A Chinese variant of Internet censorship to be in Belarus

A draft document of the government's encatment drawn up by the Ministry of Communications together with the Operative Analyical Centre under the president have enactment has come to hand of journalists.

The draft enactment which is called "About approving the Provisions on the procedure of limiting access of Internet services users to information banned for dissemination under legislative acts" has been published by zapraudu.info website. Lukashenka's aide Usevalad Yancheuski has told about restrictive measures in an interview to TUT.by: "Everything should be done accurately. My position is there should be no amateurishness. We should adopt European experience, that's all".

And what is going on in reality?

The draft enactment has been commented upon by a lawyer of one of the companies related to Internet:

"In the new project a so-called "Chinese firewall" is present, that is, content-filtering takes place: among other things, as "identifier of an internet resource" could be used "part of the internet resource content", and this "identifier" could be put on the list of restricted access.

There are such notions and "white list and "black list" ("list of restricted access"). Notably, the last one is to be available only for providers, and others (citizens and organisations) would be provided information only upon request concerning a concrete website.

Subsection 4. "Internet service providers provide services for limiting access basing upon access control lists created in accordance with the established procedure by the Ministry of Communications or an organisation authoried by it, and access control lists ctreated by Internet service providers independently". It could be concluded that beside a state list, a provider should make its own list at its own expense, and it is responsible for fullness of such a list.

In the subsection 2 of the enactment it is stated: "A website is a resource on the web intended for information exchange". It would be desirable that a definition of a website (an internet resource) which is important practically, was not described as "like throght like", but could give an answer which object could be called a separate website. For instance, are pages of websites at domains of the third and further levels separate websites (in cases when such pages have a different owner).

"Agencies which are carrying out operational and investigative activities, prosecution bodies and preliminary investigation bodies, agencies of the State Control Committee, tax agencies" independently adopt decisions to block websites, and the Ministry of Communications just put them on the black list.

In case this document would be passed, Belarus would have to clear up the mess for a long time later. And for the West our country is to become a scarecrow again."

A lawyer Andrei Bastunets, a deputy chairman of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, is sure that a decision to block websites could be adopted on other grounds, except for the enumerated in the enactment (pornography dissemination, violence and cruelty propaganda, human trafficking procurement).

Bastunets believes: "Under our conditions it is highly possible that in contractual relations with Internet service providers, limiting of access to "undesired" information would be simply imposed at the moment of conclusion of an agreement." Thus, content filtering would be used not to control crimes, but to fight with dissent, with dissemination of information displeasing for the authorities".