Russia banned anonymizers. What does the ban on anonymizers and VPN mean for the average user? How will the new ban work?

A few days ago, a rather important event took place - in the first reading, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a bill on "banning anonymizers and VPNs." After the introduction of the registry of banned sites and the blocking of various resources, many wondered - how soon will the schemes for bypassing these blockings be banned? It turned out that it took not so much time - just some 5 years.

June 8, 2017 - it was on this day that it was officially decided to make Runet a semblance of the Chinese segment of the network. Despite the fact that the law has not been formally adopted and a number of procedures must go through for its adoption, there is no doubt about the final result. Carthage will still be destroyed, and users who want the strange in the form of looking for a job on LinkedIn or communicating with their clanmates on some MMORPG from South Korea in Line will not be able to do this with all their will. In general, remember this tweet (c).

So, what have the legislators prepared for us? They prepared for us a draft law for a couple of dozen pages entitled "On Amendments to the Federal Law" On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection "". It was introduced by three deputies from different parties, but theirs and even their party affiliation does not play any role. Recently, laws that, one way or another, limit the network space, are adopted almost unanimously.

It will begin to act 90 days after it enters into force, so that a new reality after passing all 3 readings and the president's signature will come fairly quickly.

How will it be

The bill introduces a new key article into the law on information, numbered 15.8 . Officially, the article has a long and incomprehensible title "Measures aimed at countering the use on the territory of the Russian Federation of information and telecommunication networks, information systems and programs for electronic computers to gain access to information resources, including websites and (or) pages of websites in Internet networks, access to which is restricted in the territory of the Russian Federation in accordance with this Federal Law. In fact, this article describes exactly the ban on bypassing locks and how this ban is planned to be implemented. The article consists of 17 parts, written by a seasoned clerk, so that without a bottle you can’t figure it out, we simplified everything to the terms that are used in the industry.

The first part of the article right off the bat prohibits any service that operates in Russia from providing access to information that is prohibited in Russia in accordance with the law. In order to stop attempts to circumvent the bans, a number of new functions will be assigned to Roskomnadzor:

Firstly, the supervisory service will create and maintain a list of resources prohibited in the country. Note that such a list is already underway, so nothing has changed in this regard.

Secondly, Roskomnadzor will have to develop and approve a methodology in accordance with which it will monitor the network space in order to search for services that offer the opportunity to gain access to blocked resources.

Thirdly, having found such resources, Roskomnadzor will have to determine the hosting providers (or any other persons) who hosted these resources.

Fourth, after identifying hosters, they are sent requests (in Russian and English) with a request to issue information that will help identify those who contain services to bypass blocking. What information is in question is not clear. Most likely, for individuals, this will be the full name, address of residence, and the like, and for legal entities, the name of the company, location, and possibly bank details. The date of such request will be recorded.

Here we digress a little and allow ourselves to note that if hosters in Russia have to fulfill all the requirements, then foreign hosters are unlikely to comply with the requirements of Roskomnadzor like this. For it is one thing when companies themselves give their data to the register of information dissemination organizers, and quite another when the hoster will have to give out his client's data to the government of other countries. In addition to the fact that such "openness" will lead to a catastrophic drop in reputation, the hoster will violate the law on personal data already in his country.

After the hoster has received the corresponding request, it provides Roskomnadzor with all the data requested by it within the next three days. After that, Roskomnadzor, based on the data received, within three days sends a request to the services themselves to bypass blocking with the requirement to stop violations and disable the ability to bypass blocking in Russia.

Having received the requirements of Roskomnadzor on the restriction, services to bypass blocking on their own (options):

1. They restrict the access of all Internet users to their functions (voluntarily closed, if in a simple way).
2. They restrict access to their functions on the territory of Russia (voluntarily banned in Runet, that is).
3. They send an application to Roskomnadzor with a request to provide access to the register of prohibited sites and independently begin to block resources from this register.

What if we disagree?

If someone wants to show integrity and refuses to fulfill the requirements of Roskomndazor to block prohibited resources, then his end will be sad - he himself will be blocked on the territory of Russia in 30 days. Within 24 hours, Roskomnadzor will send a message to telecom operators with a list of "dissenting" addresses that will need to be blocked. Operators, in turn, within a day after receiving such a message, enter addresses into the block list.

In general, the standard blocking mechanism, only this time VPN services, anonymizers and other similar sites will have to be blocked.

We already agree what to do?

If someone at first wanted to show integrity, but then realized that it costs him too much, he can take measures to block banned sites and report this to Roskomnadzor. After that, during the day, Roskomnadzor checks the accuracy of the information, and if the resources are really blocked, it starts the unblocking procedure. During the day, telecom operators will be required to provide access to the "cut off" VPN.

How will the interaction take place?

The procedure for interacting with VPN services, anonymizers, technological networks and other resources that will block prohibited information is to be developed by Roskomnadzor. The supervisory service will be obliged to provide access to the list of prohibited information to everyone who agrees with its requirements in accordance with the developed procedure for interaction. In turn, the resources themselves will have to block prohibited information, and follow this order of interaction.

Search engines

Separate parts of the article provide for the obligations of the search engine operator. It, like blocking bypass services, will get access to the list of blocked sites and will be required to exclude links to prohibited sites from search results. Interestingly, the punishment in the form of a block to search engines has not yet been clearly spelled out - it only applies to services to bypass blocking. So Google will remain available, unless, of course, the norm is corrected. But instead of blocking, fines were prescribed for search engines. If the search engine operator does not filter the search results, or does not want to access the register of prohibited sites, then this will entail the imposition of an administrative fine:

1. for citizens in the amount of five thousand rubles;
2. for officials - fifty thousand rubles;
3. for legal entities - from five hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand roubles.

Work, and we will give you a salary with a VPN!

Apparently, having heeded the warnings that the VPN is used not only to read and watch "prohibited", the legislators left the opportunity to use the services for companies. They, as before, will be able to use their own technologies to bypass the access ban, but only in cases where users have entered into labor agreements with them.

So now, if you want to use some kind of VPN, you will have to not only pay for access, but also enter into an employment contract with its owner. This is the new kind of business. At the same time, unemployment will decrease.

Everything has already begun

Despite the fact that the ban on anonymizers and VPNs is yet to be introduced into the legal field, in fact anonymizers are already banned de facto. The ban mechanism is very simple - the prosecutor's office files a lawsuit, and the court decides to ban the anonymizer, since it can be used to gain access to prohibited information. On this basis, Chameleon, the Hideme.ru website and a number of others were blocked in 2016.

While writing the material, another news came: Roskomnadzor, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rospotrebnadzor and the Federal Tax Service issued an interdepartmental order that allows you to block any means of bypassing blocking without a court decision. The justifications are also very simple - through these resources you can play in an illegal casino, which is prohibited in Russia. Officially it sounds like this:

The presence on the page of the site on the Internet and (or) a program for electronic computers that allow access to the site on the Internet, the page of the site on the Internet, which contains prohibited information that meets the criteria specified in paragraphs 4.1.1.-4.1.6 of these Criteria, included in the Unified Register.

Naturally, this description includes everything that gives access to prohibited information, including VPN. Interestingly, the order itself was registered on June 27, and it was released on May 18. Considering that such documents are not prepared in a day, the decision to block the VPN was made much earlier.

A few days ago, the supervisory service sent out updated recommendations to telecom operators on blocking Internet resources. The recommendations do not differ in anything special from the old version, they only contain a mention of the preferred methods of blocking in the form of DPI, open source software, and buying already filtered traffic from a higher provider.

Industry implications

For telecom operators, the changes will be minimal. Well, a few more addresses will be added to the list for blocking, that's okay. There are thousands of them already. But for the Runet, as a phenomenon, everything will be much more serious. In fact, a separate space is being created in which not only can one not get access to some resources, but one cannot even know that these resources exist. Of course, one can argue that there are regular sites, forums, foreign versions of Google, where you can find information, links and distributions.

However, the logic of events is inexorable - there should be no prohibited information in Runet. So the further, the poorer will be the Russian segment. One by one, foreign services will leave the market or be blocked. Just someone earlier (like Line or LinkedIn), someone later. The vacant seats will be occupied by Russian services, which are now appearing like mushrooms after rain. We will keep silent about their quality - there is an excellent example of Sputnik, which, even with powerful competitors in the face of Google and Yandex, is something from the late 90s. Without the ability to fully interact with the global industry, Russian telecoms and IT will degrade (already now, the successful Kaspersky is being looked at disapprovingly), and the further the rate of degradation will increase. After all, it's all some version of Kwangmyeong.

On the other hand, in Africa there is no Internet at all, and no one really cares about it.

Image copyright Silas Stein/DPA/TASS Image caption Owners of VPN services and "anonymizers" are required to block access to prohibited sites

On November 1, a law came into force in Russia obliging owners of VPN services and so-called anonymizers to close access to prohibited sites.

The new law affects all known tools for bypassing blocking and achieving anonymity on the Internet, including browser extensions and the anonymous Tor browser. President Vladimir Putin signed the package of amendments in July 2017.

"In Russia, there are 25-30 proxy and VPN services that are popular with the population. Among them are cameleo.ru, 2ip.ru and others. They all expressed their readiness to comply with the law," Alexander Zharov, head of Roskomnadzor, told RBC.

At the same time, he admitted that there are still hundreds of thousands of small VPN services that are much more difficult to block. "But the law is focused primarily on the most popular services among citizens," Zharov said.

Many users fear that the ban will tighten Internet censorship in Russia. The human rights organization Amnesty International said after the signing of the law that the amendments were a "serious blow to Internet freedom" in Russia.

How will the new ban work?

To implement the amendments in Russia, a federal state information system (FSIS) is being launched. At the request of the police, Roskomnadzor will identify providers that provide access to VPN services and anonymizers.

Providers will be required to connect to the FSIS and provide information about the owner of the anonymizer, who will also have to connect to the system. After that, the owner of the service will be required to close access to sites included in the list of prohibited. If the owner refuses, the anonymizer will be blocked.

• Foreign VPN provider leaves Russia due to "Yarovaya package"

The amendments also include restrictions for search engines. If the services show links to sites from the list of prohibited ones, they will be fined.

Are the owners of anonymizers ready for the new law?

Roskomnadzor reported on October 31 that the regulator is completing testing of a system for interacting with anonymizer owners.

In preparation for the entry into force of the ban, Roskomnadzor employees met with market participants and explained how the amendments would work.

"In general, the testing was successful. The following took part in it: Kaspersky Lab, Opera Software AS, Cameleo, 2ip, Mail.ru, Yandex, Sputnik," the agency told the BBC. to obtain a list of blocked Internet resources), including in an automated mode, as well as launching a filtering mechanism for users of blocked sites".

Will it be possible to block Tor?

Roskomnadzor will not be able to completely close access to Tor. This browser uses not only open network addresses, but also closed ones, which are almost impossible to block. Tor issues them at the request of the user.

Belarus is trying to block Tor. As of December 2016, censors blacklisted about 6,000 of the 7,000 Tor public addresses active around the world.

The number of users of non-public network addresses in this country has grown from 250 to 3,000 since the start of the blocking, European Radio for Belarus reported. At the same time, the number of users of public addresses fell from 3 thousand to 2.6 thousand people.

What are the possible side effects

The Association of European Businesses warned in October that corporate VPN services that are used for business purposes could be subject to the new ban.

The ban does not apply to such VPN services, but experts note that it is impossible to distinguish a corporate network from a public one.

It is also unclear how the law will work in the case of Google and Apple, whose stores sell third-party VPN services. Artem Kozlyuk, head of the Roskomsvoboda project, said earlier that Roskomnadzor is trying to negotiate with Google and Apple so that they remove such services from their stores.

In Roskomnadzor, the BBC reported that they are not experiencing difficulties in working with Google and Apple. "We have been cooperating for a long time in terms of removing illegal applications from these stores," the regulator said.

What about Crimea

The ban on anonymizers will adversely affect the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol, warned Sergey Grebennikov, CEO of ROCIT. Due to sanctions, the services of some Internet companies are unavailable on the peninsula.

For example, many Google, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal services do not work in Crimea. The inhabitants of the peninsula got access to them through anonymizers and VPN.

"Half of Crimean residents now use VPN services, because many sites are inaccessible to them due to sanctions, and the introduction of this law may leave Crimean residents for some time without the services they used to use on a daily basis," Grebennikov said. at a meeting of the State Duma in June.

"Crime is committed not on the Internet, but offline, and the Internet serves only as a way. It is necessary to catch criminals offline. The bans that are proposed to be introduced will lead to the development of the Darknet, that is, we continue to fight against windmills," noted CEO of ROCIT.

In the current version of the law, no exceptions were made for citizens, Sergei Grebennikov told the BBC Russian Service. "So the only option for them is to use a corporate VPN or buy and set up the service themselves," the expert added.

Roskomnadzor noted in this regard that the amendments do not prohibit VPN services and anonymizers, but simply oblige their owners to block access to blocked resources.

A lot of noise on the network was raised by the Federal Law of June 27, 2018 No. 155-FZ “On Amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation”, which introduced a penalty in the form of a fine for anonymizers and VPNs. Many myths and misconceptions have already appeared around these amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses. In this publication, we will tell you whether there is a fine for VPN in Russia for Internet users, and whether there is any punishment for anonymizers in Runet.

What are anonymizers? Anonymizers can be understood as several types of network technologies and software, for example: proxy servers, VPN (Virtual Private Network - virtual private network), Tor (The Onion Router - a proxy server system that allows you to establish an anonymous network connection protected from listening) and any other services that allow you to bypass blocking access to a particular online content.

Recall that back in the summer of 2017, Federal Law No. 276-FZ of July 29, 2017 “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” was adopted, which prohibited the Owners of anonymizers and VPN services from providing the opportunity to use them. in Russia to gain access to blocked sites (sections or certain pages of sites). This “Anonymizer Ban Law” came into force on November 1, 2017 and obliges anonymizer owners (including VPN/proxy service owners) to block Russian users’ access to resources blacklisted by Roskomnadzor. The same law instructs search engines (Yandex, Poisk.Mail.ru, Sputnik, Google, etc.) to stop displaying links to prohibited sites in their search results.

What penalties are introduced by the new amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses?

Since the autumn of 2018, the Federal Law of June 27, 2018 No. 155-FZ “On Amendments to the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses” came into force, according to which fines were introduced into the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation

1. search engine penalties(citizens and legal entities) for displaying in search results, at the request of users, links to prohibited information resources (websites or individual pages of sites) - Article 13.40 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation;
2. penalties for hosting companies(citizens and legal entities) for hiding proxy servers operating on the capacities of these hosters - Article 19.7 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation.

According to Federal Law No. 155-FZ dated June 27, 2018 maximum fine for violating the “Anonymizer Ban Act” will amount to 5,000 rubles for citizens, 50,000 rubles for officials, but legal entities can be fined up to 700,000 rubles.

Will ordinary users be penalized for VPN?

Let's see if the new fines for the use of anonymizers (VPN, Tor, proxies, etc.) threaten ordinary users in Russia? What happens if an ordinary citizen (Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook or Twitter) links to a VPN or any other anonymizers and proxy services?

Not, ordinary users do not face fines for using anonymizers! Neither for VPN, nor for Tor, nor for other proxies you will be fined!

The punishment in the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation is provided only for those who directly own VPN services, who support them and ensure the functioning of these anonymizers. Penalties, as we wrote above, can also be applied to search engines if they, in turn, do not stop displaying links to sites that provide anonymous access to information resources blacklisted by Roskomnadzor, bypassing the blocking.

The user will not be fined for posting links to a proxy server or VPN on pages on social networks to view prohibited sites. Although in the past there were initiatives to punish Internet users or proxy servers/anonymizers, such ideas were not supported by the deputies.

Can anonymizers work in Russia by law?

Yes they can! There is no total ban on anonymizers, and such a service can work legally in Russia if it fulfills a number of requirements established by the new Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection”.

To function legally, the owners of the anonymizer are required to connect to the federal state information system (FSIS), which is operated by Roskomnadzor. Anonymizer owners can connect to the FSIS RKN on their own, or within 30 days after receiving an order from the RKN. After connecting to the FSIS, the owners of the anonymizer are obliged within 3 days to “ensure compliance with the ban on providing the opportunity to use on the territory of the Russian Federation” programs and other technical means to gain access to prohibited sites.

While the struggle for the Internet continues in Russia, more and more users are learning to use means to bypass Roskomnadozar's bans: they are mastering VPNs and proxies, thanking the supervisory authority for the incentive to engage in computer literacy. However, the question arises whether it is generally legal to use these services, and since the country is so zealously undertaking to block the Internet, will they not be punished for circumventing the bans.

When Roskomnadzor began (trying to) block Telegram, users only joked about the department and. There were even stories on social networks that saleswomen in stores taught how to use bypass tools.

Sergey Vasilyevich ‏

Now I drove to the nearest Vkusvill for fruit drinks, there at the checkout a 45-year-old saleswoman tried to explain to a 60-year-old customer how to set up a proxy in the cart in order to use the store bot further.

And although not everyone believed in such stories, the number of people who started using proxies and VPNs has increased dramatically. As the owners of three services to bypass blocking told the BBC, at least half of Telegram users (about 8 million people) continued to use the messenger through their services after the official blocking.

It is not yet known exactly how many people began to use bypass tools after Roskomnadzor began blocking IP addresses en masse, but on April 12, cybersecurity specialist Alexander Litreev told Vedomosti that his proxy service alone had grown from nine thousand up to one and a half million. Also, according to Kommersant, the number of entries from Russia to the TOR network has increased by 20 percent.

However, some users began to have questions: is it legal to use means to bypass blocking at all.

Maria ‏

Before installing a VPN, I first thought about the question of whether they could put me in prison for this as a repost. I can't go to jail now

The question is quite reasonable, because back in November 2017, the ban on bypassing blocking through VPN, TOR and anonymizers came into force. However, it has its own nuances. This law prohibits the owners of such services from providing access to blocked resources. For refusing to obey, VPN services promised to block, which happened in early March. Then the RKN blocked 18 servers that could be used to use Telegram.

Can users be held liable for bypassing blocking? Not yet. The law, adopted in 2017, states that the responsibility for providing access to prohibited sites lies with the “owner of the access software and hardware”, that is, the owners of VPN and proxy services. They are threatened with blocking for non-compliance with the law. As for TOR, according to experts, it is almost impossible to block it (although they are trying in Belarus).

For the average user, this law can be compared to a law prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to minors. If a teenager buys cigarettes, the seller will be punished, not the buyer.

On April 16, the head of Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov, who himself, according to him, installed a VPN on his smartphone, spoke about the fact that ordinary users are not going to be held accountable for using services to bypass blocking, according to Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

When it comes to VPNs, you can't block them all. There are hundreds of thousands of them in Russia, both commercial and self-made. Is it possible to block individual VPNs - definitely possible. We will look at what they use, whether they use it in large numbers, whether it makes sense to restrict access to VPN. But a VPN, like any other Internet program, has a set of characteristics, IP addresses.

The fact that ordinary users will not be punished for using circumvention tools was also told to RIA Novosti by a lawyer, a specialist in criminal law Alexei Sinitsyn.

For users, responsibility for the use of such services, networks, Russian legislation is not provided.

Before the “war” with Telegram, the law banning blocking bypass services was generally called useless. Despite the fact that the FSB was supposed to monitor the owners of the services and stop providing access to prohibited resources, in the three months since the beginning of the document, the special services have never turned to Roskomnadzor with a demand to limit the work of anonymizers, wrote