MOSCOW, August 13 (Itar-Tass) - The lower and upper houses of Russian parliament have expressed support for the Interior Ministry’s initiative banning online and print media to publish guides to making explosives and explosive devices.
A member of the State Duma Defense Committee, Andrei Krasov, said the bill did not infringe on freedom of speech and was targeted at ensuring safety of people’s life and health. “We do not need publications of explosive making manuals. We are not preparing for war or revolution,” he told Itar-Tass. “Why do we need explosives in our daily life? To stun fish? But this is also illegal.”
“We need to ask us a question, where an explosive device can blast off. For instance, this may happen at a children’s playground,” the parliamentarian said adding that the Interior Ministry’s initiative was also targeted at ensuring anti-terrorism security. “We should exempt any instruments that can be used by terrorists.”
The Federation Council also considered this initiative reasonable. “I think that citizens and parliamentarians should support this bill, as nobody wants to see how someone builds a makeshift bomb, explodes himself/herself and wounds passersby,” the head of the Federation Council’s temporary information society development commission, Ruslan Gattarov, said. “At first, a webpage is blocked, then an investigation starts. If it is necessary to seize a computer and conduct a more detailed inquiry withdrawing all materials, these measures are quite adequate,” he said.
On Tuesday the Izvestiya daily reported that the Interior Ministry drafted a bill banning online and print media to write about explosive making technologies and methods. If such violations are found on a website, an access to the webpage containing the relevant information will be blocked. Then police may seize computers, USB flash drives, and hard disk drives or shut down the website at all. In case with print media police may seize all copies of newspapers or magazines from circulation.