Hoping to curb “extremist activity,” Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday that they are looking to extend the authority of their special services in order to control communications networks.
During his speech at the Federation Council (the upper house of the Russian parliament), FSK information security center spokesman Dmitry Frolov said the agency wants to develop new rules that would enable Internet providers to prevent extremist ideas from gaining increased presence on the Web, according to a report by Russian news and information agency, RIA Novosti. Frolov went on to suggest that the FSB should have access to telephone company user databases that contain information on all Internet addresses of both static and mobile users, adding that because they have access to the Net, it was necessary to implement obligatory registration of mobile-phone users.
Citing “a lot of websites” that describe how to create and operate explosives and recalling recent political changes in Yugoslavia, Georgia, and Ukraine, Frolov said the Internet is a “serious instrument to form public opinion” that gives extremist groups the ability “to mobilize the political forces against the authorities of their state.
“The undetermined legal relationship on the Internet leads to the threat of spreading inauthentic and biased information, disclosure of secrets, illegal copying of confidential information, as well as the violation of authors’ rights,” Frolov continued, stressing that the Internet makes it possible for criminals to infiltrate the network of military and civil objects and steal large sums of money.
