Russia wants national Intranet : Iron Digital curtain

One should be surprised that this bill is coming so late, ' said the well-known Russian political analyst Georgi Bowt these days without any sarcasm in his newspaper column. The Duma, the chamber of deputies of the Russian Parliament, has approved a draft law for a "sovereign Russian Internet". Russia wants to make the World Wide Web, a national Intranet. A kind of "Firewall" is Russia's shield against Western Cyber-attacks. In Case Of Need. And this "need" is broad. In plain text it is said: in the Future, unwanted messages are neither to Russia, nor from Russia. The state is responsible for monitoring and control. In the context of Russian domestic and foreign policy, said Bowt, whether such a law is "inevitable". A world-wide Trend towards nationalization of certain areas of the Internet. Which countries are taking the lead, says Bowt: North Korea, China, Iran.

One of the authors of the act of the Deputy Andrei Lugovoi. In the West, the former secret service officer as a murderer. Numerous pieces of evidence point to the fact that Lugovoi poisoned the Kremlin-critic Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 with Polonium-210. In Russia he is now one of the most prominent lobbyists for private security services. In Parliament he sits in the Kremlin is loyal to the extreme-right party of Vladimir Shirinowski.

Russian Intranet

In the power-law is officially a matter of "to create an independent infrastructure for trouble-free Functioning of the Internet". It says So in the explanatory notes which the authors of the law in the Duma have introduced. And actually, this idea was also the starting point, as the 2014 began the discussion on a Russian Intranet. When the West imposed the first sanctions because of the occupation of the Crimea, feared the Kremlin, he could be cut off by a Blockade of the international payments, Swift, Mastercard, or Visa.

Those fears are still there. But in the meantime, it's much more than that. This is evident when one reads the explanatory notes to the act. Aims to minimise the data transferred abroad. Therefore, a virtual "border crossing" and exchange points for data should be established. The Provider must have the technical possibilities, "in the event of danger" to respond effectively in real time. Responsible for the state regulation would be for Telekom, head of Roskomnadzor. In practice, the control would lie in the secret service, my IT-experts of non-governmental organizations. Even today, the Provider information obligations to the FSB.

Rich eleven Server?

With concern, not looking forward to but only NGOs and opposition the new law. The business Association has sent a letter full of skepticism in the Duma. He fears that it could have catastrophic consequences if Russia will be separated by the push of a button from the main foreign servers, on large parts of the business transactions, Russian corporations are run. The entrepreneurs have been granted, in Russia, there were eleven large Server, and for the national use, is quite sufficient.

The Russian court of auditors keeps the cost of the "great Russian Firewall". Officially, they are calculated at the equivalent of 300 million rubles (around four million euros), of experts however of an amount that is at least five Times as high and the only for the introduction. It would add the annual operating costs.

the end of the INF Treaty, Russia wants to participate in the new rocket

work to refute all objections, to be tested, the "sovereign" Russian Internet in the next few weeks. Then the Connections to the West are cut off temporarily. Frank Herold