The Ministry of Communications is not able to soften the Yarovaya-Ozerov package using by-laws. Amendments are being prepared to the law itself.

Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov

The Ministry of Communications cannot mitigate the Yarovo-Ozerov antiterrorist laws adopted in the summer of 2016 using only by-laws. This was announced by the Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov in an interview with representatives of Interfax, Vedomosti reports.

"... until we see the possibility of how to do this at the level of by-laws," the minister said.
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Earlier, the agency did not support the petition to cancel the package of laws of Spring-Ozerov.

The petition, however, had a certain effect. The ministry has begun work to mitigate the requirements of the Yarovaya-Ozerov package to IT companies and telecom operators.

Thus, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media decided to abandon the mandatory storage of traffic generated when watching videos, IP-TV and downloading torrent files. According to representatives of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, this will reduce the burden on operators by 10 times.

“The point is that Internet-based video, IP-TV, torrents and a number of other information resources that are very difficult to store are related to redundant information,” said Alexey Volin, Deputy Minister of Communications.

In addition, an agreement was reached with the security agencies, according to which the periods of mandatory storage of traffic will increase gradually from the moment the package of laws comes into force on July 1, 2018.

It was planned to legalize all the above-mentioned exemptions by issuing by-laws, but Nikolay Nikiforov acknowledged that it is impossible to legally do this.

The complexity of amending the bill lies in the fact that if a sub-law at the ministerial level could issue the Ministry of Communications alone, then amendments to the law should be considered in the State Duma of the Russian Federation. If we take into account the recent high-profile detentions of high-ranking FSB officers and the top manager of Kaspersky Lab, who was in charge of investigating cybercrime, and the accusations of treason, the possible position of parliamentarians on the issue of mitigating the anti-terrorism package of laws raises concerns.

According to the minister, his department is firmly determined to find a "middle ground" between state security and its value for the end user. “Our task is not to harm, not to make it so that as a result of the implementation of this law, the prices for communications increase,” Nikiforov said.