The online world in Russia is rampant with fury: The government announced a plan to disconnect the entire country from the world wide web.
Russia goes offline
The plan is to cut off the Internet connection to simulate a situation of a cyber war, ZDNet reported.
The disconnection is supposed to be “brief” and only remove connections to the outside of the country while keeping the internal communications alive and well.
The global Internet infrastructure won’t be used during the simulation. Instead, the users will go through the internal servers of the government.
The draft law was introduced on 14 December 2018 and has already been approached by the majority of parliamentarians in the first reading. This means, two more voting sessions (in Russia they can happen in the space of days), after including corrections as requested by the law makers, and it’s a valid law.
334 members of the Russian Duma voted in favor of the new law on cyber security, while 47 voted against it on 12 February 2014.
Russian government likes to introduce unorthodox laws during the times when people are in a holiday mood. This time it was the New Year and Christmas that pulled the attention away from the proposed legislation that is unlikely to be popular.
Officially, the goal of the simulation is to test provisions in case the global powers decide to cause harm to Russia by cutting it off the grid. However, for a long time Russian bloggers have been warning users that they soon will have provisions like in China where severe restrictions are placed on what the users can see and access within the global network.
Tech experts believe the law may be unworkable as the legislators often have limited expertise and propose measures that cannot be implemented in reality, based on the level of the technology available. For instance, it is the government that is supposed to provide solutions and equipment to Internet Service Providers to filter out undesirable traffic to prohibited resources. How this will be done, is unclear.
No world, no wide, just Internet
Censorship could be the main reason for the powers of Russia to attempt creating an internal network independent from the outside channels, isolating its cyber space.
The planning outage is supposed to occur within the next weeks.
The test is being planned as a part of the Digital Economy National Program aimed to limit potential harm an interference by other countries may cause Russia. The results of the test will provide insights as to what should be changed in the draft legislation that is due to be voted in the parliament, to ensure the goals are achieved as planned.
What do you think of the plan to cut Russian users off the global Internet? Comment below!
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Every country needs to have that level of protection in this day age, the Internet can easily be weaponized, as is the western financial system by the USA “sanctions”, therefore countries like Russia need to protect their citizens & businesses from such eventualities before they happen, and neutralize their effect on their citizens and business community communication capabilities within the country. I applaud Mr Putin for being insightful of the possible eventualities and having this measure in place to be ahead of the game, it is a grandmaster chase move. That is what the term “a leader” means, to see… Read more »
Look like politicians have so minimal knowledge about how internet works. They will be unable to cut the country from both the internet, and the world wide web which is only a tiny portion of the internet. Also they will be unable to cut down Russia from other internet parts like: onion network, usenet, per-to-peer like networks (like freenet, DC++, etc…), FTP connections, and many other. Anyway Russia is the number one on planet Earth in case of black networks and hidden servers. Also there are millions of people who able to use it in a notable level, and not… Read more »
Robert, do you realize that “bypassing” (for instance, using VPN) is already illegal in Russia?
So?
The black networks, and hidden servers too, and still Russia is number one even now.
And was always the absolute superpower in the non-clearnet cyberspace in the past 20 – 25 years.
VK banned in Ukraine, so “only” a couple of million people use it daily.
Nothing to you, obviously. I just try to make it clear that once Russia decides to switch off the global internet, only non-law abiding citizens (law breakers) will use VPN to bypass the blocks. Good people will abide the law.
But Elena, my concern is that when laws become more restrictive, the law abiding citizens of yesterday, become law breakers tomorrow. For what? disagreeing with the government? For taking part in active debate? For posting what they had for lunch today? Considering myself a citizen of the world, and after growing up in the era of nuclear threat, I can’t abide a return to the cold-war paranoia and distrust which is the direction Putin is sending Russia again, and consequently the rest of the world. And I’m not saying that Trump is any better… It takes two to tango. But… Read more »
I think this is a terrible decision for Russia. Restricting the Internet means directly restricting the freedom of people and making them dependent on the television and press. On the Internet, a person can choose what information the person wants to receive. There are many sources of information on any topic you are interested in. Being separated from the World Wide Web means being dependent and follow the North Korea’s example – people there have no freedom at all, they must stick with the information they receive on media channels. Even radio is restricted there! I agree, there are a… Read more »