Deputies first submitted the measures to tighten state control over the internet in December, citing the need to respond to an “aggressive” U.S. national cybersecurity strategy. It has drawn fierce criticism from civil society groups over fears that it would lead Russia to follow China’s example in establishing an isolated internet landscape.

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a bill that seeks to establish Russia’s “internet sovereignty” into law.

The law will seek to create an alternative domain name system (DNS) to protect the Russian-language section of the internet in case it is disconnected from the World Wide Web. So far, no country has ever been deliberately disconnected from the internet.

Although Russia’s state media regulator and major tech firms backed the steps to unplug from foreign servers, experts criticized the bill as being too vague and impossible to implement.

A recent state-run poll found that 52 percent of Russians oppose the bill.</s>Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed into law a bill on providing stable operation of a Russian national internet system in case of disconnection from the global network infrastructure.

According to the law published on Russia's official legal information portal, Russian telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor is entitled to carry out "the centralised operation of the general communications network" if there are risks to the operation of the Russian internet.

The measures include installing a national system for internet traffic routing through servers within the country and preventing external threats from cutting off the Russian part of the global network, Xinhua reported.

The legislation has aroused controversy as many Russian social network users think it qualifies as one aimed at isolating the Russian internet.

In response, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said previously that Russia has no plans to isolate the internet but must prepare for a possible disconnection from the global network and protect the users' interests.</s>Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a new measure that aims to expand government control over the Internet.

Critics have warned that the new law, signed by Putin on May 1 and published on the Kremlin website, will lead to censorship over wide parts of the Internet.

Among other things, the new measure requires Internet providers to install equipment to route Russian web traffic through servers in the country.

Internet advocates have said that will allow for greater surveillance by Russian intelligence agencies, and the ability of state authorities to control information.

However, the Kremlin, and its allies in parliament, have defended the legislation as a defensive move in case the United States were to cut Russia off from the global Internet.

If that were to happen, Russia's media regulator, Roskomnadzor, would essentially seize control of Russia's Internet and would then be able to filter all Internet traffic.

Roskomnadzor's chief, Aleksandr Zharov, said last month that the measures would also target Telegram, a popular messaging app that is widely used by Russians.</s>The law, which will come into effect in November, will allow Russian authorities to isolate the country's internet

MOSCOW, Russia – President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, May 1, signed into law a "sovereign internet" bill which will allow Russian authorities to isolate the country's internet, a move decried by rights groups.

Russian lawmakers insist the new law is necessary to ensure the security of Russia's online networks but critics say the vaguely worded bill gives new censorship powers to government monitors.

The text of the law was published Wednesday but it will not come into effect until November.

The measures include creating technology to monitor internet routing and to steer Russian internet traffic away from foreign servers, ostensibly to prevent a foreign country from shutting it down.

The authors of the initiative say Russia must ensure the security of its networks after US President Donald Trump unveiled a new American cybersecurity strategy last year that said Russia had carried out cyber attacks with impunity.

Thousands of people recently rallied in Russia against this and other bills that critics say aim to restrict information and communication online.

Separately, Putin in March signed controversial laws that allow courts to fine and briefly jail people for showing disrespect towards authorities, and block media for publishing "fake news".

The laws are part of an ongoing Kremlin clampdown on media and internet freedoms that has seen people jailed for sharing humorous memes.

Last week 10 international rights organisations called on Russia to scrap the internet bill.

"The bill created a system that gives the authorities the capacity to block access to parts of the Internet in Russia," said a statement backed by Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and others.

The blocking would be "extrajudicial and non-transparent," the statement said.

Under the new law Russian Internet access providers will also need to ensure that their networks have the technical means for "centralised traffic control" to counter potential threats.

This control will pass notably to the Russian FSB security service and the telecoms and media monitoring agency Roskomnadzor, which is often accused of arbitrarily blocking content on the web.

In recent years Russian authorities have blocked online sites and content linked to the opposition, as well as internet services which fail to cooperate with them, including the Dailymotion video platform, the Linkedin online social networking site and the encrypted messaging app Telegram. – Rappler.com</s>President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed into law a “sovereign internet” bill which will allow Russian authorities to isolate the country’s internet, a move decried by rights groups.

Russian lawmakers insist the new law is necessary to ensure the security of Russia’s online networks but critics say the vaguely worded bill gives new censorship powers to government monitors.

The text of the law was published Wednesday but it will not come into effect until November.



 Deep state actors have used the MSM to spread a false narrative about Trump in hopes that a civil war would break out in America.</s>Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a measure expands government control over the internet and which critics say will lead to widespread censorship.

The law, signed Wednesday, requires internet providers to install equipment to route Russian internet traffic through servers in the country. Proponents said it is a defense measure in case the United States or other hostile powers cut off the internet for Russia.

Critics say that would increase the power of state agencies to control information. Users, they add, would find it harder to circumvent government restrictions, and the quality of the connection may suffer.</s>In a couple of years, Russia will have the ability to safely disconnect its internet from the wider internet, according to a law signed Wednesday by President Vladimir Putin.

The sovereign 'Runet' law, which was introduced in December, is not popular. A poll a few days ago found only 23 percent of Russians support it.

But it is now set to come into effect in November, with telecoms operators obliged to abide by its terms from the start of 2021.

The stated purpose of the law is to maintain the stability of the Russian internet and the services running over it, in case foreign aggressors try to cut it off the global whole. That action is something that has never been taken deliberately against any country, and remains highly unlikely.

SEE: Can Russian hackers be stopped? Here's why it might take 20 years (TechRepublic cover story) | Download the PDF version

To that end, Russia will need to build its own Domain Name System (DNS), and internet service providers will need to install special equipment – provided and paid for by the state at a reported cost of 20.8 billion rubles ($320m).

That equipment allows communications regulator Roskomnadzor to direct traffic through Russian exchange points only, at times when the Runet is seen as being under threat.

This centralized approach will also give Roskomnadzor an easier way to block unwanted content, rather than having to get ISPs to comply with its ever-expanding blacklist. Indeed, according to a report from the TASS news agency, ISPs using Roskomnadzor's equipment will no longer have to be responsible for blocking banned content, as the task will be handed over to the regulator.

Again, though, the idea is that Roskomnadzor will only assume this task when the Runet is being threatened. ISPs will also be able to ask to avoid directing certain traffic through Roskomnadzor's hardware. A cabinet of ministers will apparently determine in what cases this would be acceptable.

SEE: A winning strategy for cybersecurity (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)

As far as civil liberties activists are concerned, the censorship aspects of this centralization drive are the real goal here, rather than countering the imagined threat of an outside force that wants to cut off the Russian internet.

After all, Roskomnadzor's current blocking abilities are hampered by the ability of services to avoid compliance with Russia's strict online laws by using foreign servers – see Telegram's continued availability in the country despite having been banned, or virtual private network (VPN) providers' refusal to play ball with Roskomnadzor's blacklists.

However, the Russian government has denied that it wants to crack down on internet freedom through the Runet move, with the Kremlin insisting that the law is "designed to ensure [the] internet's viability amid potential aggressive steps in cyberspace against our country". That denial came in March, in response to protests by thousands of people who rallied in Moscow against the bill.

A report issued last month by RIPE NCC, the European regional Internet registry, stated that just three percent of Russian IPv4 traffic is routed outside the country. However, a third of IPv6 traffic seems to be routed through foreign exchange points.

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• Wickr may have a workaround for Russia's crackdown on encrypted chat CNET</s>Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new law on Wednesday that paves the way for Russia to isolate its Internet from the rest of the world.

The so-called “sovereign Internet” law is billed as a means of making the Russian Internet more “independent,” but independence will be in short supply as Putin’s authoritarian government tightens its grip on cyberspace.

Radio Free Europe quoted Putin and his allies defending the law as a means of preventing the United States from cutting off Russia’s access to the global Internet by creating Russian servers that could manage and filter all traffic and requiring foreign Internet providers to use them.

Critics naturally suspect that a great deal of managing and filtering will be conducted by those Russian servers no matter what the U.S. does.

Russia’s Internet regulation agency Roskomnadzor is already eager to use its new powers to go after Telegram, a secure messaging application popular among Russians and others around the world who wish to communicate without the threat of government surveillance. Telegram was developed in Russia but has been effectively banned there since 2018, a prohibition many Russians evidently ignore.

“Activists fear an independent Russian internet would involve the creation of a Chinese-style national firewall to monitor and censor content passing in and out of the country,” CNN observed.

ZDNet reported the law has very little support from the Russian people – about 23 percent in the latest poll – but Putin’s government hotly desired it, as it is tired of chasing Internet providers and website administrators around to make them comply with censorship demands. Once the new system is fully up and running at the beginning of 2021, Roskomnadzor will be able to block content instantly and inescapably with the domain servers under its control instead of publishing blacklists and prodding ISPs to obey them.

Skeptics of Moscow’s claims that it merely wants to secure the Russian Internet against foreign blockades note that no country has ever been completely shut off from the global network, and the estimated $320 million price tag for setting up Russia’s “sovereign Internet” servers is a high price for an economically depressed country to pay for protection against an entirely hypothetical threat.

Forbes pointed out that Russia actually tested a total-disconnect scenario in 2014 and found everything went back online in less than 30 minutes, according to Russian media reports. This will add fuel to suspicions the true purpose of the sovereign Internet law is to reduce the already dismal Internet freedom of Russians even further.

“There is a lot of protests against the law. Activists, some politicians and internet users openly expressed their outrage. But main local telecoms supported the law because the Kremlin promised not to charge them for the black boxes,” the editor of an independent Russian news site told Defense One.

Another Defense One correspondent suggested Russia is gearing up for information warfare in the next decade and taking steps to shield itself from the sort of chaos it plans to unleash upon free societies:

“Ultimately, this boils down to the fact that the Russian government, its military, and its security services regard the population’s unrestricted Internet, social media, and mobile access as a significant vulnerability in what they see as future Western efforts to launch information and cyber ops against the state in order to disorient, confuse and otherwise divide the population and the government,” said Samuel Bendett, research analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses’ International Affairs Group. “Therefore, monitoring user content and recording user information is seen as pivotal in such a defensive effort.” “The Russian government saw what such free information access can do in other countries, and defensive [information operations] is now part of the defense strategy,” Bendett said. “Therefore, access to user data is seen as key in preventing what Moscow sees as Western efforts to ferment some kind of ‘color revolution’ in the country.”

This explanation for Putin’s movies is particularly compelling when considering the economic damage Russia is likely to suffer from having a slower, more restricted Internet while the rest of the world achieves ever-greater speeds.</s>Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a measure that expands government control over the internet and which critics say will lead to widespread censorship. Putin is expecting that this law will give Russia a 'sovereign internet' which Kremlin can disconnect from the global internet at will.

The law, signed Wednesday, requires internet providers to install equipment to route Russian internet traffic through servers in the country. Proponents said it is a defence measure in case the United States or other hostile powers cut off the internet for Russia.

Critics say that would increase the power of state agencies to control information. Users, they add, would find it harder to circumvent government restrictions, and the quality of the connection may suffer.

According to a report in Financial Times, the bill will go into effect from 1 November and will require all internet service providers to filter all their traffic through special nodes which are under the control of Kremlin's internet censor, Roscomnadzor. This will enable Roscomnadzor to enforce blocks on websites. In the past, Telegram has been a victim of being blocked after it refused from giving Kremlin backdoor access to its app.

Telegram's self-exiled Russian founder Durov had long said he would reject any attempt by the country security's services to gain backdoor access to the app. The free application, which lets people exchange messages, photos, and videos in groups of up to 5,000 people, has attracted more than 200 million users since its launch in 2013.

With inputs from The Associated Press

Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.</s>
• Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed a bill which gives government the go ahead to develop a unique isolated internet only accessible within the country.
• Russia wants to develop a new domain name system (DNS) to protect it from cyber-attacks and make it independent of the world wide web.
• The bill says the government will “exercise centralized control over the communication network of general use.”
• Rights groups fear the plans could see Russia follow China into implementing a highly censored internet which is also used to surveil citizens.

Russia has taken a major step in it’s ambition to cut itself off from the global internet and create closed network only accessible inside the country.

President Vladimir Putin signed a bill on Wednesday which gives government agencies the go-ahead to develop a “sustainable, secure, and fully functioning” Russian “sovereign internet.” The move is part of the Kremlin’s plan to isolate its internet usage as a means of defending against external cyberwarfare.

Few details as to the nature of the proposed new system are mentioned in the bill, but state news outlets report Russia will attempt to develop a unique domain name system (DNS) to shed dependence on the universal world wide web.

It will also see state-owned enterprises protected via encryption, according to media reports, and see Russia’s three internet domains merged into one.

Read more: Russia has banned fake news, while also being one of the world’s prime exporters of fake news

The bill says the government will “exercise centralized control over the communication network of general use.”

On April 8, Putin assured Russians that the internet will always remain free in Russia.

But he caveated: “At the same time, it is also important to counter the risks and challenges of cyber crime and the spread of illegal content, which poses a threat to people’s rights and the state’s interests.”

If successful, the Kremlin says the isolated internet will make Russia more secure in the face of cyber attacks.

Critics warn the law may see Russia emulate China, where the internet is vigorously censored and used to monitor society through a social-credit system.

TheRussia’s move toward a closed internet network comes as major global powers move to defend themselves from external cyber attacks. The US imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Russian firms and individuals in 2017, saying it was responding to Russian attempts to jeopardize the US power grid and financial system.

The EU last year also said it would “strengthen the resilience” of its member states “in the digital domain” after the Netherlands said it caught four Russian intelligence agents trying to hack into the global chemical weapons watchdog headquarters while it was investigating Russia’s alleged involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal last April.

Russia’s Ministry of Communications first hinted at the move to an isolated internet in 2017, when it said it wanted to route 95% of the country’s web traffic internally by 2020, the country’s Izvestia newspaper reported at the time.

The project will initially cost $38 million, Russia’s financial watchdog said, according to the MIT Technology Review, but some involved in the plan expect it to cost more like $300 million.

Read more: Russia’s top Orthodox bishop says the internet is a tool of the Antichrist

In February Russia announced it would be simulating an all-out cyber attack by switching off the whole country’s internet for one day, Russian news agency RosBiznesKonsalting reported.

It was planned for April 1, but it is not known whether the simulation happened.

Over 50% of Russians said they were against the new internet proposals, the state-funded VTsIOM pollster found.

The legislation will roll out on November 1, 2019.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signs the Internet Sovereignty Bill [ru] into law. The bill has drawn fierce criticism from civil society groups over fears that it would lead Russia to establish an isolated internet landscape.