Russia was definitely included into a list of countries with Internet censorship. This is stated in a report by the international journalist organization, Reporters Without Borders, dated March 12, the World Day Against Cybercensorship.
In Russia, as Reporters Without Borders note, aside from the control exerted by the Kremlin on most of its media outlets, the Internet became the most free space for sharing information.
Yet its independence is being jeopardized by arrests and prosecutions of the bloggers, as well as by blockings of so-called "extremist" websites, including the Kavkaz-Center.
The propaganda of the Russian regime is increasingly omnipresent in the Web, and the Runet is transforming into a tool for political control, the report says
A Finam analyst, Delitsyn, specified that the attitude of the Russian state and partly of the society to the Internet is rather skeptical: the Internet is not recognized as absolutely good, the emphasis is largely placed on the risks that it carries with.
The authors of the Report recall Putin's words, who in January 2010 in response to a proposal by the Yabloko's leader Mitrokhin to take into account evidence of falsified regional elections, published in the Internet, said: "In the Internet, 50 percent is porn. Why should we refer to the Internet?"
The "Reporters" emphasized that since 2000 every Russian provider must install a SORM-2 system that makes it possible for the interior ministry and the FSB to have an access to the list of pages visited by the users and to the contents of their e-mails, and in 2007 a law has been passed allowing the FSB to intercept Internet data without court ruling.
In addition, the organization notes that popular social nets - such as VKontakte and Livejournal - were purchased by "oligarchs closely linked to the KGB regime".
As recognized by the director of the hosting company Masterhost, Ovchinnikov, sometimes a call from the authorities is enough to destroy the information on our site or to block the access to a site.
Reporters Without Borders also drew attention to the nearest neighbor of Russia - Belarus, which incidentally also blocks the Kavkaz-Center. This country has long been named as "suspicious" in Internet suppression and could now become a full "Internet enemy" because this summer a decree comes into force about state regulation of the Net by the state..
Delitsyn explains the suppression by Russian authorities' of the truth in the Net by the fact that quite a lot of people (one third of adults) now use Internet in Russia, so it became an influential media platform.
"There's a lot of Internet users in Russia now, and the Internet has become an influential media outlet, so the attitude towards it is the same as to the other media", the Finam's analyst says.
"It would be naive to assume that this parallel media, which is being used by everybody, remains without attention by those institutions that control our media now", the expert concludes.
Delitsyn recalled that in 1991, during a coup, the leaders of the Emergency Committee took control over traditional media, but they did not know about the existence of the Internet. Now the situation changed radically.
Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center
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