Putin offers G20 to craft common rules of digital econ, security

HAMBURG, Germany, Jul 10 (PRIME) -- Russia has unveiled ideas of general rules of the digital economy and cybersecurity at the Group of Twenty (G20) Summit in the city of Hamburg, President Vladimir Putin said on July 8 at the event’s second and last day.

“Our suggestions were as follows: to elaborate common rules in the digital economy sphere, define what cybersecurity is, design a whole system of rules of behavior in this industry,” Putin said at a news conference upon results of the summit.

The summit’s first session was dedicated to issues of the global economy, finances, and commerce. The second part was about climate and energy. Matters of development of African countries, migration policy, and the digital economy were also on the agenda.

Russian Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said on his Twitter page that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had offered to make the digital economy the main topic of the G20 meeting in 2018.

Under a growing threat of terrorism, Western countries are changing their mind about the Internet, pending toward a necessity to regulate this industry, Nikiforov also said during a briefing.

“The Russian Federation has been defending a position for a long time of creating common conditions to regulate management of critical infrastructure of the Internet on the basis of such international institutions, like the U.N. Our colleagues, more often from the West, opposed such approaches,” the minister said.

They believed that the Internet and IT were beyond attention and control of any state. “Meanwhile, in the context of occurring terrorist attacks, we hear more often from our Western colleagues about an intention to strengthen conditions of regulation in this industry,” he said.

“It should take place only on the grounds of existing rules of the international right, on the floors of such organizations, like the U.N. There is no room for double standards.”

Russia speaks in favor of the adoption of common documents and conventions to precisely stipulate rules of behavior of the government in this industry.

Freedom in the Internet does not mean lawlessness, and the digital economy is a new environment of communications to apply the existing rules of national economies. “There is no country that will let anybody ignore its laws. That’s why regulation will evolve in this way or another,” Nikiforov told reporters.

Russia sees wrong to block its programs in the U.S., because work should be more open. “We hope for good cooperating in (cybersecurity), and we think it’s certainly not the point to speak about in the language of sanctions,” the minister said.

“We’ve recently seen a number of reports regarding certain companies about efforts to block the use of Russian software, in particular, in these or other state units of the U.S. We think the approach is incorrect. We should unite our efforts, lift any restrictions, open source codes of software in these industries, where it should be done.”

Mass media reported earlier in July that senior U.S. intelligence officials had suggested Congress steer well clear of Russian antivirus program maker Kaspersky Lab’s products and lawmakers are weighing a proposal to ban the company from the Pentagon.

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