On June 5, 2018, the State Duma adopted in its third reading the draft law 195449-7 “On Amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation”, which establishes fines for violating the law on anonymizers. Amendments to the Administrative Code and the introduction of fines - a planned annex to the law, adopted in spring 2017 by the State Duma and signed by V. Putin on July 30, 2017 . It prohibits the use in Russia of means to circumvent locks to access prohibited sites, the so-called anonymizers.

Amendments to the Administrative Code include:

1. fines for search engines (citizens and legal entities) for issuing, at the request of users, links to prohibited information resources;
2. fines for hosters (citizens and legal entities) for hiding data on the proxy owner.

Anonymizers can be understood as Tor, VPN, and any other services that allow you to bypass locks. In October last year, Roskomnadzor created a department for blocking anonymizers and VPN services .

The editorial office, considered in the first reading , was amended a little in terms of the size of fines. Thus, for violation of the law, an administrative fine is imposed for citizens from 3,000 to 5,000 rubles, for officials - from 30,000 to 50,000 rubles, for legal entities - from 500,000 to 700,000 rubles. Commensurate penalties for search engines are provided for issuing links to blocked sites entered in the Roskomnadzor registry.

In addition, changes have been made to Article 19.7 of the Administrative Code. It is supplemented by a part where it says about the responsibility of hosters and other persons for late submission to Roskomnadzor of the identity of the owner of the anonymizer or proxy. Here, the fines are a little more serious for individuals - from 10 thousand to 30 thousand rubles, and for legal entities, on the contrary, slightly lower - from 50 thousand to 300 thousand rubles.

The text of this part:

Failure to submit or untimely submission to the body responsible for control and supervision in the field of communications, information technology and mass communications, hosting provider or other person ensuring the deployment of software and hardware access to information resources, information and telecommunication networks on the Internet, access to which is limited, data allowing identification of the owner of software and hardware access to information resources, information and telecommunications networks that are restricted, or information about notifying the owner of software and hardware access to information resources, information and telecommunications networks, access to which is limited, the need to place data to identify such owner — imposes an administrative penalty on citizens in the amount of from ten thousand to thirty thousand rubles; for legal entities - from fifty thousand to three hundred thousand rubles. ”;

The law restricting the work of anonymizers came into force on November 1, 2017. The services that fall under its action should be chosen by the Federal Security Service (FSB) or another body that carries out operational investigative activities and ensures the security of Russia.

Anonymizer Registration Procedure

On July 21, 2017, the State Duma adopted in first reading a draft federal law “On Amendments to the Federal Law“ On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection ”” ( pdf ).

According to the text of the law, Roskomnadzor will maintain the federal state information system (FGIS) - a black list of prohibited resources. Based on the appeal of the law enforcement agencies, the department will determine the provider that allows anonymizer, a Tor node, a VPN service, etc. to be placed on the Internet. Such a provider will be sent an electronic notification of the need to provide data to identify the owner of the anonymizer. Then Roskomnadzor will send to the anonymizer the requirement of the need to connect to FGIS, and the resource must do it in 30 days. At the request of the department, Internet search engines operating in the Russian Federation are also obliged to connect to FGIS.

After entering the FGIS, the anonymizer is obliged within three days to “ensure compliance with the prohibition to provide the opportunity to use programs and other means on the territory of the Russian Federation to gain access to prohibited sites.

If the owners do not provide information to Roskomnadzor to identify them, or deliberately provide false information, a penalty of 10–30 thousand rubles is provided. for citizens, 50–300 thousand - for legal entities. For repeated violation during the year - a fine of 30-50 thousand rubles. for citizens, 300–500 thousand rubles — for legal entities or administrative suspension of activities for up to 30 days.

These standards and fines do not apply to operators of state information systems, state bodies and local governments, as well as “cases of use of software and hardware access to information resources, access to which is restricted,” provided that the range of users is predetermined by their owners and use "is carried out for technological purposes of ensuring the activities of the person engaged in use" That is, a personal or corporate VPN remains legal.

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