‘Some countries bring their own values to Russia through the Internet’
The Safe Internet League visited the capital of Tatarstan. Its director told the citizens of Kazan why Russian web net is the American way to take control of Russia. As it turned out during the meeting, the Russian Internet's doctors are afraid that the absence of Russia-made equipment and software will allow to incapacitate the functionaries, whom the opponent doesn't like, and even stop the work of big Russian companies. At the same time, as a correspondent of Realnoe Vremya managed to know, apart from the talks about the danger of the U.S. policy, the Safe Internet League is trying to push a bill on Internet prefiltration, which was frozen in 2014, to the State Duma.
Enemy with American flag
Denis Davydov, the director of the Safe Internet League, came to Kazan on Tuesday to tell about how the country is going to defend its digital sovereignty. The Safe Internet League is a non-commercial partnership whose main goal is a control over information on the Internet. Together with deputy Yelena Mizulina, the organisation created a united registry of banned sites. The project served as a foundation for a federal law.
In Kazan, Davydov's lecture was called 'Safety and Development: Where is Contradiction?' First of all, he told why the USA is dangerous, what the Russian government is doing in order to weaken the influence of the States on Russia.
To start with, the director of the organisation told the United States of America rule the Internet, and we need to get rid of this dependence. Russian's key partner in this matter is China that almost has created its own digital sovereignty in the last 15 years.
'Some countries not only threaten the stability of our network but also bring their own values, execute ideological subversive activities in order to change us and get rid of Russia as a barrier for a global hegemony of the States,' the speaker told.
These are the conclusions made by the League after Edward Snowden's confessions. According to Davydov, the USA are collecting information from around the world and using it to carry out different operations designed to strengthen their hegemony.
Russia is at an advantage in this so-called fight: unlike Europe, Russia has its own social networks (Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki), browsers (Yandex, Mail.ru) and other elaborations that people actively use.
But taking into account the fact that nearly all the equipment and programmes are of foreign origin, Russia is under threat. Davydov put an example of Rostelecom when its foreign suppliers denied to support the software of its server and refused the Ministry of Internal Affairs to provide further technical support of its database.
'You perfectly see that the Internet can be harmful and it can be turned off at any moment. And they don't turn it off because it allows to control.'
In his speech, Davydov also put an interesting example of a possible influence using gadgets that already have programmes.
'Imagine that a person is training and has a gadget that controls his or her heartbeat. Let's suppose there is a functionary who is running and checking his heartbeat – 150, it is fine. But actually his heartbeat is 175 and higher, so he is exhausting himself. Consequently, the stubborn functionary resigns because of a heart attack, and another one occupies his post. These are future threats that should be taken into account.'
How is the country going to fight?
According to Davydov, the League detected a trend as early as 2015. It is infant suicide. Having analysed the situation, they summed up that it is a test of a new sort of information weapon – when people are offered to test a game, as a result of which there is an offer to kill yourself or commit unlawful acts. Now the work on the search of the corresponding content has been carried out. This content was sent for analysis. For example, there were resources that incite people to kill police workers in the North Caucasian republics.
Now the League is preparing a bill for approval in the State Duma. This topic has been mentioned in 2014 for the first time. It is an introduction of Internet prefiltration. The list of banned information is defined by the federal law 'About Ban on Access to Information that Harms Children's Health'. Later Davydov told Realnoe Vremya that if the bill is approved, all providers are to filter the Internet. For instance, if a family member wants to watch a porno movie, he or she will have to address a provider, pay the service and connect to this feature. Davydov is convinced that this bill won't be expensive.
'Of course, we hope this bill will be adopted in the State Duma and significantly protect minors from harmful information.'
The project will be proposed to a new State Duma. The interlocutor of the newspaper did not tell whether they enlisted the support of the Minister of Communications and Mass Media of Russia Nikolay Nikiforov. The only thing he replied was that, in general, they hope for the support of the state. It should be noted Yelena Mizulina is lobbying the bill in the State Duma. She was the first person to announce the idea of the Internet prefiltration in 2014.
Another problem the country is dealing with now is over-the-wire encryption and its distribution. President set a task to completely switch both state departments and citizens to Russian encryption. This measure will increase the level of safety on the Internet.
