Roskomnadzor again raised the issue of closing public access to information about the requirements of the Prosecutor General’s Office for blocking websites

Roskomnadzor again raised the issue of closing public access to information about the requirements of the Prosecutor General’s Office to block sites. According to the updated draft order of the service, posted for public discussion, information about the grounds for blocking will also be completely removed from access. Hosters say the changes will make it more difficult to administer site access restrictions. But experts believe that the approval of the order will have a greater impact on “public monitoring of blocking” than on the work of hosters and providers.

Kommersant got acquainted with the draft order of Roskomnadzor, published on February 2 on regulation.gov.ru. The document updates the operating procedure of the information system through which operators receive data about blocked sites. The service proposes to cancel the clause according to which Internet users should have the opportunity to check whether there are requirements from the Prosecutor General’s Office to remove content prohibited in the Russian Federation. It is proposed to remove the request number (official document) from the register entry about the blocking initiated by the Prosecutor General’s Office. Also, operators will be able not to publish the reasons for blocking on “stub” pages.

The information system passes through, in particular, data on blocking at the request of the Moscow City Court, requests from Roskomnadzor, copyright holders, etc. The new amendments apply only to work through the Prosecutor General’s Office: it has the right to extrajudicially block resources with “military fakes” and “discrediting the army”, websites undesirable organizations, calls for unrest, etc. At the same time, direct mentions of the Prosecutor General’s Office have disappeared from the registry records since October 2022, and blocking of sites began to be attributed to some unnamed department (see “Kommersant” dated December 12, 2022).

The planned changes essentially repeat those that Roskomnadzor submitted for public discussion on December 1, 2022; The status of the old document stopped updating after passing the anti-corruption examination. The new draft also contains a number of other adjustments: in particular, the list of grounds for blocking by the Prosecutor General’s Office is proposed to be divided into 12 paragraphs. As in 2022, the service in its explanatory note justifies the changes by the fact that the federal law “On Information” does not provide for the publication of the demands of the prosecutor’s office.

According to the CEO of the Internet Research Institute, Karen Kazaryan, the changes “will further blur the difference between registry and non-registry blocking.” That is, those that are carried out under the federal law “On Information”, and those that occur on TSPU (technical means of countering threats) – equipment installed on networks under the law on the “sovereign RuNet”.

Independent IT expert Philip Kulin notes that the grounds on behalf of an “unspecified body” in the lists of sites transferred by Roskomnadzor to operators for blocking now allow us to draw an unambiguous conclusion about the restrictions initiated by the Prosecutor General’s Office: “According to the new rules, the grounds will also be “unspecified”, which will complicate search by download and analysis of its data.” Roskomsvoboda (announced a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) agrees with this conclusion. They clarified that other public resources of Roskomnadzor currently do not allow them to fully monitor and analyze blockings.

Mr. Kulin believes that the changes will affect “public monitoring of blockings” more than the work of sites and hosters, since they “practically do not challenge the requirements of the Prosecutor General’s Office due to the risks of further persecution.” But Nikita Tsaplin, CEO of the hosting provider RuVDS, notes that the amendments “will negatively affect the transparency of decision-making.” If the existing procedure allows you to immediately understand why this or that resource was blocked, then with the new one this is impossible – “you will have to contact Roskomnadzor, and the answer will depend on it.”

Yuri Litvinenko