MOSCOW, November 15, /ITAR-TASS/. State Duma has endorsed in the first reading a bill on empowering the Federal Security Service (FSB) to hold investigations associated with the efforts to thwart the activities posing threats to Russia’s information security.
“FSB is getting powers to engage in the operational and search activity for the purpose of thwarting various threats in the sphere of cyber security,” Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin said, adding that the law aims to cut short the criminal activities involving IT, and especially is his misuse has terrorist purposes.
The document says: “The tasks of the operational and search activity embrace the obtaining of information on events and/or actions /or the absence of the latter/ that pose a threat to information security of the Russian Federation on top of military, economic and/or ecological security.”
“Results of practical actions in the field of ensuring Russia’s information security testify to a growth of threats to the national interests at present,” the explanatory note says.
It says in part that the experts note an intensification of informational contentions between various states and a rise in the incidence of proliferation of the malware used as informational weaponry.
Offenses in the field are most frequently targeted at the digital systems used by the agencies of state power, lending and financial institutions, educational establishments, and mass media, or the systems installed at critical infrastructure facilities, the explanatory note says.
In this connection, the initiators of the bill propose to amend the Federal Law on Operational and Search Activity and the Federal Law on the Federal Security Service with appropriate provisions that will give the FSB the powers “to engage in field investigation activities.”
“Adoption of this law will help put up more efficacious counteraction to the threats arising from an amassed assimilation of computerized and digital technologies in all the spheres of public life,” the explanatory note said.
MPs said in the course of discussion of the bill on Friday that no one has been in charge of Russia’s cyber security so far.
“This sphere requires a very comprehensive approach in this sphere,” FSB Deputy Director Yuri Gorbunov said.