The head of the Ministry of Communications proposes to monitor consumers of illegal content instead of blocking sites

Minister of Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov. Source: A. Makhonin / Vedomosti

Today, speaking during the government hour in the State Duma, the head of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov called blocking illegal content on the Internet ineffective, RBC writes . According to him, the blocking system that has been developing in the Russian Federation in recent years is not viable.

“The Internet and digital technologies are developing in such a way that the blocking method will not allow us to achieve the desired result, and for each blocking a technology will always be invented that allows it to be circumvented,” the minister said, adding that “we are acting in the old manner”.

“In the case of blocking, our population very quickly teaches a materiel, installs various software products, which, simply put, by executing a user command, receive prohibited information using a server located in another jurisdiction where our law is not valid,” Nikolai Nikiforov added.
')
He believes that tracking consumers of illegal content could be an alternative to blocking. Thus, according to the minister, one should “not drive everyone into encrypted channels, but carefully watch who searched for this or that information, accessed this or that illegal content”. True, according to Nikiforov, there is a problem here: "... due to the fact that all of this is encrypted, no one can understand what information is being accessed, what this content is, whether there are any threats to national security, threats the commission of certain crimes. "

It is worth recalling that since November 1, the law on the prohibition of circumventing locks with the help of anonymizers and VPN comes into force in Russia. Owners of such services are obliged to restrict users to access to sites prohibited in the country. Otherwise, the services themselves will be subject to the blocking procedure.