Why State Would Not Benefit From Blocking Of Charter’97

The five conclusions of the successful IT-businessman.

The blocking of the Charter97.org website is unprofitable first of all for the Belarusian authorities themselves. Successful Belarusian IT-businessman, one of the authors of Decree #8 on the development of the digital economy Viktar Prakapenia wrote this on Facebook:

“The day before yesterday, the website Charter97.org was blocked in Belarus. I wanted to write this appeal at the end of last year, when the site Belarusian Partisan was blocked, but I did not have time to finish it, because the site resumed work in several days then. Before that, there was completely free internet in the country for 20 years, except for short-term blocking of websites during protest actions. In the ancient Greek mythology, the hydra, when one of her heads was cut off, three heads grew on its place. In my opinion, this is the most suitable metaphor for explaining what will happen next.

1. There is no better advertising for websites than their blocking. The experience of blocking websites in state institutions shows that blocked sites are very popular among officials: they just access to them not from working computers, but from mobile phones. To bypass the block, you need to put another program to access the Internet, for example, Tor or Opera. Even a pensioner copes with this task in less than 5 minutes. There's no point in cutting off the hydra's heads or putting out the fire with gasoline. A blocked site, having increased its traffic through such advertising, is likely to become even more radicalized, just as its audience is radicalized. Google trends, though not the cleanest tool for metering, already shows the growth of the popularity of the blocked site by 20%.

2. The possible transition of a large number of citizens to programs like Tor or Opera will lead to more complicated work on the investigation of crimes in which the Internet was used (now more and more) - the state will not be able to see not only when citizens visited blocked sites, but any others. A large number of operational and search activities will become impossible. As a consequence, if crimes are more difficult to disclose, crime can grow. In case you really need to close access to some sites during some kind of “fire”, and most citizens use Tor to access the Internet, it will be impossible to block access to these sites.

3. Websites today can lay out all their content on social networks, for example, instant articles on Facebook. As a result, an increasing number of people go to social networks to get information, which has exactly the opposite effect from what the site's blocking implies.

4. Blocking the media without warning and without providing time for eliminating violations is a complication of international relations. The damage to the image is obvious to everyone, there is no point writing about it. Recently, we have done a great job with American lawyers and lobbyists to unblock the Paypal payment system in Belarus. Belarusians can not use this payment system, in this list we are close to Zimbabwe, Liberia and North Korea.

Paypal is necessary for small companies to work easier, and large ones can work through their branches. If the situation continues with the blocking of websites, this will be impossible.

5. In social networks, opinions are expressed that Lukashenka personally gave the order to block. The following scenario seems more likely to me: some agency has placed its interest above the interests of the state. Getting 100 thousand dollars to the balance of your department, when the state lost 100 million - this is the classic of the genre. It can take only a couple of weeks, and the number of visits to the blocked site will grow. But this attendance will not be reflected in the reports of Belarusian providers. But this agency will be able to report that according to their statistics no one in Belarus browsed the blocked the site. As a result, a certain agency is in the black, and the state has suffered immense damage. This explanation seems most likely to me.”

Important to note, on January 24 the Lukashenka regime blocked the independent informational resource Charter97.org. First Deputy Minister of Information Ihar Lutski confirmed the fact of blocking.

The detailed instruction how to overcome the blocking of the website Charter97.org is available here.