New Russian Law Will Criminalize Internet Searches For ‘Extremist Content’

Free Speech

from the the-crime-of-curiosity dept

It should be uncontroversial at this point to say that the Russian government has waged a long but incremental war on both free speech and a free and open internet. Always couched in terms of preventing “extremist content” to infiltrate the minds of its own people, the truth is that Russia denotes any content it doesn’t like as extreme, be it LGBTQ+ content or any critique of the government. Since Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, the Russian government’s desire to clamp down on critical content online has only increased.

Laws were passed in the wake of the invasion aimed at clamping down providers and promoters of so-called “extremist content.” Those laws themselves were ripe for abuse by the government, as the vague language allowed for extreme censorship. But at least they reserved for those promoting the content itself. But now, as a sneaky amendment to a completely unrelated bill, Russia has passed a law that will criminalize searching for any content the Russian government decides is verboten.

The new measures, which sailed through the Russian parliament and will take effect in September, envision fining people who “deliberately searched for knowingly extremist materials” and gained access to them through means such as virtual private networks, or VPNs, which let users bypass government blocks.

Russia defines “extremist materials” as content officially added by a court to a government-maintained registry, a running list of about 5,500 entries, or content produced by “extremist organizations” ranging from “the LGBT movement” to al-Qaeda. The new law also covers materials that promote alleged Nazi ideology or incite extremist actions.

Until now, Russian law stopped short of punishing individuals for seeking information online; only creating or sharing such content is prohibited. The new amendments follow remarks by high-ranking officials that censorship is justified in wartime. Adoption of the measures would mark a significant tightening of Russia’s already restrictive digital laws.

Here we can start to see the problem. Russia has a habit of referring to any country or group it deems an adversary as “Nazis.” And, yes, this is not a problem unique to Russia (see the wider political discourse on social media), but Russia has probably become the gold standard of weaponizing this sort of thing in as cynical a manner possible. For example, it has referred to the Ukrainian government as Nazis, which must surely have come as a shock to its Jewish President. The attacks on other marginalized groups, such as the LGBTQ+ community, are par for the course. As is the remaining vague language of “inciting extremist actions,” which will surely mean whatever the hell the Kremlin wants it to mean.

Now, the proposed fines are admittedly low, but everyone with a working frontal lobe will realize that these meager fines are obviously a potential gateway to further punishment.

The fine for searching for banned content in Russia would be about a $65, while the penalty for advertising circumvention tools such as VPN services would be steeper — $2,500 for individuals and up to $12,800 for companies.

“The fines imposed for searching for extremist materials in this iteration may be minor, but this can be grounds for detention, pressure, a pretext to be escorted to the police station,” said Sarkis Darbinyan, an internet freedom activist whom the Russian authorities have labeled a foreign agent “I am most afraid that in the next iteration, administrative fines will turn into criminal cases.”

Of course they will. Well, let’s put a maybe on that, actually. Why? Well, because until eventual carve-outs are constructed, it seems like the law might actually hamper some of those that try to police the internet for the government.

The proposal drew ire even from some Kremlin loyalists who called the amendments an overreach. Yekaterina Mizulina, the daughter of a Russian senator and head of the League of Safe Internet, a group known for denouncing anyone criticizing the government, said the legal changes would prevent her organization from doing its work as her group would technically be breaking the rules by opening the flagged content.

“It turns out that under the new law, the League for Safe Internet will not be able to transfer data on extremist communities to the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” Mizulina said in a Telegram post. “They will ban us from monitoring extremism.”

No, they won’t. That type of activity will inevitably be carved out of the law, either explicitly or through selective enforcement. And what’s truly terrifying about this for Russian citizens is that enacting this law only makes sense if the government has in place the ability, or the planned ability, to monitor citizen internet searches.

ussian internet activists have warned that the vague language of the amendments creates significant potential for misuse. It also remains unclear how regulators intend to monitor search queries or enforce the new rules. Net Freedoms said that telecom operators and Russian platforms such as VK, which are already obligated to store and share user data with law enforcement, could be asked to turn over such information.

User search activity can also be exposed through unprotected public WiFi networks, search engine histories or data stored on devices, such as browser logs and autofill entries.

And so begins a new era of the internet in Russia, one in which curiosity is a crime and extreme content is whatever the government decides it is. I recognize that this may seem like an incremental step for this authoritarian government, rather than a massive leap, but it’s no small thing that the Kremlin is turning its enforcement away from providers of content and onto its own citizens.

No, I don’t expect mass arrests over search histories to start being a thing tomorrow. But you can damned well bet that there will be targeted arrests of undesirables in which this law will be used to first fine, and then further investigate and charge, the people Putin’s government would like to silence.

Filed Under: censorship, extremist content, free speech, internet regulations, russia, searches