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To whom and for what will messengers “knock”

So, the Government of the Russian Federation has established a procedure for identifying users of instant messengers. So, to confirm the subscriber number, the messenger user will be asked to perform actions using this number, which will allow to reliably establish that he uses the reported subscriber number when registering with the messenger. In case of absence of a number in the operator’s database or non-receipt of a response from it, the identification is considered to be incomplete, and the messenger refuses to provide services to the user. This order will take effect from May 06, 2019.


Thus, one of the pillars of instant messengers - anonymity, a thing of the past. What is it done for?

Improving the level of security in the community? Hardly. For precinct and police departments to solve domestic crimes? To do this, do not use the resources of such capacity - the enormous costs of cellular operators, conflicts with instant messengers, social discontent. Fighting terrorists? Common sense dictates that serious events are held at a certain level of conspiracy, excluding calls and the exchange of instant messengers from the phone purchased to their last name. Does this make it difficult for criminals of various levels to access the messenger? Not. Take a foreign sim card and use it. Plus, you can still buy “gray” SIM-cards without problems in large cities.


This does not lead to a new level of security, does not create any qualitatively new barriers to criminal communities. They will not have to invent and attract more resources to solve the problem of anonymity.


Linking a messenger to a subscriber can be a help when searching for petty hooligans or “random extremists”, those who spoke on prohibited topics. Those. or criminals - complete idiots, or ordinary people who have no idea of ​​hiding. Checking the phone by the police has already become a given. In fact, the ruling simplifies procedural actions for investigators - it is easier to establish a binding of users to a real person.


Legal issues also arise, for example, in normative acts there are no definitions of either a “messenger” or a “sender of a message in a messenger”, which may cause legal conflicts. It is rather difficult to give a legally correct definition of the messenger, since the ability to exchange messages in real time is provided by a wide range of programs. From a legislative point of view, the notion of “message sender” requires clarification.


Or how to provide a bunch of cellular operator, app store and device. Moreover, there are plenty of other ways for a user to register with the new messenger. It is unclear how the rules will apply to minors and legal entities. Identification of users of instant messengers may affect the right of citizens to privacy of correspondence, which is guaranteed by 23 articles of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It is not clear if, when identifying a user, only information about the “presence or absence of information about the subscriber” is specified, then such identification does not really give anything. It is unclear what information will be exchanged between messengers and telecom operators and how this information should be regulated in terms of personal data protection and subscriber information protection.


findings



What to do? I will describe in ascending order of paranoia



In the following articles, it is planned to consider in more detail the last two types of instant messengers, federated and fully decentralized. For the first category, consider the popular implementations of the XMPP and Matrix servers, focus on security issues (using the most relevant cryptographic libraries), ease of deployment on your hardware / leased facilities, and optimal use of system resources. For the second, there will be an overview of popular solutions in the field of decentralized communication, the pros and cons of various instant messengers.

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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/441196/


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