Regime prepares “Potato Firewall”

Belarusian officials are more and more often stating their desire to deal with the Internet. The so-called discussion on the ways of regulating Internet in Belarus started when the new draft of the Law on Mass Media was discussed. Finally, more and more often officials voice an opinion that “responsibility should be increased”, a website Electroname.com writes.

One needn’t be explained what this law could bring about. It is enough to recall how the independent press was “dealt with”. Officials often take offence at articles in independent newspapers, and easily receive dozens thousands dollars’ compensations for moral damage through the court.

It is not so easy with the web, and it is not so easy to find the “offender”. In reality, such a task isn’t assigned. The regime simply needs a legally confirmed mechanism to block information on the web. Mr. Praleskouski has called it “content filtering”. In fact, a full-fledged control system reminding “Chinese Firewall” is meant, when special programs analyze the downloaded content, and block access to this or that website basing on key words. Such a system is more effective than the blocking of websites at the level of a Beltelekom router and hacker attacks which have been already used.

It’s an achievable task, when dissenting websites are hosted at servers outside Belarus. According to Praleskouski, in a case of some problems, the administrator of the site, the owner of the website and the provider are to bear responsibility. It could be supposed, a web hosting provider is meant. The regime forces creators of independent news websites to emigrate, that is, to host sites out of the country, as they do not come within the jurisdiction of the Belarusian authorities; to use international domain zones, to update websites from abroad or to use encrypted VPN connections which cannot be spotted from within the country. Basically, the key popular independent web resources are already located outside Belarus, and the ones which are in the “by” zone and are hosted by Belarusian hosting providers, are to start self-censorship. By the way, they are already doing that.

Judging by the official statements, the authorities are inclined to rubberstamp restrictions by a special decree. Simultaneously, some “hot heads” offer to introduce registration of Internet-resources. It is a difficult task, as the Belarusian web consists not only of news websites, which worry the state most, but from dozens thousands of specializes websites, blogs, personal webpages. It is not really clear how to discriminate between them. That is why one of the proposed initiatives was to create an association of Internet-editors under a noble pre-text to defend authors’ rights on the web.

One thing is clear, in the near future Belarusians will have to master the whole inventory of a common Chinese viewer – proxies, anonymizers, VPN, while careless websites creators and forum participants are to face criminal prosecution. The time of “democracy” on the Web in Belarus is up.