Russian lawmakers approve new Internet isolation law
Russia’s lower house of parliament approved on Tuesday the third reading of a draft law that aims to increase Moscow’s sovereignty over its Internet segment and defend against foreign meddling.
Censor.NET reports citing Meduza.
Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) will be responsible for "coordination of provision of a stable, safe and integral functioning" of the Internet in Russia. If there are threats to stable work of the Internet in Russia, the establishment can "implement centralized management of the public telecommunications network".
The Government will define the types of threats and measures to remove them. In particular, the body will designate the "cases of management of the technical means to counter the threats and give compulsory instructions".
Besides, the secondary legislation should provide "demands on organizational technical interaction within central management of the public telecommunications network and the ways Roskomnadzor defines technical possibilities of execution of instructions given within the central management," the document reads.
Besides, the Government is responsible for "defining the conditions and cases when the service provider has a right not to send traffic through the technical means of countering threats".
The operators who sent such means are exempted from the responsibility to block banned information if the access to it is limited by the mentioned systems within the central management of the public telecommunications network.
The bill must now be approved by parliament’s upper house and the presidency before passing into law.
The bill’s authors said earlier that the measures are needed to defend the country after the United States adopted what they described as aggressive new cyber security policies last year.
