Internet Disconnection Planned To Be a Form of Punishment in Russia

Earlier this week the Ministry of Justice of Russia published a new draft law that deals with IT secturity and internet issues and has some very curious suggestions. For example, if the draft actually turns into law, local ISPs here will be obliged to provide law enforcement agencies with the information on their subscribers when requested. But the most interesting thing is that in some situations they will even have to deny their subscribers internet access when deemed necessary.

The intention of the draft law is actually to make more severe punishment for hacking government internet resources: anyone guilty of such a crime can now be sent to prison for up to three years (and if multiple hackers work together on such a project, the prison term could reach seven years actually). For me it is not really obvious why they focus on government websites only and ignore all the other resources that get hacked or face DDoS attacks on a daily basis.

But anyway this idea does not seem to be too strict to me because I strongly dislike all kinds of hackers, especially if they happen to attack Profy or a blog of my friend (which they regularly do). And while I believe that the official authorities may have enough financial and human resources to ensure decent protection of their websites and local networks, I don’t think that hackers should really practice their skills anywhere so the stricter the punishment - the better to me. But honestly, I’d amend the planned law a little to make it possible for anyone to deal with hackers when they attack our websites - and exactly in the manner they deserve.

But of course it is hard to be indifferent now that I know that law enforcement agencies will probably have the right to receive all the information about ISP subscribers should they ever need it. And that means that any citizen who is under investigation in Russia now faces the opportunity of having all their internet activities tracked - similarly to what we can have with our phones now. And while I have no problems with law (or at least hope so), it still makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable - even though there’s nothing embarrassing or discreditable on my Firefox history.

Now I can understand how monitoring internet activities of a suspected criminal could help in investigation (of course, they are supposed to exchange emails regarding their previous and planned crimes - and right from their home computers) but no matter how hard I think, I am unable to understand how disconnecting such a suspect from the World Wide Web could help in any investigation - and this is another action that ISPs would have to do when requested by authorized law enforcement agencies.

And the worst part is that a simple “reasonable” authorization of a head of such an agency will be sufficient to disconnect anyone - and no court judgment even needed. What’s worse, there’s nothing about internet cafes or other public internet access points: if no access limitations are available there, what’s the point in disconnecting someone from their home or office network at all? So this makes the draft law even less reasonable and questionable - so it is no wonder Russian internet users are buzzing about it and you will hardly find any supporters of the plan to have internet access regulated in this manner simply because people know how laws can be used in Russia.

Via (in Russian)