Experts: Messenger regulating bill to serve Russia’s security

MOSCOW, Jun 14 (PRIME) -- A bill seeking to identify Russian messenger users will help reveal perpetrators, and the need to adopt the initiative is explained by terroristic threats, several experts told PRIME on Wednesday.

Maxim Grigoryev, director of the democracy problems study fund, said that compulsory identification of messenger users by phone number will be more effective in detecting criminals than traffic that operators must store under the data retention law.

The fund tracks propaganda of such terroristic groups as the ISIS, which is banned in Russia, and the Internet, including various messengers, is the main channel of promotion, Grigoryev said.

“Detailed instructions on how to prepare handmade explosives are distributed in (messenger) Telegram. At least hundreds of such Telegram channels exist. Drugs are sold via (messenger) Viber and Telegram,” the expert said.

“Law enforcement authorities can trace Internet traffic via the data retention law up to a certain point, to the borderline. It’ll be difficult to trace them further if law enforcement authorities of another country don’t cooperate (with Russia).”

Dmitry Morev, a leading expert at the contemporary right development center, said that the necessity to adopt the law on messenger regulation results from terroristic threats.

“First of all, the law offers to identify users and imposes a number of duties on messenger administrators, including blocking illegal mailouts on an authority request. That’s why we should believe that the bill is in line with the current risks, which exist today amid a rapid expansion of messengers, primarily, in view of extremist and terrorist activities,” the expert said.

The State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, is studying the bill in the first out of three mandatory readings on Wednesday. To become law, it must be further approved by the Federation Council, the upper house, and be signed by the president.

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