able to abandon unwanted messages, program owners should be able to stop at the request of the state or, conversely, organize a massive newsletter.

Through instant messengers, it will be prohibited from transmitting "information distributed in violation of the law", the service administration is also required to block the transfer of such messages at the request of the state.

If the service of instant messages does not comply with the requirements of the law, then the communication operators will have to block users access to it on the basis of the order of Roskomnadzor by decision of the court, such an obligation of providers is established by a new part 2.1 of Article 15.4 of the Information Law.

If the bill is adopted, messengers will be required to work under the new rules from January 1 of next year.

The initiative for consideration by the State Duma was made by deputies Marina Mukabenova (United Russia), Oleg Nikolaev ("Fair Russia) and Alexander Yushchenko (" Communist Party).

In January, Kommersant wrote about the development of a government bill on the regulation of messengers, on which Roskomnadzor and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are working. The government’s initiative also involved the introduction of mandatory identification of services users.

According to the current "Law of Yarova", "Organizers of the dissemination of information", which are required to register their services by messengers, are already obliged to submit messages of message encryption at the request of the FSB.

Since April, mass blocking of messengers has been continuing in Russia for refusing to register as distributors of information and cooperate with the authorities. On April 10, the popular Zello Internet Internet was inaccessible to Russians . On May 2, BlackBerry, IMO and Line messengers got into the register of prohibited sites .

On May 16, the media reported similar claims of Roskomnadzor to the Telegram messenger. The department was called "rumors." The developers of the service themselves said that "not a single government or special service in the world received a bit of information" from them.