FOCUS: Experts say messenger regulation idea to impair life of operators, IT firms

By Yekaterina Yezhova

MOSCOW, Jun 5 (PRIME) -- Russian authorities are seeking to strengthen control over messengers with a new bill obliging them to sign contracts with mobile operators in order to identify users. Experts say the industry cannot support the initiative as is, which may violate citizens’ rights and do harm to local companies as well, but some officials welcome the move.

The bill, submitted by deputies in late May, says that an organizer of instant messaging in the Internet must transfer electronic messages only of identified Internet users. “Identification of Internet users is done by a connection operator via a subscriber number on the basis of a contract of identification signed by an organizer of instant messaging with the connection operator,” the document reads.

Organizers of instant messaging must also secure confidentiality of transferred messages and ensure an option of a mailout upon an initiative of state authorities. They must restrict a transfer of messages with the information distributed with violations of the law, among others.

If approved by the parliament and signed by the president, the move will come into force from January 1, 2018, which is also the deadline set for messengers to comply with the rule.

A spokesperson for Internet giant Mail.Ru Group, running messengers ICQ, Agent Mail.Ru, and newly launched TamTam, said it respects the law. “If special requirements are imposed regarding some services, we’ll follow them,” the spokesperson told PRIME.

The Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) officially said that the adoption of the bill will entail heavy extra expenses for local connection and IT companies, place them in unequal conditions with foreign companies, and create a climate for unfair competition.

“The most important thing is that it will raise serious barriers for appearance of new services and development of existing ones,” the association said in a statement.

The RAEC’s experts believe the current legal base can fully implement the tasks set by the bill’s authors. “There is no need in additional identification of messenger users, because under the current law all operators of messengers are organizers of information distribution in the Internet, including foreign ones, and must keep information on connections and facts of transfer of messages with IP addresses for three years,” the experts said.

The law also obliges connection operators to store metadata for three years and sign contracts with the indication of passport data of Russian citizens, which, in its turn, could deprive minors or foreign citizens of the right to use messengers, if the bill is approved.

The initiative wants to identify messenger users on the basis of contracts signed by messengers with connection operators. “The bill’s authors do not take into account that there are more than 20,000 connection operators in the country, and the definition of services of instant messaging covers a huge number of Internet resources. Signing such a quantity of agreements is unfeasible both for most of connection operators and Internet companies,” the RAEC said, adding that subscribers’ identification in public spots, like schools, is a weak point of the bill.

The obligation imposed by the initiative on operators to prevent the delivery of messages with the information banned in the country forces messengers to scan exchanged content, which contradicts the Constitution’s clause safeguarding privacy of correspondence.

At the same time, the ongoing trends of the technological development of messengers, comprising peer-to-peer and end-to-end encoding, which do not allow messengers to decipher correspondence of subscribers, disable messengers to look through content of the exchanged messages, as the experts said.

Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov also voiced his skeptical attitude to the initiative to identify messenger users via SIM cards.

Meanwhile, the bill was welcomed by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media. The watchdog’s Director Alexander Zharov said shortly after the presentation of the document that secret and uncontrolled communication, regardless of engaged channels, will “be evidently used by extremists and terrorists.”

Control over citizens’ correspondence, however, should be out of the question, he said then, adding that only facts of such communication should be registered.

Presidential aide Igor Shchyogolev said the regulation of messengers will make work conditions for various market participants equal.

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