Telephone terrorism

2019: FSB will grant the right to turn off communication with the whole countries convicted of telephone terrorism

On October 25, 2019 it became known that FSB will grant the right to turn off communication with the whole countries convicted of telephone terrorism. The relevant bill is drafted at the request of the Security council of Russia.

The authorities intend to oblige to block telecom operators according to the order of "the body performing security of Russia", including FSB, traffic in the direction of a certain country if from its territory calls with untrue reports on terrorist attacks arrive. Can disconnect the message at the same time for a period of up to half a year (180 days).

FSB will be able to turn off for half a year communication with the countries for fight against telephone terrorism

In a document package there are no amendments  — what type of traffic should be blocked. In the explanatory note to the bill it is only mentioned that now at operators the duty to stop communication services provision on certain subscribers (Paragraph 3 of Article 64 of the law "About Communication") is provided, but this "is not enough measure for suppression of calls of terrorist orientation".

Two other participants of the working group told RBC that they will block only a voice communication and the SMS. According to them, "nobody directly spoke about shutdown of all communication channel": "Unless the operator will be such "krivorukiya" that will not be able to block a voice without data transmission blocking". 

In December, 2017 the President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed the law toughening punishment for telephone terrorism guilty of it imprisonment for up to 10 years can threaten. However it did not help to get rid of violators — for example, at the beginning of the 2019th in Russia the next wave of untrue reports on mining swept.

FSB said that calls with untrue reports on terrorist attacks arrive from abroad "using the IP telephony". At the same time it was announced a large number of similar "calls from the Internet" on normal phone numbers from the territory of Cyprus.^[1]

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