Russia's 'dictatorship-of-the-law' approach to internet policy

As international politics' developments heavily weigh on Russia's domestic politics, the internet is placed on top of the list of "threats" that the government must tackle, through an avalanche of legislations aiming at gradually isolating the Russian internet from the global infrastructure. The growth of the Russian internet market during the last couple of years is likely to remain secondary to the "sovereignisation" of Russia's internet. This article aims at understanding these contradictory trends, in an international context in which internet governance is at a crossroads, and major internet firms come under greater regulatory scrutiny from governments. The Russian 'dictatorship-of-the-law' paradigm is all but over: it is deploying online, with potentially harmful consequences for Russia's attempts to attract foreign investments in the internet sector, and for users' rights online.

In an international context in which internet governance is at a crossroads, and major internet firms come under greater regulatory pressure from governments, this article aims at comprehending the contradictory trends that are shaping the development of the Russian internet.The Russian "dictatorship of the law"10 paradigm is not over: it is now deploying online, with potentially harmful consequences for Russia's attempts to attract investment in the ICT and internet sectors, and for users' rights and freedoms online.

STABILITY AT ALL COST
As a relatively young nation-state that has been experiencing, since the chaotic 1990s transition to a free market economy and pluralism, a potent feeling of insecurity, Russia has been adopting a threat-oriented lens towards the internet.11By extension, the country's internet policy conveys a long-lasting national security fear.This feeling stems in part from the complex interactions between state authorities and the media ecosystem since the 1980s, when Soviet leaders tolerated increased access to previously suppressed information, thus opening the 'information gates' to the masses.In the 2000s, with Russia striving to recover its full sovereignty and struggling against the 'permeability' of its neighbourhood, Vladimir Putin gradually saw the information revolution -driven by the considerable growth in domestic internet access -as one of the most pervasive components of the United States' expansionism in the post-Soviet sphere, most notably in Russia itself.
However, officials have long paid a modest attention to RuNet's development, supporting its benefits for the country's economy while tolerating some spaces online for dissenting activities.12 The first legal online restrictions were imposed in [2002][2003]  "extremism".In parallel, SORM-II, the technical system used by several law enforcement agencies to intercept and analyse the contents of telecommunications within Russia, extended its reach to monitoring the internet.13 The authorities' approach radically changed from 2011 when they observed citizens from some Arab countries mobilising and coordinating their protest actions through networked technologies.These events -known as "Arab Spring" -did profoundly impact the minds of However, the 'power of networks' was mostly used at a local level: blogs were the only way to draw the attention of authorities and make them act, when usual means did not work due to the total lack of attention of politicians to the population's daily problems and the level of corruption.20 The

RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN
The issue of the "right to be forgotten" -so far limited to Europe -has also sparked off parliamentary debates.In June 2015 the State Duma passed in first reading a draft bill which forces search engines to delete links to any information that is over three years old, based on citizens' requests and without court orders.A formal complaint addressed to the search engine and mentioning the topic of the information to be removed (not a hyperlink, as in European

ALL POWERS TO ROSKOMNADZOR?
The most controversial discussions and laws have been involving the private sector.The post-Snowden context proved timely for officials on the basis that the privacy policies adopted by transnational companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and others pose a threat to Russia's digital sovereignty -and consequently national security.In the wake of Snowden's intelligence brought this date forward.However, the negative reaction of numerous Russian and international companies forced the Duma to reschedule the effective date on 1 September 2015.
The requirements of the law do not cover the personal data of non-Russian citizens and stateless persons, even when their data is collected in Russia.In this case, it would be possible to continue processing such data in the same way as it is currently the case, as long as it is separated from the data of Russian citizens.
The law indeed took force on 1 September 2015, although it introduced nuances in its scope, adding to the confusion surrounding the legislative process.Roskomnadzor made clear it will not verify the compliance of mainstream services with the personal data until 2016.41 Roskomnadzor has made an exception for air travel data, which under international conventions must be stored internationally (the so-called "Passenger Name Records").According to some observers, the main target of Russian authorities is the RuNet market: "companies that buy and sell products or services in Russia to Russians, but may store consumer data in servers offshore".42Roskomnadzor spokesman even declared that the main transnational internet actors are not the target of the law, the first in line being financial institutions, hotels, mobile operators and e-commerce.43 Unquestionably, Russia is not the first country in the world to impose such data localisation requirements across all sectors of the economy: China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam have implemented similar laws and Brazil and Germany have sought to enact localisation policies.As Jonah Force Hill noted, the data localisation movement is a complex and multilayered phenomenon: depending on the country in which it is being advanced, localisation -supposedly defending privacy -also serves to protect domestic businesses from foreign competition, to support domestic intelligence and law enforcement ambitions, to suppress dissent and to stir up anti-American feelings for narrow political ends.44 It is not exaggerate to say Russia combines all these motivations -at the expense of its economic performance.Half of Russia's GDP comes from the services sector, which uses data extensively.45Some fear the localisation law would have unforeseeable consequences for the Russian economy and its ability to attract investments and create jobs.46 In the short run, data localisation requirements may well reduce both demand and supply, resulting in loss of productivity, competitiveness and economic activity.In the long run, such policies also could make Russia less attractive to investment and deprive its economy of its innovative potential.47 On a security perspective, the law on data localisation may be interpreted as the Russian authorities' will to "fight" against the https protocol, which is used in particular by Gmail, Facebook and Wikipedia.The Russian law enforcement agencies' system for monitoring the internet cannot handle https due to the encryption used, whose standards have been reinforced by the main internet players in the wake of Edward Snowden's disclosures.48Once again, Russia is not a cas isolé: EU countries such as the United Kingdom or France have sought to pressure internet firms so that their security services could track the online activities of extremists.49 Russia's 'dictatorship-of-the-law' approach to internet policy

CATCH UP AND OVERTAKE AMERICA!
Though not specific to Russia, plans to promote national networking technology, set up a secure national email service and encourage regional internet traffic to be routed locally are well in the spirit of the times in Moscow.50 All these claims tend to legitimise and revive the longstanding call for a "national operating system" (OS) that would reduce the Russian dependency on Microsoft Windows.Back in 2011, then Minister of Communications Igor Schegolev approved what he called a prototype for "Russian Windows", a national operating system that was designed to be used by government officials and civil servants.However, that project was called off in 2012 when Vladimir Putin appointed Nikolai Nikiforov as the head of the Ministry of Communications -with a seemingly less ambitious agenda.
In May 2015 the Russian authorities announced their plan to work alongside the Finnish smartphone company Jolla, which built the Sailfish OS, to develop an alternative mobile OS.51 In his statement, the Minister of Communications pushed for a BRICS-made project, with the goal of creating an "international consortium" that would include IT companies from each of the BRICS countries (Brazil, China, India and South Africa).52Foreign mobile operating systems currently account for more than 95percent of the Russian market53 -the official ambition is to see this reduced to 50 percent by 2025.54Undeniably, developing a wholly Russian-made mobile OS corresponds to the government's plans for import substitution -in a strained domestic economic context, which is also applicable to most of its economic sectors.
It may also be a response to the American technological embargo upon Crimea: in January 2015, Barack Obama ordered sanction that targeted Crimea -banning American online services like Amazon, PayPal, and Apple's App Store from operating in the disputed peninsula.Russians promptly reacted by underlining the U.S. "double standard": "Isn't it strange that a country claiming to defend freedom suddenly imposes territorial sanctions?"55Besides, it paradoxically reveals as well a will to catch up with a technological gap with the West, as a perceived feeling of inferiority towards the U.S. technological supremacy.56 More broadly, these debates also happen outside Russia -Europe is also increasingly worried with its digital sovereignty, that is, its perceived dependence upon U.S. technologies and services.57Worries are often similar as regards the net giants' practices.In February 2015, after Yandex lodged a complaint, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS, for its abbreviation in Russian) opened a probe against Google for abusing its dominant market position with its mobile operating system Android.Yandex accused Mountain View of forcing smartphone manufacturers to pre-embed all of Google's applications, including its search engine, at the expense of fair competition.Google would also have caused Yandex's loss of market share on the mobile market -they have dropped from 49percent to 44 percent in a year.

STEADY GRIPS AHEAD
In such a restrictive context, and in the light of the current information struggle over Ukraine, one may assume that the Russian official state-centric approach towards the internet is highly likely to prevail -if not to strengthen, with less freedom for civil society and independent businesses.
Pioneers of Russia's internet -mostly the technical community that introduced the internet in Russia in the 1990s and the not-for-profit structures "governing" the national segment, along with IT entrepreneurs and active users of the blogosphere -have clearly been overshadowed by a more security-oriented grouping of so-called "power ministries" (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Observatory showed that almost half of all Russians believe that online information needs to be censored; that one quarter of Russians think the internet threatens political stability; and that a clear majority of Russians do not like having information critical of the government or calling for political change being available online.65 The "Arab Spring" uprisings, the mass demonstrations in the winter 2011-2012 in Russia's biggest cities, then Snowden's disclosures are as many examples of a geostrategic landscape modeled by "information" which is dominated by a still hegemonic United States -as the Russian decision-makers see it.All the recent regulatory initiatives pushed by the government may well fit into a broader "information warfare" strategy directed against the West -the objective of securing the domestic "informational space" being not the least of the stakes.66The will to create an alternative "reliable" Wikipedia and official calls for a "patriotic internet" are cases in point.67 The same with the state-controlled telecom Rostelecom-sponsored search engine Sputnik.ru,released in May 2014.The idea of creating a state search engine is nothing but new: it arose in 2008 after Russia's war against Georgia -seeing that the information rising to the top of existing search engines did not always chime with the government line, officials realised the desirability of an aggregator more amenable to the state's interests.68 The consequences of this increasing "self-isolation" in Russia's internet are likely to prove more severe in the economic realm.Data regulation including data localisation measures may have a significant negative economic effect: Russia's innovative capacities would likely be severely hampered, and data-driven industries, typically e-commerce, tourism, financial services, logistics and most forms of business services would also be affected in the first instance.69

CONCLUSION
What we are likely to see is a "hybrid" approach, combining more legislation with some later fine-tuning.Unquestionably, in the current difficult legislative context, complicated by Western sanctions against Russia and the new strategy of import substitution, it is going to be more challenging both for Russian companies to keep up with global business, and for the foreign players to stay in the Russian market.70 Will then the RuNet wall-garden itself?Like many governments in a post-Snowden context, Russia is actively seeking to legislate and enforce sovereign internet laws that may well fragment digital information-sharing.Although it is tempting to emphasise the restrictive nature of these laws, we should put them into a wider context in which appears an objective convergence between states, be they authoritarian or not, towards a "digital wave" that might carry their sovereign prerogatives away.Here lies a relevant ground for further research: in a post-Snowden context, more than ever, we need to think beyond a binary vision of the internet as "a new space of freedom" or "a new instrument of control".
on condition of fighting Russia's 'dictatorship-of-the-law' approach to internet policy Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 3 November 2015 | Volume 4 | Issue 4 Russian political elites.Reflecting on the sustained use of digital technologies -microblogs such as Twitter, video platforms such as YouTube and social networks such as Facebook -in the revolutionary processes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the Kremlin and Russian law enforcement agencies started to monitor closely the impact of the political use of networked technologies upon social mobilisation and democratic transition.14The events in the Arab world did clearly reawaken the authorities' fear of "regime change" initiated from abroad with the use of digital tools.These international developments inspired many in Russia who demanded substantial political changes after a decade of Vladimir Putin's rule characterised by rising living standards for the population guaranteed by the state in exchange of (most) political freedoms.15During the years of Dmitry Medvedev as President of Russia (2008-2012), the internet served as a substitute to the public sphere in Russia, equivalent to the role played by the literature in the XIXth century and independent media in the 1980s.16Digital technologies have been used indeed by citizens in a "creative" way for mobilisation purposes around a particular cause, addressing directly the politicians to solve such issues, thus going beyond both the legal online restrictions that have been imposed since 2002-2003,17and overcoming the traditional distrustful attitude towards institutions among the Russian society.18Overall, internet users have become skillful in circumventing 'legislative" obstacles online or at least mitigating their consequences.They learned to move their profiles quickly or duplicate them on Western social networks when popular blog platforms such as LiveJournal were subject to DDoS attacks.They massively use services such as TOR (see pp. 6-7), and traditionally resort to humour to make a mockery of political authorities.19 Ministry of Defense, Federal Service for Control of the Narcotics Trade, law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Security Service), and political figures from the ruling party United Russia and its affiliated youth organisations.State-controlled media64 and a myriad of "information" portals also increasingly contribute to the dissemination of a security-driven approach to the internet, favourable to increased online monitoring and further regulation by law enforcement agencies.Public perceptions of the internet remain dominated by the authorities and large numbers in the Russian population are favourable to increased regulation and censorship.A recent study by the Annenberg School for Communication's Internet Policy Russia's 'dictatorship-of-the-law' approach to internet policy Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 9 November 2015 | Volume 4 | Issue 4 political legitimacy.26Not surprisingly, the ongoing conflict with the West over Ukraine27 provides the perfect context to justify and further a more repressive agenda towards the internet in Russia.In February 2014 amendments to the Federal Law "On 31formation, information technologies and information security," allows pre-court blocking of websites instigating riots, extremist or terrorist actions, thus extending the outreach of the original law fighting child pornography.This law has been actively used ever since to ask Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to remove or restrict access to content.In its 2014Transparency Report Google reported that between July and December 2013 the number of content take-down requests from Russia increased by 25percent compared to the preceding reporting period.28Discussionsalso focused on granting the police extrajudicial power to block access to internet anonymisers and "the means of accessing anonymous networks, such as TOR."29The latter is already blocked in countries such as Belarus, China, Ethiopia, Iran and Kazakhstan -while its average number of daily users in Russia does not cease to grow (142,600 Russian internet users access TOR on a daily basis), as it represents a convenient means to circumvent the new legal restrictions.30Despiterecent failures to fight online anonymity, the Russian legislators still seem eager to resort to law-making in order to restrict access to the TOR network.31 In an international context marked by strenuous information campaigns over the events in Ukraine, added to what he perceives as the decline of a "morally decadent" West -which would use the internet to pervert Russian society and culture, Vladimir Putin has seriously come to consider the foreign policy of the internet as the establishment of a new U.S.-led hegemonic framework.Not surprisingly, the scandal involving the United States National Security Agency (NSA) sparked by Edward Snowden's leakage of classified documents from June 2013 allowed Russian authorities to legitimise their own regulation and surveillance practices, and to push forward other legislations further tightening government control over the internet.
35ion) is enough.In early July 2015 the draft passed in third reading in the State Duma, but it still needs to be approved by the Federation Council and then signed by the President to become law.Internet industry representatives in Russia have spoken out against the law, force search engines to delete links to any personal information that is more than three years old -even without evidence that the information is inaccurate or false.33Concretely,leaks on corruption cases involving high-level officials or state companies' executives could possibly be sued -the examples of Alexey Navalny's disclosures on his blog, or Boris Nemtsov's online report that proves the involvement of Russian troops in the war in the Donbass region, Russia's 'dictatorship-of-the-law' approach to internet policy Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 5 November 2015 | Volume 4 | Issue 4immediately come to mind.34AFTERSNOWDEN:THEPATHTO 'INFORMATION SOVEREIGNTY'In April 2014 VladimirPutin publicly assimilated the internet to a "CIA project" and expressed reservations to Russian internet companies which are registered abroad "not only for taxation purposes" (such as the successful local search engine Yandex).Rumours about an internet "kill switch" being devised in Russia came after "cyber exercises" reportedly revealed vulnerabilities in RuNet's security infrastructure preparedness against potential external aggression.35Thisproduced calls for the creation of a self-contained system duplicating the root domain name system (DNS) architecture to keep the RuNet running in case of emergency, either externallywhich is no longer seen as hypothetical in the current belligerent geopolitical context -or, in case of civil disorder and/or extremist action, internally.Even though a special Security Council meeting reassured that "no internet switch off" or state takeover is planned, it would be right to assume the further strengthening of Russia's internet at the level of critical cyber infrastructure as part of the national security capacities.36 disclosures, several members of both houses of the parliament suggested that all servers on which the Russian citizens' personal data were stored should be located in Russia, and started a media campaign to bring global web platforms under Russian jurisdiction -either requiring them to be accessible in Russia by the domain extension .ru,orforcing them to be hosted on Russian territory.37DeputyPrime Minister Dmitry Rogozin claimed that services such as Facebook and Twitter are elements of a larger American campaign against Russia, while State Duma members called for tighter regulations on state officials' internet activity, based on the concern that Russian bureaucrats commonly discuss or upload government secrets in communications hosted on American websites (mainly Gmail).38 collection, retention, processing and storage of Russian citizens' personal data and facilitating state supervision activities by Roskomnadzor.40Initiallymeant to come into force on 1 September 2014 it caused stir in international business circles -which realised they would be unable to comply with the new requirements on time, when a new deadline(1 January 2015) Parliamentary debates nevertheless continued for a year until the controversial Federal Law "On the introduction of amendments into separate legal acts of the Russian Federation defining the order of personal data processing in the information and telecommunication networks" was passed in autumn 2014.39The law is aimed at restricting the use of foreign servers for the Russia's 'dictatorship-of-the-law' approach to internet policy Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 6 November 2015 | Volume 4 | Issue 4 60ssia needs its own national text messaging service "to reflect [Russian] national identity".59ChechenPresidentRamzanKadyrov -who is tech-savvy and often uses social networks to reach Russian or global audiences -stressed that the main issue with using foreign communication services is a lack of control and access to user data for Russian security services.60Ifthere is no direct evidence that the Russian authorities took their inspiration from foreign internet legislations, they do care about regulatory practices observed in other countries -be they authoritarian or democratic regimes.A report by the Civil Society Development Foundation, a Russian "think tank" with close ties to the Kremlin,61 assessed in length various forms of internet control in China and Iran on one side, and the U.S. and Great Britain on the other side, and produced policy recommendations to the Russian government.62Besides, the