The head of Roskomnadzor: regulating the work of instant messengers does not violate the freedom of speech

Source: TASS

Today it became known that the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, supported the draft law on regulating the work of instant messengers, submitted by State Duma deputies for consideration, TASS reports . The authors of this initiative are Deputy Chairman of the Duma Information Policy Committee Marina Mukabenova and ordinary deputies Oleg Nikolaev and Alexander Yushchenko. Developed the same bill Media and Communication Union.

According to representatives of this union, the document “as a whole is based on the expert developments that the union proposed” and was finalized by the deputies of the Duma in accordance with various additions and recommendations of industry regulators. The draft law proposes “to identify users using the subscriber number on the basis of an identification agreement concluded by the organizer of instant messaging with a telecom operator”.

According to the deputies, now most of the instant messengers are already using the phone numbers of users to identify subscribers, so the user will not need any additional actions when the law enters into force. Alexander Zharov agrees with this. At the same time, the head of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, Nikolay Nikiforov, said that he was skeptical that the proposed method of regulating the work of instant messengers would somehow improve the control of information dissemination.
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Zharov also says that this bill does not imply control over private correspondence of citizens: “I fully support the approach to regulating instant messengers, I want to emphasize that we have always insisted that this should in no way concern control over citizen correspondence. It should be recorded the fact of communication citizen. " "The approach is important, there is no attack on the freedom of speech."

“Given the level of terrorist threat that exists in the world, they say that, in principle, regardless of what channels communication takes place, but if it is secret, uncontrolled, it will obviously be used by extremists and terrorists,” he added .

And you, Telegram

As for the messenger developed by Pavel Durov, the Roskomnadzor previously asked the creators of the program to provide the necessary information to include Telegram in the register of information dissemination organizers. Moreover, if the company does not meet and does not agree with the requirements of the department, then Telegram will be blocked in Russia.

If the messenger agrees to provide the information requested by the authorities, then Telegram will have to store and issue, at the request of law enforcement officers, correspondence of users with all the necessary means of decrypting messages.