Frustrated Russian operators want law on content storage tested first

By Yekaterina Yezhova

MOSCOW, Mar 1 (PRIME) -- Russian mobile operators and Internet companies still have no idea how a controversial law obliging them to store content of information exchanged by subscribers for up to six months will be implemented in more than a year, but they believe that a pilot project might be of help, they said at a Wednesday round table.

“The law concerns all and sundry. It must be respected by some 36,000 operators if we take the number of issued licenses into account. Tension is high since it’s unclear how much funds will be needed, how operators will respect the law and what will be done with personal data, which include lots of data on commercial and state confidential information,” Internet ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev said.

The controversial law, signed by President Vladimir Putin in 2016, obliges connection operators and Internet companies to store calls and messages for up to six months from July 1, 2018. Metadata must be stored for three years by connection operators and for one year by Internet companies from July 20, 2016.

Internet companies are also obliged to provide the Federal Security Service with keys in case of additional encoding of messages.

Dmitry Petrov, head of government relations at mobile operator MegaFon, said that the company had studied similar legal initiatives in other countries, since the authors of the local data retention law referred to foreign analogues.

“We found out that the E.U. had a directive to keep information on subscribers’ activities and their locations, but not content…The most important thing is that this directive was voided by the European court since it meant intrusion into personal life. The U.K. adopted the law that almost doubled the directive, but it was later cancelled as well. A new law was adopted in 2016, but it could be voided,” Petrov said.

“Requirements to keep facts on connection activities were cancelled in many European countries. The crucial difference is that they did not order operators to store content as the Russian law does.”

The novelty of the initiative makes it difficult for Russia to implement the law since the country can copy nothing. “What we’re going to do in Russia is unprecedented from the point of view of the world experience. No one stores content of correspondence or talks,” Petrov said, adding that threats for information security to befall Russia will be also unique.

The country’s biggest mobile operators – MTS, MegaFon and VimpelCom – agreed that the law should be tested first to understand what costs it will entail and what volume of information should be stored.

Andrei Rego, head of the regulatory risks management department at MTS, said the legal initiative should be implemented as a pilot project in several regions, like it was done with the “System-112” project, a single number to call emergency services.

“A pilot project should help. Preparation for it will take about six months and the same time will be needed to run it. So, we could decide in a year how the law could be implemented,” Rego said.

The participants of the meeting said that the operators themselves will have to finance the test.

Rego also said that market participants will have to buy equipment to comply with the law, and the government could introduce a system of monitoring and control over prices to avoid their rise.

VimpelCom backed the pilot idea, according to the operator’s government relations head Vitaly Nedykhalov. “Another proposal is to exclude heavy traffic and focus on voice and SMSs. We should carry out a pilot test after compiling a technical assignment and then, on the basis of the test’s results, we could revise the assignment. Another proposal is to delay the date of the law coming into effect,” he said.

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