Aiming for RuNet

Russia’s crackdown on internet freedoms reached a fever pitch this spring as the government attempted to slow Twitter traffic in response to the microblogging platform’s alleged refusal to delete banned content. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media and internet watchdog, has been fighting with Twitter for years, this year claiming there are over 3,000 posts containing illegal information, including on suicide by minors and substance abuse. Twitter’s legal team, however, had indicated that the posts flagged as banned by Russian authorities were political.

In March, the agency retaliated with an operation to slow down internet traffic “to protect Russian citizens and coerce the internet service to obey Russian law on Russian territory.” While some users reported intermittent slowdowns on Twitter, Roskomnadzor’s operation also crashed the Kremlin’s website and those of some government bodies, including Roskomnadzor itself.

Then the state regulatory agency gave Twitter one month to delete the content in question, threatening a complete blockage of the service, as well as of other platforms that don’t comply.

Twitter and Facebook are both popular in Russia and are used widely by opposition activists and politicians, including to organize events. While Twitter does not normally comment on its battle with Russian authorities, experts guessed that the company may not be as willing to risk all-out war as was the Russian founder of the Telegram messaging app, who dodged Russia’s blockages by routing traffic through endless roundabouts and mirrors.

But taming Twitter is only one item on Russian government’s agenda. Another Roskomnadzor initiative seeks to make internet users disclose personal data, like their passport number, when registering a new account for social media or messaging apps, prompting concerns about internet freedom and that this will be yet another tool for the security services to monitor citizens.

“Roskomnadzor and social networks don’t need this volume of information unless they plan to pass it on to law enforcement agencies or monetize it through advertisement,” said Mikhail Tretyak, an expert with the group RosKomSvoboda, which has been chronicling the Russian government’s attempts to control the internet.

Many criminal cases opened against activists in recent months – including some where the defendants have been imprisoned pending their trials – are based on social media posts and retweets about peaceful but unsanctioned rallies, which investigators have characterized as “promoting mass disorder,” or “promoting extremism.”

Concerns about state access to personal information is not always about how it might put people at risk in the realm of free speech or political opinions. Another worry is the government’s proven inability to keep that information out of nefarious hands. Through ineptitude and corruption, individuals’ personal information is often leaked and readily available for purchase or download online. Most recently, independent media outlets found online a database containing information about 300,000 former coronavirus patients in Moscow, complete with home addresses and phone numbers. The data was publicly available for three months before a probe was launched.