Is The Internet Being Viewed As A Threat In Russia?

The Internet is clearly a potential political force — and we need look further for confirmation of this fact than this news story:

MOSCOW, April 29 (RIA Novosti) – FSB analysts have admitted for the first time that the Internet poses a threat to Russian authorities. Referring to the experience of Ukraine and Georgia, a representative of the FSB Center for Information Security, Dmitry Frolov, put forward an idea to impose stricter technical control over the Russian Internet domain during a round table on legislation on communications and IT at the Federation Council on Thursday.

Both Biznes and Gazeta.ru report the FSB proposed imposing immediate control over users and providers of Internet services, which is the crux of an idea to tighten up control that has long been under discussion by the Russian authorities.

“All providers must be ordered to keep track of Internet activities conducted by their registered users,” Frolov said. In his opinion, providers must register permanent and dynamic IP-addresses of their customers and send this information to the security agencies. He also said it was necessary to “introduce mandatory registration of mobile phone users, considering they have Internet access.”

The FSB is the Russian federal intelligence agency. And it clearly wants to keep closer tabs on who is reading what, writing what, and using what phones. More:

In his reasoning, the FSB representative constantly referred to the flood of extremist sites “of various political backgrounds,” which can “use the Web for mobilizing political forces against state authorities.” He referred to recent events in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine as striking examples.

Despite the obvious threat expressed by the FSB representative, businessmen and officials from the Information Technology Ministry reacted to his statements skeptically. “We believe the Internet should not be controlled,” said Alexander Parshukov, a ministry spokesman. He said the current Law on Media provided a solid legislative base covering the responsibility of providers for Internet content.

“In fact, all providers have long been cooperating with the security agencies,” said Alexander Malis, the vice president of Korbina-Telecom. “There is no need to impose additional control. Besides, in the majority of cases it is virtually impossible to establish the identity of someone sending an e-mail.”

Still: it’s hard to believe a member of a federal intelligence agency would make such a suggestion — unless it displays the tip of the iceberg of thought within at least some segments of the federal government.