Authoritarian Control Over Internet :: Charter'97 :: News

Following the information on the program of control over Russian segment of internet by special services, the reports about attempts to create the same program for the CIS are received. Specifically, the matter concerns creation of an analogous program of Internet-control “SORM-2”, a certain center of electronic struggle with “orange plague” and independent sources of information in a number of former USSR countries. What is meant there concerns not only Russia, but also Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

As said by our source, close to Foreign Ministry of Russia, recently the special services of the five countries had made a secret informal agreement on struggle with political opposition at the territory of the former USSR.

Except for the control over electronic media and independent internet-sites, the special services of the above-mentioned countries agreed to monitor and identify names and addresses of oppositional internet-users, who could seem suspicious to national security agencies.

Moreover, one of the most important issues of inter-governmental agreement is to tune up a permanent exchange of such information between secret services with the aim to stop a practice of international internet broadcasting from the territory of third countries in the CIS. (For instance, hindering the work or even closing down internet-sites opposing Lukashenka at the Russian territory).

In fact, the point at issue is an attempt to introduce censorship jamming for the whole segment of electronic media in the five countries of the former USSR, in which for different reasons authorities are in horror of repetition of revolutionary events, which had led to defeat of ruling regimes in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.