The expert community discussed Internet security issues, protecting children from the threats of the virtual network, the sovereignty of states in cyberspace.
In 2018, 6914 messages were received about the discovery of content related to the sale of drugs, with 5153 resources such content removed or blocked, said Elena Milskaya at the X Safe Internet Forum. According to her, it was possible to completely oust the messages about the sale of drugs from the networks of VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.
“The intruders unfortunately have moved to Telegram, where it is difficult to fight against them, because sales are carried out using credit cards of foreign countries or using bitcoins. It’s difficult to locate the seller,” she complained.
In addition, she said that last year revealed 26080 messages about the discovery of content with child pornography, it was deleted from 14046 resources or the resources has been blocked.
However, 35% of adolescents are influenced by destructive resources, the expert noted.
“These are very big numbers,” stated Elena Milskaya.
In his turn, the vice-speaker of the Federation Council, chairman of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy, Andrey Turchak, reminded that over 80% of the Russian citizens are the users of the network, including 65% going online every day. According to him, the issues of ensuring the information security of children when using the Internet are among the priorities of the upper house of parliament. He noted that Russia is in favour of free exchange of information, for an open Internet, but it is impossible to forget about its security, about the threats that have arisen with the development of Internet technologies.
“This is not only the deliberate dissemination of deliberately false, and sometimes dangerous, information. Recruitment of young people by terrorist organizations takes place through the Internet, and there is a negative impact on susceptible children and adolescents. We cannot ignore it,” said Andrey Turchak.
According to him, there is a number of measures have already been taken, however he worries because of the position of some companies working in this area, who are willing to remove content dangerous for children’s health only after a court decision.
A possible mechanism for the protection of children can be the creation of an Internet code, which would regulate the work of online sites, says Senator Elena Mizulina. At the same time, Elena Mizulina is sure that the Internet is not necessary and impossible to regulate.
“It is necessary to cut off definitions of terms with the help of prohibitions, permissions and legal obligations, if they are ambiguous or indefinite, especially new ones. There are so many of them today in the Internet law, which is essentially already spontaneously formed. It is necessary to cut off these risks that we do not want to have, and then there will be no problems. We will have a good, modern law or even an Internet code,” the senator believes.
In her opinion, it will regulate the interaction, safe in relation to each other, will create the Internet free from debauchery, deception, deprivation of property, harm to human life and health to modify to maximize the safety of children and adults.
The founder of the Safe Internet League, Konstantin Malofeev, believes that the Internet has become cleaner over the past 10 years.
“We now forgot that 10 years ago we had the Internet where child pornography was free. This is long gone due to such regular and consistent work of thousands of cyber activists,” he believes.
At the same time, the head of the League recalled, back in 2011, the International Telecommunication Union discussed the question of why the Internet, the international medium of communication, is regulated by US law, and not by the international community. Russia, China, India, European countries are interested in creating the Internet Convention, but the United States, with the support of Canada and those who joined them, “torpedoed” this agreement.
“They arranged tremendous intrigues, comparable to those that happened in the world of sports with WADA. … We moved into a world where it became clear that Americans are not going to make the Internet a truly free and open space for communication, learning, and accumulation of knowledge. They were going to make their own instrument, accountable only to them, with the help of which only they can regulate educational and cultural space around the world,” he said.
That is why, in his opinion, Russia has now come to the law on the sovereign Internet.
Alexander Malkevich, President of the Foundation for the Protection of National Values, considers the topic of Internet regulation and self-regulation to be somewhat crafty. He stressed that the laws governing the work of the World Wide Web exist in many countries, and Russia also needs a similar legal framework. However, the expert is concerned that the proposed law for adoption in Russia will apply only to Russian resources.
“The problem is much wider. Western colleagues were able to force Google, the Zuckerberg empire (Facebook – ed.) to accept the western, European rules of the game. Our Roskomnadzor solemnly announces the next Twitter and Facebook fines for 3 and 5 thousand rubles. It doesn’t cause anything but laughter and irony,” he remarked in reply to the laughter.
The expert noted that in France, for example, fines are about millions of euros, while local lawmakers are constantly raising the bar.
“In France, they want to set a minimum of 4% of global annual revenue,” he stressed.
A similar situation is in Germany, where foreign corporations that are doing business on its territory and have a certain number of users, were obliged to register their representative offices in Germany. Alexander Malkevich is surprised that this is not done in Russia, given that international corporations have a huge income only from advertising placed in the Russian segment. He is confident that all foreign companies are obliged to comply with Russian legislation.
“Our legislators hide behind the fact that nothing can be done, so let’s leave everything as it is, let them demolish the accounts of our media, citizens, delete content, do not obey our laws and so on, because nothing can be changed “, ” he added.
Alexander Malkevich believes that it is necessary to oblige both Russian and foreign companies operating on the Internet to remove dangerous content and introduce substantial fines for violations of the legislation of the Russian Federation.
