Russia strengthens its internet censorship powers

Russia’s boldest moves to censor the internet began in the most mundane of ways — with a series of bureau­crat­ic emails and forms.

The messages, sent by Russia’s powerful internet regulator, demanded technical details — like traffic numbers, equipment specifications and connection speeds — from companies that provide internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then the black boxes arrived.

The telecom companies had no choice but to step aside as government-approved technicians installed the equipment alongside their own systems and servers. Sometimes caged behind lock and key, the new gear linked back to a command center in Moscow, giving authorities startling new powers to block, filter and slow down websites that they did not want the Russian public to see. The process, underway since 2019, represents the start of perhaps the world’s most ambitious digital censorship effort outside of China. Under President Vladimir V Putin, who once called the internet a “CIA project” and views the web as a threat to his power, the Russian government is attempting to bring the country’s internet to heel.

The gear has been tucked inside the equipment rooms of Russia’s largest telecom and internet service providers, including Rostelecom, MTS, MegaFon and Vympelcom, a senior Russian lawmaker revealed this year. It affects over 120 million wireless and home internet users, according to researchers and activists.  

The world got its first glimpse of Russia’s new tools in action when Twitter was slowed to a crawl in the country this spring. It was the first time the filtering system had been put to work, researchers and activists said. Other sites have since been blocked, including several linked to the jailed opposition leader Alexei A Navalny.

“This is something the world can copycat,” said Laura Cunningham, the former head of State Department programs on internet freedom. 

Russia’s censorship technology sits between companies that provide inter­net access and people who are brow­sing the web on a phone or laptop. 

Often likened to intercepting mailed letters, the software filters through data travelling across an internet network, slowing down websites or removing whatever it has been programmed to block. The cutoffs threaten to upend Russia’s thriving digital life. Broadly censoring the internet could return the country to a deeper form of isolation, akin to the Cold War era. Russia is using the censorship technology to gain more leverage over Western internet firms in addition to other strong-arm tactics and legal intimidation.