Is Yarovoi the victim? The first provider left Russia

VPN provider Private Internet Access (PIA) has announced that it is leaving the Russian Federation. The company explained that they were forced to take the anti-terrorism package “Yarovoy” by such a step. The company also indicated that the Russian authorities already control several company servers in the country.

“The Russian government has passed a new law that obliges providers to store all Russian Internet traffic for up to a year. We are confident that due to the pressure of the authorities surrounding the new law, some of our Russian servers were recently captured by the Russian authorities, without any warnings or proper procedures, ”reads the official report.



Representatives emphasized that no logs, personal information or information about the sessions on those servers in which the bodies are interested, no, customers can not worry. The company said that as soon as it became aware of such interest, it closed all the Russian floodgates and ceased all activities in the country.



“Spring Package” is a combination of draft laws developed by Deputy Irina Spring and Senator Viktor Ozerov. Despite the heated debates and negative reviews of the profile community, the document was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The essence of the document is that now providers are required to keep logs and metadata for the time that the Government of the Russian Federation is to establish. Vladimir Putin gave time until autumn to estimate costs and optimal data storage time. Also, providers will be required to cooperate with the authorities and transfer all data for decryption.

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According to the lawyers of the company RUVDS, “panic on the ship” is still premature and resembles a panic when adopting amendments to the Federal Law 152 “On personal data”.

“After examining the signed package of amendments, it is clear that at the moment there are no major changes. According to Article 13 of this package, providers are required to keep data on the facts of customer actions for 3 years after this fact, but the customer data itself is valid for up to 6 months, despite the fact that the maximum storage period is uncertain and left at the discretion of the Government of the Russian Federation. Taking into account the negative response to this law by the Minister of Communications Nikiforov, it is hoped that the dates will not be very long, and the industry itself will be given enough time to adapt.



If we talk about who may benefit from this panic, you should pay attention to telecom operators, who are constantly looking for a reason to raise prices for telecommunication services. If you recall, telecom operators were strongly opposed to the abolition of “mobile slavery”, saying that they are not technically ready and it will be expensive, which means that prices should be raised. However, since that time, Russians have become accustomed to the fact that the operator is easy to change without losing numbers, and prices are only falling due to the high competition. Yes, and TELE-2 does not allow operators to relax in this matter.



And now there is a distortion of facts. The law clearly states that the data retention limit (on the facts of customers' operations) is 180 days, and the minimum period is 0 days. The government decides what is the maximum storage period for the client data itself, but in the end they can refer to SORM and SORM-2 and not change anything at all. But the operators received a reason to raise prices, or at least talk about it.



In general, the bill itself does not look so radical, remembering how it is approached to such data in the West, especially in the United States. Edward Snowden described it in colors, and if you take his revelations into account, it turns out that this law is really aimed at enhancing the security of law-abiding citizens.



Therefore, we still believe that panic is at least premature, and most likely is simply unfounded. ”

Here is also a translation of comments by foreign users who question the real reason why PIA left Russia:

Jason:

You are very naive. Do you even imagine how much data is stored in the US and the UK? We say “YOTABYTES” data. This is beyond what is happening in Russia. Do you know about US national security, which is protected through secret courts, and information about which cannot be disclosed without the risk of imprisonment? (And how funny is it that you complain about Russian hackers when many Western governments are doing the same thing? Or have we forgotten the revelations about the USA, Great Britain and Germany in recent years?)



This crazy Russophobia that has developed in the last 2-3 years really drives me crazy. This is not reprehensible. You guys are not ready for the new European War



Alex K.

This is a very raw solution.

Why not just make a special "unsafe" option to access resources in countries with stupid laws?

I’m sure that many people use VPN to quickly view / download and / or increase response time and they don’t care about the recorded data for certain types of resources (training, games, etc.).