The working group of the expert council under the government of the Russian Federation criticized the bill on expanding the grounds for extrajudicial blocking

The working group "Communication and IT" criticized the bill of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications.

On August 20, 2018, the working group "Communications and Information Technologies" of the expert council under the Russian government considered the draft amendments to the law "On information, information technologies and information protection", which provide for extrajudicial blocking of materials containing "justification and justification for the implementation of extremist and ( or ) terrorist activities ".

The bill, developed by the Ministry of Communications , caused a number of comments from experts. In their opinion, the proposed wording is unacceptable. According to experts, the academic concept of "justification" can mean both "a specific form of logical inference based on the construction of a logical connection between premises and consequences ," and the premises themselves. If, for the purposes of the draft law, the first interpretation is chosen, then " it should be borne in mind that the conclusion may not be obvious or erroneous, which creates opportunities for extremely arbitrary enforcement of law ." In the second case, " any judgments can be used as prerequisites, from which, by means of logical conclusions (both correct and incorrect), consequences can be obtained" justification and justification for the implementation of extremist and (or) terrorist activities "" .

The concept of "justification" is also ambiguous, experts noted. On the one hand, it is evaluative and " cannot be included in the objective composition of the delict ," they believe. On the other hand, if justification in the legal sense is meant, then its ban " undermines the constitutional foundations of law, since any person has the right to protection, to statements in his favor, justifying his actions ," the working group noted.

Thus, from the point of view of experts, the proposed wording may include " any publications on criminology, the subject of which is extremist or terrorist activity " and " sociological studies containing explanations or explanatory hypotheses of the growth of terrorism and extremism ".

" For example, if this amendment is adopted, it will mean that of all textbooks on Russian law, the speech of the lawyer P.A. Alexandrov in the case of the terrorist Vera Zasulich should be withdrawn. Further, as a “substantiation and justification for the implementation of extremist and (or) terrorist activity” can quite rightly be qualified by many well-known works of Marx, Lenin and their associates, a significant part of Soviet literature and the works of Soviet historians, a significant part of modern domestic and foreign journalism and fiction. Any criticism of our reality can also be regarded as a justification for extremism ," the comments of the working group read.

In addition, according to the federal law "On counteracting extremist activity", information containing justification or justification for the need to carry out extremist activity is extremist materials, and the recognition of materials as extremist is within the jurisdiction of the federal court. Transferring the powers to the prosecutor's office to extrajudicial blocking of materials containing justification of extremist activity would be contrary to the law "On counteracting extremist activity", experts believe.

According to the members of the working group, the approach to blocking information recognized as extremist should be differentiated. Experts indicate that blocking, for example, 1% of the sites existing in the world (that is, approximately 19 million sites) can have a significant impact on the quality of data transmission services for users of communication networks in Russia. Therefore, it is stated in the conclusion that in the case of posting extremist materials on Russian resources, it should be deleted, not blocked, and if we are talking about foreign sites, then it should be analyzed whether they are visited by Russian users. If the share of the audience from Russia is 3–5%, blocking is inappropriate; if the resource is aimed at the Russian audience, then it should be blocked, and its owner should be fined, experts believe. In their opinion, it is advisable to categorize illegal resources and " to establish different approaches, requirements and conditions for blocking, taking into account the social danger of each category ."

We welcome the start of a discussion about the manner and extent of blocking. Recall that we generally consider extrajudicial blocking of online materials to be undesirable and permissible only in exceptional cases, and the changes proposed by the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, in our opinion, can lead to a further increase in abuses in the field of restrictions on freedom of speech. We also note that if for the purposes of blocking the legal concept of "public justification of terrorism", defined in Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code, can be used (public justification of terrorism is understood as a public statement on the recognition of the ideology and practice of terrorism as correct, in need of support and imitation ), then the definition of the concept "substantiation and justification of extremist activity" is absent in Russian legislation, which opens the way for its arbitrary interpretation.

Sources

• Roman Rozhkov. Blocks spread across sites // Kommersant. 2018. August 23.
  
• Inc. inf.