MOSCOW, July 23. /TASS/. The draft law stipulating email use by duly identified users only was submitted to the State Duma on Tuesday. Relevant information is contained in the electronic database of the lower house of the Russian parliament.
"The draft law determines the notion of the email service organizer and vests in him the responsibility to ensure transmission of emails of only those Internet users that are identified in the manner set forth by the Russian government. Email users are suggested to be identified by the subscriber number on the basis of the identification agreement to be concluded by the email service organizer with the communications operator," the explanatory note to the draft law reads.
In addition to identification responsibilities, email service organizers are to enable the users to reject emails and limit distributions and transmissions of messages containing information disseminated with violation to the Russian laws.
Approval of such a draft law will make it possible to significantly reduce the number of false terrorist messages spread via email, create legal conditions for bringing abusers to liability and decrease economic damages from such messages, the bill's initiators explain.
Vice President of the Russian Internet company, Mail.ru Group Vladimir Gabrielyan disapproved of the initiative in an interview with TASS. According to him, if approved the bill on compulsory identification of email users by the phone number will discriminate Russian companies on the domestic market. "The draft law is inappropriate and superfluous. It entails considerable inconveniencies for users and discriminates Russian market players. Domestic companies will sustain extra costs, while foreign players repeatedly ignored requirements of Russian laws. We do not see preconditions for any changes in this practice by proposed new developments," the top manager noted.
Google, Yandex, Rambler Group, MTS and Vimpelcom refrained from comment. MegaFon told TASS that it is ready to perform such identification but the initiative "should not discriminate Russian email services obliged to perform all the requirements for the organizers, compared to foreign ones." This initiative is similar to regulations earlier introduced for messengers and its feasibility depends on readiness of foreign email services to cooperate with the mobile operator, Tele2 told TASS.
Meanwhile, Russian Human Rights Ombudswoman Tatiana Moskalkova told reporters the bill on identification requires careful work.
"The draft law requires detailed consideration. It is critical that notions of ‘information harmfulness,’ ‘violations,’ etc., are spelled out in detail in this document," she said. "The Internet should not be put into a rigid framework" and the society should not be deprived of the opportunity of implementing the right to freedom of speech, opinion, and information exchange, Moskalkova added.
The mechanism of limiting transmission of prohibited information in the bill can be interpreted as violation of the constitutional right of citizens to privacy of correspondence, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communication Leonid Levin said in a comment.
"Authors speak in the explanatory note about importance of proposed measures to counter spread of deliberately false threats of committing terrorist acts, coming to email addresses of government agencies and social or transport infrastructural facilities," Levin said, cited by his press service. "At the same time, the mechanism of limiting transmission of prohibited information identified in the draft law does not provide for the need of lawfulness of actions of the authorized agency and can be interpreted as the arbitrary extrajudicial limiting of the citizens’ right to privacy of correspondence established by the Constitution," the MP said.
A similar opinion was expressed by the Committee Member Anton Gorelkin. The norm of user identification by the phone number "bumps up against Internet openness," he said.
The draft law does not breach the privacy of correspondence, says Andrei Klishas, the Chairman of the Constitutional Legislation Committee of the Federation Council and one of bill developers.
"The bill on identification of users of email services does not breach constitutional rights, including the right to privacy of correspondence. Amendments contain the mechanism similar to regulation stipulated by earlier approved law on messengers and SIM-cards," Klishas told TASS.