PRESS: Russian security svc may take control of local Internet traffic

MOSCOW, Sep 21 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal Security Service, the communications and industry ministries are discussing a whole range of technical solutions to decipher and have access to the whole Internet traffic of the country’s citizens, business daily Kommersant reported Wednesday citing people familiar with the matter.

Analysis of traffic by key words, like a “bomb”, will be carried out with the DPI systems, which are already used by connection operators to screen requested Web sites.

Operators must retain Internet traffic under the law, but data will be useless without decoding. According to experts, deciphering will make it possible not only to prevent potential threats, but also identify behavior profiles of users in the Internet up to assessment of their psychological state and taste preferences.

“It makes no sense to store exabytes of cyphered Internet traffic: one can find nothing there. The Federal Security Service wants all traffic to be decoded in the real time regime and analyzed by key parameters, roughly speaking by a word ‘bomb’, while the ministries insist on deciphering traffic only of those subscribers who will draw attention of law enforcement entities,” a source in the presidential administration told the daily.

Under the law, organizers of information distribution, that is owners of Internet sites transferring electronic messages, like Google, Yandex, Mail.Ru Group, WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, Facebook and others, must hand over keys to deciphering to the security service upon request from July 20.

“Foreign companies simply do not comply with the requirement, and Russian ones may give the keys after multiple requests. The Internet has a great deal of sites that don’t distribute information and use protected https-connection. It’s not always clear without deciphering of traffic what Web sites users surfed, to say nothing of what they did there,” one of the sources said.

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