Russia’s Ekho Moskvy Radio Discusses Terrorism on the Internet

In a studio discussion on Ekho Moskvy radio’s “Search for a way out” programme on 10 April 2007, presenter Matvey Ganapolskiy discussed the subject of terrorism on the internet with his guests Andrey Soldatov, editor of the website agentura.ru and Novaya Gazeta correspondent, and Anatoliy Yermolin, a State Duma deputy with the rank of Federal Security Services lieutenant-colonel.

The scale of the problem

Ganapolskiy pointed out that estimates of the number of Russian websites of a terrorist or extremist nature vary greatly, from 30 or 40 (a figure given by Lt-Gen Boris Miroshnikov of the Interior Ministry in 2006) to several thousand, depending on how you define extremism. According to Soldatov, most extremist websites spring up around an internet forum where likeminded people share their views. Letting such forums exist on-line is better than driving them underground, argued Soldatov, because at least the security services are able to keep track of what they are planning. “If we are battling against terrorist attacks, then it’s good for us to know where those who are planning them are gathering,” he said.

Legislative amendments

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee is preparing legislative amendments to “strengthen the personal responsibility of internet- companies for disseminating terrorist and extremist materials,” said Ganapolskiy. Neither of the studio guests supported this legislation. Soldatov first argued that “the internet is not the same as the mass media”, since extremist sites were read by only a handful of people. Yermolin’s view was that it is too hard to define extremism: “If we take as our basis the latest version of the law on extremism, then harsh criticism of the authorities could also be judged as extremism by the courts, if the desire is there,” he said. “The verdict will be passed according to the needs of the customer,” he added.

Repressing political opposition

Ganapolskiy suggested that the legislative amendments had “one goal – to kill the sites the authorities don’t like”, in particular, those of the leaders of the Other Russia opposition movement Garri Kasparov, Mikhail Kasyanov and Eduard Limonov. However, behind this motivation lies the second, more important issue of anti-Semitic and fascist websites, argued the presenter. Soldatov again referred to the difficulty of distinguishing what is extremist, and he warned of the risk of somebody posting semi-fascist comments “on a forum of the few remaining liberal internet publications” as an excuse to close them down. Yermolin later agreed that the legislation was probably politically motivated, because “as a means of fighting terrorists and extremists it is not effective”. It is being supported “primarily to remove those who are undesirable at the forthcoming elections, and whom the authorities simply don’t want to see in the information space today,” added Yermolin.

However, Yermolin later denied Ganapolskiy’s suggestion that the State Duma would happily approve the amendments in the run-up to the elections. “It’s not a fact that the Duma will be so obedient before the elections,” he said. Soldatov, on the other hand, expressed his “sad impression” that the legislation would get through this time. His reasoning was that “the main internet providers are branches, let’s say, of state telecommunications, some kind of daughter companies of MGTS (Moscow State Telephone Network) or Rostelekom, etc”. “There may not be much resistance from the internet community in this case,” he said.

Whose responsibility?

Yermolin’s main concern about the proposed legislative amendments was that it placed the responsibility for monitoring the internet on the wrong people. “Why should the internet companies do the job of the special services?” he asked. He argued that the Federal Security Service (FSB) already had a large department dealing with closing down illegal websites, and this was a better system than asking the internet providers to “guess for themselves what needs to be shut down”. It would be unrealistic for every internet provider to have a specialist dealing with this issue, he argued, especially since such monitoring work is in the interests of the state more than the interests of the companies themselves.

Ganapolskiy’s response was that the FSB themselves probably don’t have a clear idea of how the mechanism would function in reality, quoting Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the Federation Council committee on defence and security, as saying: “I like the idea, but are there mechanisms to implement it? I haven’t heard of any.” The presenter also cited Aleksandr Brod, Director of the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights, who suggested internet providers should bear administrative rather than criminal responsibility, and that Russian internet providers should come to a “corporative agreement” that they would not offer internet space to radicals. Yermolin described this as a “wonderful idea”, whereas Soldatov doubted its practicality.

Yermolin criticized the trend of passing state responsibilities over to private companies, and said that in the case of monitoring the internet this would lead to a complete lack of transparency. Another problem, he added, was that “there aren’t enough programmers who can technically do this work”.

Chinese-style control

During the show’s phone-in, one listener proposed introducing a requirement to hold a special licence in order to use internet providers’ web hosting services. Soldatov dismissed the idea, which he compared to the system used in China, because the requirement to submit passport details to open a website already exists and has not stopped extremists. “I don’t know how much it would help to fight extremism, but the fact that it’s censorship – that’s 100 per cent sure,” he added.

Whom to blame?

A second listener who called the show said that control should be exerted by imposing harsher punishments on the creators of extremist websites who are caught, rather than on the service providers. However, “the problem is the difficulty of punishing website creators”, pointed out Ganapolskiy, since they are much harder to bring to justice. Yermolin described the proposed legislative amendments as “very Russian, or Soviet, as you wish”, in that it “tries to make the internet providers a scapegoat”, and all the emphasis is on having someone to blame.

Escape to Ukraine

According to Soldatov, the new internet legislation being proposed will simply lead websites moving to other domains: “Everyone will move to the Ukrainian zone, the .com zone or somewhere else,” he said.

Towards the end of the show, the authorities’ ability to bring down undesirable websites was discussed. Soldatov said the authorities had not balked at using student hackers to bring down websites such as that of the Kavkaz-Tsentr organization. Even within the FSB, “they are perfectly able to shut down websites at a state level, beyond Russian borders”, he added. In the case of Kavkaz- Tsentr, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs first approached the country that provided the site’s web-hosting, then when they failed to see anything wrong with it, they turned to their group of young hackers to deal with it, said Soldatov.

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.