If Telegram tries to bypass blocking using a VPN, the State Duma will take action against the VPN

As is known, by a court decision, the Telegram messenger is blocked in Russia. It was decided to "punish" for the failure to provide encryption keys that allow the special services to get acquainted with the correspondence of the messenger users. Pavel Durov, the head of Telegram, did not begin to deal with this decision; moreover, he instructed the company's lawyers not to take part in the court hearing.

Some Telegram users already have difficulty sending or receiving messages, and in a couple of weeks the program will be completely blocked in Russia. In any case, officials promise so. In addition, if the messenger or its users begin to deal with blocking using VPN services, the State Duma may adopt new laws against them. Reports about it "RBC".

Journalists of the publication got acquainted with the corresponding opinion on this issue of the deputy chairman.
State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications Vladimir Krupennikov.
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“Roskomnadzor has not yet encountered a lock of this magnitude. Now we will look at whether additional legislative measures will be required to exclude the use of VPN, respectively, we will think how to do it, ”said Krupennikov.

"Anti-VPN" law entered into force on November 1, 2017. In accordance with it, services that are used to bypass blocking on the Internet, including VPN and anonymizers, are obliged to restrict users from accessing prohibited sites upon the request of law enforcement agencies.

The procedure for limiting is as follows. Roskmnadzor receives a request from the Federal Security Service or other authorized body. After that, the agency sends a request to services to connect to the federal state information system (FGIS). It contains all the necessary information about banned sites. Further, with the help of the system, the department is obliged to block access to these resources.

If the service does not connect to FGIS within 30 days of receipt of the request from Roskomnadzor, then it will be blocked. The law is quite strict, but in February 2018 it became known that there was not a single request from law enforcement authorities on VPN services.

Before the adoption of the law on their own desire and willingness to obey its requirements, representatives of various Russian services stated. But representatives of foreign services said they are not going to obey. Most foreigners claim that since their companies do not work in Russia, the laws of this country do not apply to them.

“As a company focused on protecting the privacy and freedom of information on the Internet, we will continue to support users without any censorship or blockages regardless of where they are located,” a representative of the American VPN service ExpressVPN told RBC.

The law itself on blocking VPN and Tor was adopted in August last year. In addition to the details listed above, there are other interesting details. For example, Internet service providers obliged to collect information on the management of VPN and proxy services, calculate their owners, determine the office address and location of servers.

As in the case of Telegram, most of the services stated that they would not obey the requirements of Roskomnadzor. This means that any guilty, according to the ministry, the service can be punished by blocking in Russia. Moreover, some providers began to act from the very moment the bill was published.

It is worth recalling that the Telegram blocking case was filed at the suit of Roskomnadzor. The judge of the Tagansky court of Moscow Smolin Yu.M. On-line, held a preparatory meeting in the Tagansky Court of Moscow, and at the meeting there was no one from Telegram representatives. Well, the messenger itself was blocked by the decision of the same court on April 13 at 10 o'clock.

Of course, regulators will not be able to block everything and everyone, in any case, not immediately. The fact is that the DPI-equipment costs a lot of money, and its introduction into work is not too fast. Therefore, the adoption of instant measures should not be expected. But "sly" sometimes can be done more than swoops. For this reason, do not underestimate Roskomnadzor and its capabilities.

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