Difference between revisions of "Internet Censorship in Russia"

Revision as of 19:30, 10 February 2023

Freedom House 2022 Russia Ranking^[1]

Russian internet censorship refers to the government's efforts to control and restrict the information that Russian citizens can access through the internet. The censorship regime is an example of decentralized control, ^[2] which can be technically difficult and expensive to execute. Government authorities are less capable of implementing technological censorship measures unilaterally when they do not directly own the networks; instead, they must adopt controls through laws and policies to force the network owners to comply.The Russian government implements this censorship using a variety of means, including blocking websites, banning certain content, and requiring internet service providers to store data on their users' online activities.

While the access to the Internet in Russia is continually growing, where in 2021 an estimated 88.3% of the Russian population was using the internet,^[1] the online environment is becoming increasingly more restrictive. In 2022, Russia received a ranking of “not free” for the Internet Freedom Score by Freedom House due to obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. ^[1]

History

one of the first internet censorship laws was passed in response to a series of large-scale protests from 2011 to 2013 in opposition to the parliamentary election's manipulation and the so-called rokirovka, which involved the switching of positions between President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the time, where the opposition extensively utilized the internet to rally the public. In response, the state passed a law in 2012 establishing a centralized list of banned websites. The register originally contained websites that offered drugs and child pornography. But less than two years later, in 2014, it was expanded to include websites that encouraged rioting, contained extremist material, or encouraged participation in large-scale public demonstrations.^[3]

Policy

Roskomnadzor

Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, or Roskomnadzor, is the primary government agency in Russia that is responsible for overseeing and regulating nationwide Russian Internet censorship that reports directly to the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation. Roskomnadzor maintains a singular and centralized Internet blocklist, officially called the Registry of Banned Sites. This registry was implemented in 2008.^[4] Although Roskomnadzor maintains the central registry of banned sites, they are not behind the technical implementation of censorship in Russia. Upon the identification of a website with illegal content, Roskomnadzor sends notice to the website’s owner and hosting provider. If the illegal content is not removed within three days, the corresponding site is added to Roskomnadzor’s registry, and all ISPs across Russia are required to block access to websites in this registry. Therefore, the implementation of censorship falls on Russian ISPs. ^[2]

Yaroyova Law

Since a law passed in 2015, "all domestic and foreign internet companies are obliged to ensure the recording, systematization, accumulation, and storage of the personal data of Russian citizens on internal servers." Additionally, Yarovaya’s Law of 2016, which is a series of provisions claimed to be for "anti-terrorism." With this law, ISP companies must retain all transmitted data, including video, telephone calls, text messages, web traffic, and email for six months as well as their metadata for three years within Russian territory, and the Russian government no longer needs a permit to access this data.^[5] They must provide this information to security services upon request.^[6]

The unprecedented data storage requirements have been cited as making the law's implementation both impractical and expensive. Following the law's passing, it was discovered that the necessary equipment for the data storage was non-existent. Putin has therefore requested government contracts from Russian businesses for the necessary hardware and software.

The difficulty to comply with this law is said to be a “desired feature” for the government “because they [companies] cannot reasonably comply with all the demands of the Yarovaya package, they become de facto criminals whatever their actions. And that, in turn, gives the Russian state the leverage to extract from them any other concession it desires.” ^[7] Critics have expressed significant privacy concerns, claiming that the bill makes it easier for the Russian government to spy on its own population, with evidence showing the use of these surveillance capabilities to target human rights activists and opposition figures. ^[8]

The Sovereign Internet Law

The Sovereign Internet Law is commonly used to refer to the series of amendments Russia passed to the federal law in November, 2019. The official goal of the revisions is to protect Russian internet users from external threats. The policy, theoretically, would enable Russia to run its own internal networks separate from the rest of the global internet.^[6]

Implementations

Blocklist

The Russian blocklist refers to a list of websites that are blocked by the Russian government due to their content being deemed illegal or inappropriate. The government has the authority to block access to websites that contain illegal or harmful information, including material that promotes extremism, terrorism, or child pornography. The Russian blocklist is maintained and enforced by the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor). The agency has the power to order internet service providers to block access to websites that appear on the list, and it regularly updates the list to reflect changes in the online landscape. The use of a blocklist is a common method of censorship in many countries, and it is often used to restrict access to information and restrict freedom of expression online. Critics of the Russian blocklist argue that it is often used to censor political content and silence opposition voices, and that it undermines the principles of a free and open internet.

In practice, the implementation of the Russian blocklist has been criticized for being inconsistent and arbitrary, with many websites being blocked even though they do not contain illegal content. The effectiveness of the blocklist is also limited by the widespread use of VPNs and other circumvention tools, which allow users to access blocked websites.

Deep Packet Inspection

The 2019 Sovereign Internet Law requires ISPs to accept and participate in the installation of Deep Packet Inspection systems or equivalent technology under the "Technical Means of Countering Threats" equipment.^[1] The major technical elements of DPI systems are so-called "black boxes," which are installed at the hubs of internet service providers to analyze both data packets and the content of communications. They allow for the blocking of specific content by enabling the monitoring, filtering, and slowdown of requests, allowing Roskomnadzor the ability to impose access restrictions to block undesired traffic and severely censor the Russian web.^[6]

Although the DPI technology cannot view the contents of an encrypted connection, the IP destination may be enough for Russian authorities to block requests from unwanted websites. Traffic prioritization and discrimination can also be accomplished using DPI or comparable technology. Prioritizing traffic might have a significant impact on net neutrality, particularly if it is done by a governmental agency. Roskomnadzor could favor trusted connections from entities that comply with the established regulations while slowing down the traffic speed of any unknown or undesirable connections.

Since bypassing DPI services and gaining access to restricted areas of the internet will be very challenging unless you are a highly skilled user, it is likely that the average Russian user will be the main target of the widespread implementation of DPI. This will create an "asymmetry of blocking effectiveness."

National Domain System

The implementation of a Russian National Domain Name System (DNS) involves creating and deploying a national system for managing and registering domain names in Russia. This development is a crucial step in the country's internet infrastructure and is part of a larger initiative to enhance national control and sovereignty over the internet. Currently, the DNS system is managed in a decentralized, redundant, and open manner by more than 1500 instances of 13 root servers. The proposed Russian system would require ISPs to route through a centralized chokepoint, causing a decline in service for users within Russia and posing a threat to internet communication as websites from outside Russia would become inaccessible unless a Russian-only mirror is already available, including popular sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. ^[9]

The establishment of a national DNS has raised concerns among proponents of internet freedom who fear that it might be used to limit access to information and suppress online freedom of expression. If the government decides to restrict access to certain websites or online content, the Russian National DNS could be used for censorship. This could be achieved by controlling the domain name registration and management, allowing the government to block or redirect access to specific websites by manipulating user requests, or simply preventing access. The system could also be used to monitor and control online activity, potentially compromising the privacy of internet users. Furthermore, it would undermine the effectiveness of evasion techniques such as VPNs, Tor, and other methods of hiding traffic destinations, including domain fronting.^[9]

The implementation of a national DNS system in Russia is challenging because of the country's decentralized internet infrastructure, which requires a lot of coordination and a significant amount of effort. Although Russia claims to have already set up the infrastructure, managed by Roskomnadzor at the Moscow IX, where Russian TLDs are hosted, it is uncertain whether internet service providers have connected to it. Starting in 2019, Russia has been experimenting with technology to separate from the global internet infrastructure in certain regions. The results of these tests are not known due to the secrecy surrounding them. Russian internet researchers Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan predict that by the end of 2021, with advancements in technology since the passage of the sovereign internet law, the Kremlin would have the ability to control 100% of mobile communications and 73% of internet traffic. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content

VPN and Tor

On November 2017, the Russian government implemented the 276-FZ law that requires all VPN (Virtual Private Network) providers to register with the government. This law effectively prevents proxy services, such as VPNs and anonymizers like Tor or Opera, that can bypass content restrictions and give access to websites that are blocked in Russia. It also makes it illegal for search engines to provide links to such content.^[10] The ban applies to both foreign and domestic VPN providers, with certain exceptions, including state-owned information systems and private networks. ^[11]Individuals who use unregistered VPNs can be fined or face other penalties. The ban has been criticized by internet freedom advocates, who argue that it limits free speech and access to information. Despite these criticisms, the ban remains in place and is actively enforced.

Censorship after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Over the past decade, Russia's censorship regime has become more active, but recent events have brought it to public attention.^[2] Internet censorship in Russia has intensified since Feb 2022, when the invasion of the neighboring country Ukraine began.

Russian fake news laws

The Russian fake news laws are a set of federal regulations that prohibit the distribution of any material considered "unreliable" by the Russian government. These laws specify the consequences for violating them and give the Rokomendazor the power to shut down online media that do so without a court's authorization. Two additional laws, known as Laws No. 31-FZ and No. 32-FZ, were introduced after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on March 4th, 2022. These laws made it a criminal offense to express opposition to the war or to share information about it that is not supported by the Kremlin, including about the actions of the Russian military. ^[12]

As a result of these laws, many Russian media outlets were unable to cover the invasion. By March 7th, 2022, over 150 journalists had fled Russia after President Putin signed the bill into law. In the following months, virtually all remaining independent media in Russia were shut down by the Roskomnadzor for violating censorship laws, including the liberal radio station Echo of Moscow, which was replaced with the propaganda outlet Radio Sputnik, The TV channel Dozhd, and online publications such as The New Times, The Moscow Times, and Novaya Gazeta. Around 138,000 websites, including social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, have been blocked or shut down under claims of “fake news” and “extremist organization.” Many of the websites that have been blocked have condemned the conflict in Ukraine or called it an invasion or war instead of the Kremlin's preferred term, "special military operation." ^[1]

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4} Russia: Freedom on the Net 2022 Country Report | Freedom House. (2022). Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-net/2022
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} Xue, D., Mixon-Baca, B., ValdikSS, Ablove, A., Kujath, B., Crandall, J. R., & Ensafi, R. (2022). TSPU: Russia’s Decentralized Censorship System. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference. Association for Computing Machinery.
3. ↑ Epifanova, A. (2020). Deciphering Russia’s “Sovereign Internet Law.” DGAP Analysis 2.
4. ↑ Roskomnadzor - Background Background. (n.d.). Roskomnadzor - Statute of Roskomnadzor. Retrieved January 27, 2023, from https://eng.rkn.gov.ru/about/background_information/
5. ↑ Galperin, D. O. and E. (2016, July 19). Russia Asks For The Impossible With Its New Surveillance Laws | Electronic Frontier Foundation. Electronic Frontier Foundation; https://www.facebook.com/eff. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/russia-asks-impossible-its-new-surveillance-laws
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1 6.2} Epifanova, A. (2020). Deciphering Russia’s “Sovereign Internet Law.” DGAP Analysis 2.
7. ↑ Galperin, D. O. and E. (2016, July 19). Russia Asks For The Impossible With Its New Surveillance Laws | Electronic Frontier Foundation. Electronic Frontier Foundation; https://www.facebook.com/eff. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/russia-asks-impossible-its-new-surveillance-laws
8. ↑ Welle, D. (2015, September 2). Russia tightens Internet controls – DW – 09/02/2015. Dw.Com; Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/en/russia-tightens-internet-controls-makes-it-easier-to-spy-on-citizens-critics-say/a-18690498
9. ↑ ^{9.0 9.1} Flashpoint Team. (2022, March 11). What If Russia Isolates Itself from the Global Internet? | Flashpoint. Flashpoint; https://flashpoint.io/blog/russian-runet-sovereign-internet/
10. ↑ Russia: Growing Internet Isolation, Control, Censorship | Human Rights Watch. (2020, June 18). Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/18/russia-growing-internet-isolation-control-censorship
11. ↑ Strizh, V., & Dergacheva, A. (2018, February 28). Russian Telecommunications and Media Laws: Latest Developments – Publications | Morgan Lewis. Morgan Lewis – Global Law Firm. https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2018/02/russian-telecommunications-and-media-laws-latest-developments
12. ↑ https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/08/08/russia-has-blocked-138k-websites-since-ukraine-invasion-prosecutor-says-a78532