The plan of Russia before a possible world war

Russia approved the process to endow itself with a "Sovereign Internet"able to operate autonomously in case of break with the major global servers, but also to increase its control over the Web.

The law includes a series of measures to ensure the operation of the Internet in Russia and to protect the network against cyber attacks. According to his supporters, it is a response to the "belligerent nature of the new US cybersecurity strategy adopted in September 2018", which makes Russia a threat.

In recent years, the government of Vladimir Putin content and websites blocked related to the opposition, as well as services refusing to cooperate with them, such as the Dailymotion video platform, the LinkedIn social network and the Telegram messaging platform.

Although some sectors fear a "Chinese-style" Internet under the control of the authorities, the promoters of the project present it as the Russian answer to the growing threats in cyberspace.

More specifically, the project provides an "infrastructure to ensure the functioning of network resources in case of impossibility for Russian operators to connect to foreign servers".

Russian companies that provide Internet access will also have to ensure the application in their networks of "technical means" for "centralized control of traffic" to curb potential threats.

Criticism of the project

"This law poses serious risks for civil society" in Russia, he explained. AFP Artiom Kozliuk, director of the NGO for the defense of freedom on the Internet, Roskomsvoboda.

The state control body will be able to intervene directly in the administration of the network in the event of a threat and will be able to directly block the banned contents in Russia. Until now, it is the operators who occupy it.

Since 2014, with the beginning of tensions between Moscow and the West, the Russian authorities have decided to create a "backup" infrastructure of the Russian Internet segment, to protect the network in case of war.

In addition, Russia has been trying for several years to strengthen its control over the Web, one of the country's last areas of relative freedom. This is why digital companies, Russian and foreign, are required to store user data in Russia.

The media, bloggers, as well as the popular social network VKontakte or the portals Yandex and Mail.ru must also store the data of users for six months and agree to provide them to the authorities. VPN services to avoid blocking can also be suspended at the request of the authorities.

"Laws adopted since 2012 under the pretext of defending children, against suicide, against terrorists or for the security of the Russian Internet allow us to restrict more and more the rights and freedoms of the network," writes Kozliuk .