Today Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the controversial “anti-terrorist” legislation adopted by the lower and upper houses of parliament in late June, despite the flurry of criticism coming from opposition-mided circles and the serious concerns expressed by Russian telecom and Internet companies.
As reported earlier by East-West Digital News, the new legislation — which Edward Snowden has called “Russia’s new Big-Brother law” — is not only severe against those involved in “international terrorism,” its financing or non-denunciation. Law-enforcement agencies will also be granted access to any user’s messages without any judicial oversight.
Several key provisions will affect directly Russia’s telecom and Internet industries. In particular, mobile operators and Internet companies will need to store the recordings of all phone calls and the content of all text messages for a period of six months, entailing huge costs — if ever practicable.
Industry players will also be required to cooperate with the Federal Security Service (FSB) to make their users’ communication fully accessible to this organization (see detailed analysis by EWDN).
President press secretary Dmitry Peskov indicated that Putin “ordered the government to follow very closely [the implementation of the new legislation] in order to minimize the possible risks related to implementation costs, to the use of domestic information storage equipement, or other risks.”
Concerning the FSB’s access to Internet communications, the President has given two weeks, until July 20, to the FSB to specify which encryption means will be subject to certification as well as the procedures to certify them and transmit the corresponding encryption keys to the secret service (text in Russian).
“No to total control,” say Russian civic activists.
