“The logical step would be to ban curtains in the apartment”: expert opinions on the ban on VPNs and anonymizers.
Since the signing of the Yarovaya Law, there have been debates in the Russian media space about the future of anonymizers and VPN services: will they become a new panacea or will the state tighten the screws so much that there will be no freedom, even illusory, on the Internet. And on June 8, it became known that the State Duma was going to consider a bill on a complete ban on anonymizers.
To protect personal data and information,
To access higher quality entertainment content (, Netflix),
To access sites prohibited in the country (),
To access blocked sites from your workplace,
To communicate with relatives abroad.
And among the world's VPN consumption markets, Asian countries remain the largest. For example, 41% of residents of Indonesia, 37% of residents of the Kingdom of Thailand and 35% of Chinese citizens use secure networks to access information.
VPN services in China
With the development of technology, the popularity of mobile VPN applications is growing. The statistics are very logical - in Asian countries they are most often blocked various resources and China, of course, succeeded in this.
With the development of the Internet, the Chinese authorities were faced with the question of reducing the influence of the West on Chinese culture and politics. As a result, the “Golden Shield” was launched, in other words, the “Great Firewall of China”, blocking access to certain sites.
An amazing fact is that the development of the “Golden Shield” was carried out by representatives of Western companies - Cisco, IBM, Yahoo.
Blocking access to prohibited resources has led to the fact that the progressive part of the population has mastered VPNs and proxies and happily uses these means of anonymization on the network.
However, China is closely monitoring the development of VPN services. Thus, in January of this year, Beijing authorities announced the closure of a dozen illegal VPN resources that helped end consumers bypass blocking of sites banned in the Land of the Rising Sun. True, this did not affect large companies that use VPN for data transfer.
China continues to stand by its ban, but with the advent of smartphones and the development and penetration of social networks, the existence of the Great Firewall of China becomes doubtful.
There is an opinion that the Golden Shield will gradually fall because giant Chinese corporations do not benefit from its existence.
VPN services in the USA
In the USA the situation is completely different. The main prohibitions, as a rule, relate to the distribution of pirated content. The war between copyright holders and the torrent tracker the Pirate Bay is clear evidence of this. However, the use of anonymizers and VPN services in the States, as in Europe, is not prohibited by law. About 17% of Americans regularly used proxies and VPNs in 2014 to protect their personal data and access better content.
An interesting story is unfolding now with Netflix. After the service expanded its influence to almost the entire world, the resource's management declared war on consumers who use proxies, VPNs and other anonymization tools to view content not intended for their country. Thus, the video service is trying to please copyright holders. However, the situation looks quite ironic.
Considering that VPNs are designed specifically to hide data end users, Netflix can only block the IP addresses of VPN providers and blacklist them.
Providers whose IPs fall into black list, simply change their addresses and the game starts again. On the other hand, the “Streisand effect” kicks in and special resources appear on the network designed to bypass Netflix blocking.
Development scenarios
By by and large, in Russia there are two options for the development of events:
Neutral. Roskomnadzor will continue to block sites with extremist content, but will not encroach on the freedom of VPN services. This scenario is being implemented now.
Hard. The government will gradually tighten the screws more and more, blocking VPNs used by end consumers. This is already happening to some extent.
In fact, even if the most negative scenario comes true, it will change little the situation on the Russian Internet.
- Firstly, because maybe not 95%, but about 67% of Russians do not know what a VPN is.
- Secondly, resources that are blocked, including VPNs, can create mirrors an infinite number of times and remain available. However, recently the government also approved a bill to block mirrors of sites that distribute pirated content.
VPNs and anonymizers have not yet been subject to the law, however, it will become more difficult for other resources to deal with blocking. But it is worth remembering that even the “Golden Shield” in China does not give unambiguously positive results and anyone can easily bypass it.
As for the State Duma’s consideration of the bill banning anonymizers, we do not believe that this is feasible.
It remains unclear how they are going to determine which VPN services are needed for commercial purposes from services that are used to bypass blocks? This is physically impossible to determine.
In addition, the ban on access to certain sites occurs, rather, from the fear of losing control over the demonic entity called the Internet, the laws of which are completely incomprehensible to the state. And not from good intentions.
State Duma deputies Russian Federation voted for laws regulating the work of instant messengers and banning means of bypassing site blocking.
These laws are published on the website of the Automated System for Supporting Legislative Activities of the State Duma of Russia.
VPNs and anonymizers
Services were also required to provide the ability to transfer emails at the initiative of government agencies in accordance with Russian legislation.
Head of the State Duma Committee on information policy Leonid Levin commented on the information about a possible ban, according to this law, of access to instant messengers for individual users.
“The introduced regulation provides for sanctions only against instant messenger operators if they contribute to violation of the law. There are no plans for any fines or direct bans against users,” he said.
According to the new law, information about the subscriber number of messenger users can be transferred to third parties only with the consent of the first. The law also establishes the obligations of the messenger to identify users by subscriber number operator on the basis of an agreement with the operator. In addition, the law stipulates that instant messengers belonging to legal entities or Russian citizens registered in Russia have the right to be identified by their subscriber number.
The document notes that if messengers fail to comply with the requirements regarding restrictions on sending messages with information that violates the requirements of Russian legislation, it is possible to restrict access to the messenger in the country.
The Internet Ombudsman calls the bill “madness,” Yandex criticizes “excessive” measures, and the first anonymizer refused to cooperate with the authorities in advance.
Bookmarks
Yandex company office. Photo by Alexander Weinstein, Kommersant
On June 8, deputies of three factions submitted a bill to the State Duma banning bypassing blocking using TOR, VPN services and anonymizers, as well as fines for search engines for links to sites with appropriate methods and means.
TJ collected the opinions of experts and industry representatives who were the first to respond to the introduction of a high-profile bill.
Author of the bill and deputy
The adoption of the law will help close additional channels accessing prohibited links by removing them from the operators’ network cores search engines.
We will not block any services. We insist on more intensive and high-quality implementation of the bill, we are closing additional exit channels.
Maxim Kudryavtsev, deputy
A similar position is shared by Kudryavtsev’s colleague, head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, information technology and communications Leonid Levin. In his opinion, the law only limits access to already prohibited information, and does not “introduce new bans or censorship.”
German Klimenko criticized the bill, noting that it does not imply a complete ban on VPN services and anonymizers. The Russian Presidential Advisor on Internet Issues recalled that they plan to ban means of bypassing blocking only in relation to sites blocked in the Russian Federation.
At the same time, Klimenko still doubted whether the law would work flawlessly.
Good question is whether this law will be effective, since most of the services providing such services are located outside of Russia.
German Klimenko, Presidential Internet Advisor
Internet Ombudsman
The Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs on the Internet, Dmitry Marinichev, called the bill “madness” and attention to the point where companies will be able to continue to use ways to bypass blocking.
Impossible to distinguish using a VPN as a way to bypass blocking for commercial purposes, the Internet Ombudsman recalled.
All this goes against common sense. The bill talks about technologies that allow you to bypass the blocking. First of all, these are VPNs and anonymizers. How will they separate a VPN that is used for commercial purposes from a VPN that is used to bypass blocks? It's impossible to determine.
According to him, technical feasibility There is a ban on end devices, but its use can be compared to “persecuting citizens in one’s own country” and a ban on “putting locks on doors.”
The keys must be handed over, and curtains and curtains must be removed from the windows so that one can see how citizens live.
Dmitry Marinichev, Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs on the Internet
Marinichev also drew an analogy with the USSR law banning home brewing.
This is the same thing. It’s technically impossible to ban it, it can all be done by hand, and you can make moonshine, but you can find someone with the help of a local police officer and punish them.
Dmitry Marinichev, Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs on the Internet
Director for Strategic Projects at the Institute for Internet Research, Irina Levova, the bill is a step “towards the complete and final deprivation of the Russian population of constitutional rights.”
If the state’s task is to turn the country’s population into a herd of unthinking cattle, then, of course, a law must be passed.
Along with this logical step, there would be a ban on logic (which is no longer a compulsory subject) and some sections of mathematics, programming, an even greater simplification of Unified State Exam tests and, of course, a ban on the use of curtains in the apartment.
Irina Levova, Director of Strategic Projects, Internet Research Institute
"Yandex"
The Yandex press service said that the introduced bill imposes excessive measures on search engines. The company is referring to a possible obligation to unload domains that should be removed from search results and to prohibit the display of links to blocked pages.
If access is limited, Yandex is sure, it will not be at the level of search engines, which do not provide access to certain sites.
Even if a link to a resource is in the search results, this does not mean that the user, by following the link, will be able to access the resource if the resource was blocked by a telecom operator or otherwise.
Yandex press service
After reviewing the document, Yandex noted its “extremely broad wording.” The company's main concern is that it is not yet possible to assess to whom exactly the requirements of the law will apply.
Rambler&Co
The company Rambler&Co (owns the publications Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru and Championship.com) criticized the bill, calling it “more than crude” and harmful for owners of not the fastest connections.
We are talking about banning technology that not only allows you to bypass the blocking, but also facilitates access to resources at low speeds when accessing the Internet.
The bill banning means for bypassing Internet blocks, which includes VPN services and anonymizers, is in final reading. If such services refuse to block access to prohibited content, they themselves will be blocked by Roskomnadzor. If approved by the Federation Council and President Vladimir Putin, the law will come into force on November 1, 2017.
The Village figured out which services will be subject to restrictions, how they will be blocked and how this will affect users.
What will be blocked
The new law establishes a ban on the use of information systems and programs to gain access to Internet resources blocked in Russia. The law covers not only proxy and VPN services, but also anonymous networks, such as Tor and I2P. In addition, the document prohibits search engines like Google and Yandex from providing links to blocked resources.
However, the list of resources available for restriction does not end there, since sites that post information about means of bypassing blocking are heterogeneous. These include any resources with lists of VPN services and even application stores, including App Store And Google Play. The ban may also include software platforms type operating systems and their technical portals, such as Microsoft's support portal, which describes VPN setup V different versions Windows. Possible limitation of work popular browsers, offering built-in ways to bypass locks. Similar options in various options available in Opera, Chrome or Safari. Lists of VPN services and instructions for setting them up are also distributed on social networks and messengers.
However, the law provides an exception for companies’ own VPNs if these tools are available only to employees. In turn, the Internet Ombudsman under the President Dmitry Marinichev, who called the bill “madness,” noted the impossibility of separating a VPN used for commercial purposes from a VPN used to bypass blocking.
How to block
Anonymizers and VPN services can be blocked in two ways - by IP addresses or by type of traffic.
In the case of using the first technology, already tested in Russia, Roskomnadzor will enter into the register all domain names and IP addresses of official websites of VPN services where you can purchase the product. You can also block public Tor servers that users connect to using IP.
To use the second technology, it is necessary to install DPI equipment on the networks of all operators for deep traffic analysis, which is capable of identifying VPN traffic and distinguishing it from other encrypted HTTPS traffic. DPI equipment is quite expensive, so taking into account large quantities Operators in Russia will have to spend a lot of time and money on using this technology. This method has already been tested in China, where there is a constant arms race between the authorities and developers.
What should users do?
The experience of Asian countries like China, where the Golden Shield content filtering system has been in place since 2003, shows that limiting the operation of tools for bypassing Internet blocks does not completely limit user access to VPN services, Tor exit nodes and other means of proxying traffic.
Clients of VPN services will not notice any changes for themselves before implementing DPI equipment. Unlike sites with software distribution kits, it is extremely difficult to block a VPN itself, which will require a deep understanding of the operating principles of each separate service and network structure. In addition, the VPN service can quickly restructure the network, and everything will have to be done anew. In this case, the restructuring procedure can be automated - in this case VPN provider can create new IP addresses at least every minute. For users it will look like automatic update extensions.
There are now many VPN services around the world, and new ones are constantly appearing. The competition in the VPN market is quite high, and it is impossible to block all bypass tools in a short time. Besides, everything installation files Users will be able to receive VPN applications on forums, by mail or in instant messengers. According to the head of Roskomsvoboda Artem Kozlyuk, 80–90% of services will remain available to Russians.
In addition, the possibility of using a dual VPN will remain and will likely develop - where a user connects to a server in one country (for example, Canada), and from there to a server in another (for example, Norway). Then the final, Norwegian service will perceive Russian user as a Canadian and will not apply blocking from the Roskomnadzor list even if both VPN services comply with Russian law.
Another option is to set up your own VPN by renting space on a foreign hosting, which will require small cash investments. And in some mobile devices, for example, in Android smartphones, there is a built-in VPN function, and in the case of pre-installed programs It is simply impossible to block any VPN resource. In addition, as noted earlier, blocking will officially allow corporate VPNs used by company employees to be bypassed.
As for Tor, the network, in addition to the public list of keys, has a constantly updated list of servers through which you can access the necessary sites. If public Tor nodes are blocked, to connect to the network and access prohibited sites, you can use bridges, which were specially designed to bypass blocking using hidden relays. Users can take advantage of the browser's built-in bridging options or obtain new addresses.
Deputies Maxim Kudryavtsev (United Russia), Nikolai Ryzhak (A Just Russia), Alexander Yushchenko (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) introduced a bill to the State Duma that proposes to ban the use of any special means and services with which you can bypass blocking.
The document proposes to prohibit the use of “information and telecommunication networks, information systems and computer programs to gain access to information resources, including sites or pages of sites on the Internet, access to which is limited on the territory of the Russian Federation.”
In addition, the authors of the initiative propose to amend the Code of Administrative Offenses, according to which search engine operators will be punished for failure to fulfill obligations to gain access to the Roskomnadzor information system and stop issuing links that it contains. This “entails the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of five thousand rubles; for officials - fifty thousand rubles; on legal entities- from five hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand rubles.”
They also propose to fine the owners of “information and telecommunication networks, information systems or programs for electronic computers that can be used on the territory of the Russian Federation to bypass access restrictions, or the owner of an information resource, including a site on the Internet through which access to such information and telecommunication networks is provided, information systems or programs for electronic computers."
In fact, this means that owners of VPNs and any other means of tunneling and proxying traffic will be fined. Punishment for them “entails the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of ten thousand to thirty thousand rubles; for legal entities - from fifty thousand to three hundred thousand rubles.” Or, in case of repeated commission of an administrative offense, “the imposition of an administrative fine on citizens in the amount of thirty thousand to fifty thousand rubles; for legal entities - from three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand rubles or administrative suspension of activities for a period of up to thirty days.”
In the explanatory note, the authors of the bill write that “the practice that has developed since 2012 has revealed the insufficient effectiveness of blocking” and on the Internet you can still find links to blocked resources in search engine results, and you can also use technologies that allow you to gain access to blocked information resources :
“Technologies for directing the traffic of Russian Internet users through foreign servers, anonymous proxy servers, virtual private networks are legal, there is a wide range of possibilities for their lawful use, but these technologies are used to gain access to information resources, access to which is legally limited.”
The creators of the bill propose to provide owners of relevant networks and programs with access to the information resource of Roskomnadzor, which contains information about resources to which access is limited in Russia. If Roskomnadzor’s demands for a ban are not met within 30 days, it is proposed to limit access to information resources that provide the ability to “bypass blocking.”
Adviser to the Russian President on Internet development issues, German Klimenko, has already expressed his opinion regarding this initiative. In a conversation with Lenta.ru journalists, he clarified that the bill submitted to the State Duma does not imply a complete ban on VPN services and anonymizers such as Tor.
“A good question is whether this law will be effective, since most of the services that provide such services are located outside of Russia,” Klimenko noted.
Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs on the Internet Dmitry Marinichev, in a conversation with RBC, called the bill banning technologies for viewing blocked sites “madness.”
“All this goes against common sense. The bill talks about technologies that allow you to bypass the blocking. First of all, these are VPNs and anonymizers. How will they separate a VPN that is used for commercial purposes from a VPN that is used to bypass blocks? It is impossible to determine,” Marinichev said.
An interesting commentary on what was happening was also published by Sarkis Darbinyan, lawyer, head of the Defense Center digital rights"and leading lawyer of Roskomsvoboda:
"For lately Many bad laws regarding Internet regulation have been introduced and passed into the State Duma, but this one is one of the worst. It fits well into the trend of illiterate pressure on the network and infringement of digital human rights. But this time his legs grow not from the special services and the regulator, but from media lobbyists, MKS and Rostelecom, who are also not averse to following government agencies in monitoring users and censoring content.
The authors of the bill essentially propose to assign additional responsibilities to search engines, the same as telecom operators, for the daily unloading of domains that need to be removed from search results, and block technical services (for example, those described on openrunet.org) if they do not provide restriction of access to sites included in numerous Roskomnadzor registers. If the law is passed, tools such as VPN and TOR will be completely blocked at the carrier level, since it is obvious that service administrators will not filter anything.
The legislative initiative is absolutely unviable. The experience of Asian countries with repressive political regimes shows that even blocking sites with distribution kits will not completely limit user access to VPN services, TOR exit nodes in different parts of the world and other means of traffic proxying.
The initiative looks especially funny in the light latest news that due to the vulnerability of the blocking system and the actions of Roskomnadzor, users were massively deprived of access to completely legal sites. If these tools did not exist, it is unclear how users would even exercise their rights to access information. When the Constitution cannot protect, they come to the rescue software. Now they want to limit us in this too.”
