Gambit Spring

Although some people write that the rules on traffic storage will become effective only from 2018, in fact, in the text of the package, the execution is postponed only for the obligation to transfer the stored data to the authorized bodies. Thus, the obligation to store data may appear to operators earlier, as soon as the government wants.

In the worst case, it may take billions of dollars to store all the transmitted data of all Russians, and that is millions of terabytes. No need to be a visionary to understand that such amounts can put many Russian companies, even the largest, on the verge of existence. What to say about the district ISP.

Angry cop

Spring and Ozerov with this law play the role of such a bad cop who faces the most terrible punishment. After all, this law allows the government to create any indirect costs for any Russian Internet business. Of course, to some extent such new costs can only increase Internet and telecommunication tariffs , but let's not forget that the existing tariffs on the market did not appear from scratch, but as a result of market interaction . If the operators just so easily raise the tariffs several times, then this will naturally reduce their subscriber base, and with it, they will reduce revenues even to the disappearance of the meaning of doing this.

Thus, this law does not simply allow to determine the conditions of storage of traffic, but gives the government the right to judge and dispose of any Russian Internet company as he, the government, pleases.

In other words, this law in a very transparent form gives the government a lever of influence on the industry, or, if you like, a tune with which the industry dances any Polish butterfly. After all, otherwise death.

Cui bono?

Why it may be necessary? Why did the government need any additional leverage on the industry? After all, if we need leverage for victory, it means that there is some kind of opposition.

There is no need to go far for such a confrontation. No one was happy with the "black lists" of sites, and even more so no one would be happy with the white lists. If even someone tries to introduce them in plain language in the form of a law, this will cause violent resistance to both the industry and the population. After all, who will need this Internet, if there is nothing in it but a dozen sites, no? Who will pay for this money? Who will need Yandex if there is nothing to search for in it? .. What life will be without the Internet?

Such companies as Yandex will just not be happy about the next site registry, and the real work on its implementation will have to be done by telecom operators , who, as you know, did not really hurry with the support of such initiatives earlier, forcing them to pass additional laws for coercion .

Whitelist sites

Now imagine that a list of trusted sites is added to an existing list of sites , for which providers are freed from the need to keep all traffic (the government is completely free in defining this principle). And for all other sites, a record of everything and everything for all the required months is introduced. In such a situation, Russian telecom operators (your ISP) will have nothing to do but to introduce new tariffs with the usual price and access at full speed only to websites from the white list and with limited access (hello, 128kbps ADSL) to the rest of the Internet. Or even without one, except for a fee. No one wants to buy thousands of terabytes of disk arrays for their money, and the client is unlikely to want to pay them in full.

Thus, Putin and Yarovaya will be able to eat the fish, having received such a voluntary-compulsory white list of sites they wanted, and ... avoiding confrontation between the industry and society.

Putin’s order for the FSB to approve the procedure for certifying encryption tools when sending messages on the Internet in the framework of the above looks like an awkward attempt to throw dust into the eyes, pretending that he is actually interested in correspondence in instant messengers .

Good cop

Now comes the time of the "good policeman" Nikiforov, who will agree with the industry leaders on the conditions for the voluntary surrender of positions and the introduction of white lists for everything that the government wishes.

What does all this mean to us?

You can consider several consequences of the introduction of such a white list of sites.

Streisand effect

The restrictions themselves will have exactly the opposite effect. If now the average consumer has little to do with what Navalny there, denounced on state TV, writes in his blog , then as soon as the consumer finds out that he cannot even read it at all, then ... He will read it at any cost, even if you have not read before. You can recall the recent history of blocking one famous tracker.

Stupid laws as the engine of progress

Restrictions on access to the network and the inability to download anything for no reason will bring all sorts of home networks to the beginning of the two thousandth to life, but this time with new technologies. If earlier such networks worked only with a twisted pair and were significantly limited to the limits of the house, now we can expect significant progress in part of cellular hybrid networks and other interesting technologies that do not limit themselves to any one transmission medium. It will be very difficult for the government to regulate such spontaneous networks if not impossible.

Nothing new under the moon ...

The idea of ​​whitelisting sites is nothing new. So, all sorts of ways to circumvent them are not new, tunneling traffic through DNS or else how. If now only specialists (like you, dear reader) knew about such things, then with the introduction of whitelists, every schoolchild will know about how to bypass them and access the open Internet. That, frankly, can make white lists almost useless and even vice versa - harmful and complicating the work of special services.

Total

We hope that all of the above is erroneous speculation, and that Putin and Spring really only need the content of our messages. Or just our money.