Chapter 13 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO), introduced a year ago by a group of deputies, was voted by 306 members of the lower house of parliament.
More than 108,000 sites with prohibited information have been blocked in Russia, but the popularity of anonymizers is growing
Now, for failure to provide Roskomnadzor with data on the owners of means of bypassing the blocking of citizens, they will be fined in the amount of ten thousand to thirty thousand rubles. For legal entities the punishment is higher - from fifty thousand to three hundred thousand rubles.
Penalties are also provided for the issuance by search engines of links to prohibited sites. For citizens, the punishment can reach 5 thousand rubles, officials will pay from 30 to 50 thousand rubles, the highest fine for organizations is from 500 to 700 thousand rubles.
After the adoption by the State Duma in the final reading, the law will go to the upper house of parliament - the Federation Council.
Senators can consider it at the next meeting on June 20. If approved by the upper house and signed by the president, it will enter into force 90 days after its official publication, that is, in mid-autumn.
The amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses adopted by the State Duma are aimed at enforcing the law banning anonymizers. It was adopted by Parliament in July last year and came into force on November 1. The law prohibits the use information systems and programs for gaining access to sites blocked in Russia. Subdivisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB can participate in tracking the use of anonymizers, the document gives them the right to notify Roskomnadzor of detected cases for subsequent blocking of means to circumvent restrictions.
By the way, blocking of such resources has been used since mid-April to restrict access to the Telegram messenger. In order to enforce the relevant decision of the Tagansky Court of Moscow, Roskomnadzor has already blocked about 50 VPN services and anonymizers that provided access to the messenger.
In total, according to the department at the end of May, more than 108 thousand sites with prohibited information were blocked in Russia, but the popularity of anonymizers is growing. According to the head of the department, Alexander Zharov, over the past two years, the number of users of such services has grown from five to seven to ten to fifteen percent. At the same time, only a quarter of popular proxy and VPN services comply with the current restrictions.
It should be noted that the requirements of both laws - both on the prohibition of the use of anonymizers and on liability for its violation - apply to all players in the digital market, both domestic and foreign.
However, the authors of the adopted law - deputies Maxim Kudryavtsev (United Russia), Nikolai Ryzhak (Fair Russia) and Alexander Yushchenko (KPRF) - declare that they have reached "complete understanding" with the owners of search engines and software.
Meanwhile
The State Duma on Tuesday adopted in the first reading a draft law that allows concluding hereditary contracts and drawing up joint wills of spouses. The initiative was introduced by Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation. The bill introduces amendments to parts one and three of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which provide for new opportunities for Russian inheritance law - to conclude inheritance contracts and draw up joint wills of spouses. As the author of the initiative explained earlier, this will help "to agree in advance on the fate of the inheritance and thereby reduce the likelihood of conflicts involving persons who may be called to inherit." For example, if there is a joint will of the spouses, it is not necessary to divide joint property, and then decide on the issue of inheritance and heirs.
New penalties for client base leaks
Mintsifra proposed to introduce penalties for leakage of personal data in the public domain.
There are more than 400 thousand personal data operators in Russia, including hotels, carriers, companies mobile communications, banks. On their behalf, other companies collect and process information, accumulate large databases (for example, insurance agents, aggregators), which often "leak" and are used in completely different ways - by marketers, scammers, "cold sales" specialists, and so on. In "leaks" personal data operators usually blame just those who collected information for them.
According to the project, if the operator did not control the collection of data, then he would face a fine of up to 30 thousand rubles for one identified case of a "leak". For persons who collect data on behalf of operators, fines are projected in the same amount for violation of data processing rules.
In addition, the department proposes to limit the number of organizations that can publish data about orphans on the Internet. Only federal and regional authorities that are responsible for the formation of a state data bank on children left without parental care are going to be granted such an exclusive right, and the executive authorities will retain the right to process biometric personal data of orphans for their placement in families.
1
What happened?
A bill was submitted to the Duma prohibiting services to bypass blocking to give Russians access to banned sites. We are talking about all sorts of intermediaries that allow you to access prohibited pages through foreign servers. In addition, the document prohibits search engines from issuing links to prohibited pages.
2
Banning anonymizers? And how will it work?
The idea is pretty simple. The law will clearly state that various services (for example, anonymizers), networks (for example, VPNs) and programs (for example, Tor and Opera) should not be given to Russians access to prohibited sites. Roskomnadzor will monitor such services and networks. If the department discovers that some services, networks or programs allow Russians to access blocked pages through foreign servers, employees will send a request to the owners - please make sure that Russians cannot access such and such with your help prohibited sites. If the owners do not comply with the requirements within a month, Roskomnadzor will begin to block their servers, with which users bypass blocking, and sites where they install desired program. And if they agree, they won't start. The agency will create a special list of prohibited resources and give access to it to the owners of anonymizers and VPN networks, so that they themselves can monitor whether they allow Russians to watch something forbidden.
3
What about search engines?
Everything is simple. Now Yandex, Google and other search engines are not prohibited from issuing links to blocked pages. Now they want to prevent them from showing such links to users in Russia. They will also be given access to the list of banned pages maintained by Roskomnadzor. For violations of the owners of search engines will be fined in the amount of 500 to 700 thousand rubles.
4
We have a VPN at work. Will the problems start now?
No. The bill makes an exception for companies that use their own VPNs and other means of bypassing blocking, if these means are available only to employees.
5
They say the coolest thing is Tor. Can it be blocked too?
Yes, Tor is also covered by the bill. Authorities can block public servers that users connect to. This list is open to everyone, and there is nothing difficult to close access to it.
6
And what to do? Blocking can no longer be bypassed?
One way or another, the locks can be bypassed, it just might become more difficult. Now it is difficult to answer this question clearly, because we do not know in what form the bill will be adopted (while we have no doubt that it will be adopted) and how it will be implemented. But there are ways around. For example, in addition to the public list of keys, Tor has a constantly updated list of servers through which you can access the desired sites. You can learn more about how Tor works and how to use the network in case of blocking public nodes in our cards.
There are other ways to bypass blocking - for example, you can use not just a VPN, but a double one. Let's say you connect to a server in, say, Holland, and then - also via VPN - to a server in Denmark. And the Danish server will consider you a user from Holland, although in fact you are watching a resource from Russia. Such a scheme will work even if both VPN services comply with Russian law and restrict access for Russian clients. After all, the Danish service will consider the user to be Dutch.
According to the new bill, VPN services and anonymizers are required to cooperate with the authorities and block access to resources from the register of prohibited sites. Services that refuse to cooperate face blocking. 
In addition, this law also regulates the activities of search engines: they should not issue links to blocked resources in search results. For non-compliance with the requirements, search engines face a fine of up to 700 thousand rubles.
If the bill is approved by the Federation Council and signed by the President, it will come into force on November 1, 2017.
How will this affect traffic arbitrage?
Many affiliates use VPN services both for online anonymity and for work purposes. Most of these services are foreign companies that are unlikely to cooperate with the Russian authorities, monitor the Roskomnadzor registry and limit some resources for users. Therefore, most likely, they themselves will fall under the blocking of Rosskomnadzor, which will lead to some inconvenience for affiliates.
Fortunately, in addition to VPN, there are other ways to bypass blocking, such as, for example, VPS - a virtual dedicated service.
As for the anonymous Tor network, it also falls under the bill. But, the Tor Project has a solution specifically for such cases: hidden entry nodes (bridges) through which the network works in other countries where it is officially blocked, such as China, Belarus and Turkey.
Partnerkin decided to find out from well-known arbitrageurs how this will affect traffic arbitrage and are there any alternatives to bypass blocking?
A few days ago, a rather important event took place - in the first reading, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a bill on "banning anonymizers and VPNs." After the introduction of the registry of banned sites and the blocking of various resources, many wondered - how soon will the schemes for bypassing these blockings be banned? It turned out that it took not so much time - just some 5 years.
June 8, 2017 - it was on this day that it was officially decided to make Runet a semblance of the Chinese segment of the network. Despite the fact that the law has not been formally adopted and a number of procedures must go through for its adoption, there is no doubt about the final result. Carthage will be destroyed, and users who want something strange in the form of looking for a job on LinkedIn or communicating with their clanmates via some MMORPG from South Korea in Line will not be able to do this with all their will. In general, remember this tweet (s).
So, what have the legislators prepared for us? They prepared for us a bill for a couple of dozen pages called "On Amendments to the Federal Law" On Information, information technology and on the protection of information. It was introduced by three deputies from different parties, but theirs and even their party affiliation does not play any role. Recently, laws that, one way or another, limit the network space, are adopted almost unanimously.
It will begin to act 90 days after it enters into force, so that a new reality after passing all 3 readings and the president's signature will come fairly quickly.
How will it be
The bill introduces a new key article into the law on information, numbered 15.8 . Officially, the article has a long and obscure title "Measures aimed at countering the use on the territory Russian Federation information and telecommunication networks, information systems and programs for electronic computers to get access to information resources, including sites and (or) pages of sites on the Internet, access to which is restricted on the territory of the Russian Federation in accordance with this Federal Law. The ban is planned to be implemented.The article consists of 17 parts, written by a seasoned clerk, so that without a bottle you can’t figure it out, we simplified everything to the terms that are used in the industry.
The first part of the article right off the bat prohibits any service that operates in Russia from providing access to information that is prohibited in Russia in accordance with the law. In order to stop attempts to circumvent the bans, a number of new functions will be assigned to Roskomnadzor:
Firstly, the supervisory service will create and maintain a list of resources prohibited in the country. Note that such a list is already underway, so nothing has changed in this regard.
Secondly, Roskomnadzor will have to develop and approve a methodology in accordance with which it will monitor the network space in order to search for services that offer the opportunity to gain access to blocked resources.
Thirdly, having found such resources, Roskomnadzor will have to determine the hosting providers (or any other persons) who hosted these resources.
Fourthly, after determining the hosters, requests are sent to them (in Russian and English) with the requirement to issue information that will help identify those who contain services to bypass blocking. What information is in question is not clear. Most likely, for individuals it will be full name, address of residence and the like, and for legal entities - the name of the company, location, possibly Bank details. The date of such request will be recorded.
Here we digress a little and allow ourselves to note that if hosters in Russia have to fulfill all the requirements, then foreign hosters are unlikely to comply with the requirements of Roskomnadzor like this. For it is one thing when companies themselves give their data to the register of information dissemination organizers, and quite another when the hoster will have to give out his client's data to the government of other countries. In addition to the fact that such "openness" will lead to a catastrophic drop in reputation, the hoster will violate the law on personal data already in his country.
After the hoster has received the corresponding request, it provides Roskomnadzor with all the data requested by it within the next three days. After that, Roskomnadzor, based on the data received, within three days sends a request to the services themselves to bypass blocking with the requirement to stop violations and disable the ability to bypass blocking in Russia.
Having received the requirements of Roskomnadzor on the restriction, services to bypass blocking on their own (options):
- They restrict the access of all Internet users to their functions (voluntarily closed, if in a simple way).
- They restrict access to their functions on the territory of Russia (voluntarily banned in Runet, that is).
- They send an application to Roskomnadzor with a request to provide access to the register of prohibited sites and independently begin to block resources from this register.
What if we disagree?
If someone wants to show integrity and refuses to comply with the requirements of Roskomndazor to block prohibited resources, then his end will be sad - he himself will be blocked on the territory of Russia in 30 days. Within 24 hours, Roskomnadzor will send a message to telecom operators with a list of "dissenting" addresses that will need to be blocked. Operators, in turn, within a day after receiving such a message, enter addresses into the block list.
In general, the standard blocking mechanism, only this time VPN services, anonymizers and other similar sites will have to be blocked.
We already agree what to do?
If someone at first wanted to show integrity, but then realized that it costs him too much, he can take measures to block banned sites and report this to Roskomnadzor. After that, during the day, Roskomnadzor checks the accuracy of the information, and if the resources are really blocked, it starts the unblocking procedure. During the day, telecom operators will be required to provide access to the "cut off" VPN.
How will the interaction take place?
The procedure for interacting with VPN services, anonymizers, technological networks and other resources that will block prohibited information is to be developed by Roskomnadzor. The supervisory service will be obliged to provide access to the list of prohibited information to everyone who agrees with its requirements in accordance with the developed procedure for interaction. In turn, the resources themselves will have to block prohibited information, and follow this order of interaction.
Search engines
Separate parts of the article provide for the obligations of the operator search engine. It, like blocking bypass services, will get access to the list of blocked sites and will be required to exclude links to prohibited sites from search results. Interestingly, the punishment in the form of a block to search engines has not yet been clearly spelled out - it only applies to services to bypass blocking. So Google will remain available, unless, of course, the norm is corrected. But instead of blocking, fines were prescribed for search engines. If the search engine operator does not filter search results, or did not want to get access to the register of prohibited sites, then this will entail the imposition of an administrative fine:
- for citizens in the amount of five thousand rubles;
- for officials - fifty thousand rubles;
- for legal entities - from five hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand roubles.
Work, and we will give you a salary with a VPN!
Apparently, having heeded the warnings that the VPN is used not only to read and watch "prohibited", the legislators left the opportunity to use the services for companies. They, as before, will be able to use their own technologies to bypass the access ban, but only in cases where users have entered into labor agreements with them.
So now, if you want to use some kind of VPN, you will have to not only pay for access, but also enter into an employment contract with its owner. Like this the new kind business. At the same time, unemployment will decrease.
Everything has already begun
Despite the fact that the ban on anonymizers and VPNs is yet to be introduced into the legal field, in fact anonymizers are already banned de facto. The ban mechanism is very simple - the prosecutor's office files a lawsuit, and the court decides to ban the anonymizer, since it can be used to gain access to prohibited information. On this basis, Chameleon, the Hideme.ru website and a number of others were blocked in 2016.
While writing the material, another news came: Roskomnadzor, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rospotrebnadzor and the Federal Tax Service issued an interdepartmental order that allows you to block any means of bypassing blocking without a court decision. The justifications are also very simple - through these resources you can play in an illegal casino, which is prohibited in Russia. Officially it sounds like this:
The presence on the page of the site on the Internet and (or) a program for electronic computers that allow access to the site on the Internet, the page of the site on the Internet, which contains prohibited information that meets the criteria specified in paragraphs 4.1.1.-4.1.6 of these Criteria, included in the Unified Register.
Naturally, this description includes everything that gives access to prohibited information, including VPN. Interestingly, the order itself was registered on June 27, and it was released on May 18. Considering that such documents are not prepared in a day, the decision to block the VPN was made much earlier.
A few days ago, the supervisory service sent out updated recommendations to telecom operators on blocking Internet resources. Nothing special from old version the recommendations do not differ, they only mention the preferred methods of blocking in the form of DPI, open source software, and buying already filtered traffic from a higher provider.
Industry implications
For telecom operators, the changes will be minimal. Well, a few more addresses will be added to the list for blocking, that's okay. There are thousands of them already. But for the Runet, as a phenomenon, everything will be much more serious. In fact, a separate space is being created in which not only can one not get access to some resources, but one cannot even know that these resources exist. Of course, one can object that there are ordinary sites, forums, foreign Google versions, where you can find information, and links and distributions.
However, the logic of events is inexorable - there should be no prohibited information in Runet. So the further, the poorer will be the Russian segment. One by one, foreign services will leave the market or be blocked. Just someone earlier (like Line or LinkedIn), someone later. The vacant seats will be occupied by Russian services, which are now appearing like mushrooms after rain. We will keep silent about their quality - there is an excellent example of Sputnik, which, even with powerful competitors in the face of Google and Yandex, is something from the late 90s. Without the ability to fully interact with the global industry, Russian telecoms and IT will degrade (already now, the successful Kaspersky is being looked at disapprovingly), and the further the rate of degradation will increase. After all, it's all some version of Kwangmyeong.
On the other hand, in Africa there is no Internet at all, and no one really cares about it.