Chat on a chat

On the first day of the New Year , the law on messengers entered into force - one of the new prohibitive acts adopted as part of the next wave of tightening the state regulation of the Internet.

The state’s interference in the activities of services for Internet communication began yesterday: back in 2014, simultaneously with the adoption of the law on bloggers in the law on information, the concept of “organizer of information distribution” was included - any services that are “used to receive, transfer, delivery and (or) processing of electronic messages”, from forums and social networks to news sites, where you can leave comments are used.

First, the services were obliged to store and provide the security forces with metadata about user correspondence (dates for sending messages and other similar information). After the adoption of the Yarovaya Package in 2016, the organizers should transfer the FSB to encryption keys to access users' messages themselves, and from July 1, 2018 they will need to store and if necessary to provide the security forces with correspondence . Punishment for Internet companies that refuse to cooperate is blocking.

An active attack on messengers began in the spring of the past year, even before the adoption of a special law. For refusal to share encryption keys in Russia, Zello, Backberry and Line messengers were banned, for this, officials threaten to block Telegram.

What key changes does the new law make? Firstly, now messengers should identify users exclusively by mobile phone number. It would seem that this changes little: in those programs that are created mainly for use on smartphones - like WhatsApp or Viber - registration is already carried out according to the subscriber number. But for the definition in the new law - "Information systems for electronic messages exclusively between users of these systems", which is impossible to "post publicly available information on the network" - any services in which users can conduct private correspondence with each other, including those intended for usual computers: the same social networks (especially "VKontakte" and Facebook have Mobile applications), forums, blog platforms, generally any sites with registration and the ability to exchange personal messages . You can register there not only by phone, but also, for example, at the email address. The authorities received another legislative baton, which allows at the right time to ban any objectionable resource.

The state’s desire to strengthen control coincided with the commercial interest of telecom operators: it is no secret that they are unprofitable to reduce the number of calls and SMS due to users' departure to instant messengers. It is known that the draft version of the new law was developed in the media communion union - an organization uniting the largest suppliers of telecom services.

Another innovation is the ban on sending information “information that is prohibited” and “information distributed in violation of legislation” through messengers. How to implement this norm without total control over the contents of correspondence (if users do not complain about each other) is unclear. For sending "prohibition", owners of messengers are obliged to block users at the request of Roskomnadzor within a day .

"The administration of the messenger will be obliged not only in this case, but in any" cases and the manner determined by the government ", to prevent electronic messages". The wording, which allows absolute arbitrariness - can now be limited by users not even by law, but by an by -laws, which at any time can be changed without even bothering with formal voting in the State Duma.

For non -discovery of the new rules of the Internet company, registered in Russia, will be fined - before the New Year the president signed another law that supplements the Code of Administrative Offenses Article 13.39 (failure to fulfill the obligations by the organizer of the exchange of instant messages), which provides for fines for legal entities in the amount of 800 thousand to a million rubles. After the "establishment of the fact" of the refusal of the messenger owners to obey the requirements of the authorities, Roskomnadzor can block the service through the court.

How the messengers will control in practice depends on the general political context. Legal formulations allow both the point prohibitions of individual services, and to close in the case of mass protests all the uncontrolled possible channels of the online communications that Iranian authorities have now made. But here the state will inevitably have to encounter a technical hitch of arms: blocking of messengers servers is overcome by the usual methods of bypassing Internet censorship (Telegram developers with the next update have already built the opportunity to work through proxy servers), and the use of P2P-mixers like FireChat, which allow the owners of mobile devices to communicate without the Internet, Connecting directly to each other via Bluetooth, it is generally impossible to limit without a mocking connection by technical methods. Therefore, the ban on Internet communication, like all previously adopted laws on site blocking, will work very conditionally.

Of course, much depends on the choice of the owners of the messengers themselves: they are afraid to lose the Russian market or will protect the rights of their users. Several services - the same Telegram, Chinese WeChat and the Vimeo video communication service - have already voluntarily registered in the register of Roskomnadzor . Users will take this into account, deciding who to trust their correspondence.