Report: Watchdog head says Runet law needed amid Google-Huawei war

MOSCOW, Jul 2 (PRIME) -- Russia needs the law on the sustainable Runet in the light of the recent global trends, like competition between Google and Huawei or attacks on infrastructure of different countries, the communications service’s Director Alexander Zharov told television channel Rossiya 24 in an interview late on Monday.

“I don’t like the word ‘sovereign’ because the Internet cannot be sovereign, private or closed. The network by its architecture overcomes all obstacles as it was designed to create conditions for functioning of any connection network after a nuclear war, when all infrastructure has perished. This is why it’s more correct to speak about a secure Runet,” Zharov said.

“In the conditions I’d say of a competitive battle between Google and Huawei, when everything is possible, I’d say such a law is certainly essential.”

In May, President Vladimir Putin signed a bill on safe and sustainable functioning of the Runet, which will take effect in November, into law.

The communications service is authorized to set the rules of traffic routing for local operators, which must install technical means of resistance to threats, which the watchdog will provide, on their networks.

Zharov said the information society brings not only benefits, but also huge risks.

“We must know infrastructure of public telecommunication network. We routinely need it to see where there is much traffic, where there is little traffic to tell an operator where to redirect it. Every connection operator knows only about itself, while we help everyone to know about everything, the situation will be transparent. We’re preparing this system together with the connection operators. We have no purpose of surveillance, but the purpose of protection in case of an attack,” the official said.

Reserve copies of domain names in the zones ru, .ðô, and .su should be created. “If our servers are disconnected by anyone’s evil intent or as a result of malicious actions, we’ll be at least safe and will continue functioning,” he said.

Exploitation of equipment to fulfil the law on the Runet will not impact network neutrality, under which the Internet service providers must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, or method of communication.

“Network neutrality will be unaffected since equipment in case of necessity will single out and create problems for traffic only of banned resources,” Zharov said, adding that users will not notice any changes in the Internet speed.

“All equipment that will be used against attacks, to get information, for analytics, will be paid by the government and installed by the government. Connection operators won’t bear any costs,” he said.

Equipment should create no problems for equipment of connection operators, should not impact services for final users and should be effective. “Unless these three conditions are met, we won’t install anything,” he said.

Requirements to equipment factor in future services, like the Internet of Things and 5G.

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