It’s been discovered that the Roskomnadzor, the Russia’s state media watchdog, is currently planning a new legislation. Apparently, this one will be used for punishing any and all search engines, software that provides anonymity and even VPNs that don’t enforce Russian government’s web restrictions.
This is a very bad news for all of the Russian internet users since it could completely ban the use of all software that’s used for doing anonymous browsing sessions, especially those that helps with accessing blocked content. Companies that don’t comply might end up completely shut down.
The use of services like VPNs, proxies and even anonymous browsers like Tor have helped the Russian users to navigate the web in a way that allowed them access to all of the internet content, despite the numerous blocks and restrictions that were placed earlier. The government has decided that it’s time to put an end to that, in further attempts to limit the available content to its citizens.
Even though the use of VPNs is still not considered a crime in Russia, the country will try to force the VPNs to stop providing access to websites and online domains that the country decided should be forbidden. Many of the officials have been complaining about the ability to bypass the restrictions, and this is the result of their complaints.
And VPNs aren’t the only ones on the line, and the search engines might join them soon. This includes Yandex, a search engine that’s Russia-based, could end up being impacted by this, simply because it provides links to content that the government made restricted.
Punishment for not respecting the government’s wishes will be up to 700,000 rubles, which is £8,000/$12,400, per every incident.
As you can imagine, Yandex wasn’t happy to hear the news.
Officials have stated that the VPNs will be given a list of websites that are to be blocked, and every one of them that decides not to respect the decision made by the government will be disabled in Russia.
Director of the Regional Public Internet Technology Centre, Sergei Grebennikov, has stated that “Naturally, we are against the dissemination of illegal content, but at the same time it should not violate the rights and freedoms of a citizen to access information.”
He admits that the “gray areas” are often used for illegal activities, but that doesn’t mean that the casual users should suffer.
Russia’s strict rules when it comes to these things has troubled the western companies for a long time, and the latest incident involved the complete block of the LinkedIn app, only for not storing the data it had on Russian citizens.
More than 100 VPNs are blocked within the country at this point, with the most recent being HideMy.name VPN that allowed access to restricted content. It would seem that the Russian government isn’t joking, and passing this legislation might mean the end of the online privacy, as well as unlimited content access in Russia.
