Roskomnadzor does not have enough money to spy on companies that store correspondence and conversations of Russians

RKN needs money

Roskomnadzor (RKN) will require additional funds from the federal budget to increase the staff of specialists and refine accounting systems, Vedomosti writes . On February 15, 2023, at a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Oleg Terlyakov , Deputy Head of the RKN, said this . The money will be required after the adoption of amendments to the law “On Communications”, which oblige Roskomnadzor to additionally control about 2,000 online services.

According to the bill, owners of autonomous systems will be required to keep records of the reception and transmission of any information for three years – just as telecom operators and organizers of the dissemination of information do now under the “Yarovaya Law” and the Law ” On Information “. The innovation applies to all companies that have an autonomous system number – this is a unique identifier or “name” of the network.

For example, networks of enterprises or networks of digital services will fall under the law. Numbers are available not only from federal telecom operators, but also from regional ones. They are also possessed by departmental and corporate networks of banks , universities, large Internet resources, online cinemas and online stores . In order to control how they comply with the law, an agency responsible for this is required.

At a meeting of the State Duma Committee , Deputy Minister of Digital Development Dmitry Kim noted that so far the federal body authorized to carry out such control has not been determined, but “this issue can be resolved at the level of a government decree.” He clarified that the RKN is ready to take on this, but they do not have enough finances and specialists.

“If we do not have resource support, we will not be able to fulfill this authority,” Terlyakov said at the meeting. “Looking at the domain resource registry, that’s 1,937 new entities owning autonomous systems.”

He did not specify how much money the RKN would need , but Dmitry Kim promised to apply for additional funding from the Ministry of Finance and the government .

The representative of the FSB, at the meeting, proposed to take over part of the authority to maintain the register in order to alleviate the fate of the RKN.

What does the bill say now?

The amendments to the law ” On Communications ” were adopted in the first reading in December 2021. At the moment, the bill does not specify which agency will monitor how companies comply with the new requirements, director of the Internet Research Institute Karen Kazaryan explained to CNews .

“Neither the RKN nor the FSB appear in the bill at all, their functions are not spelled out,” the expert noted. “At the same time, the RKN has been keeping a register of autonomous networks and their owners for several years and has been monitoring compliance with the requirements since the adoption of the law “ On the sovereign Internet .”

In an interview with CNews, Igor Bederov , the head of the Internet -rozysk company , noted that if the RKN has to additionally control another 2,000 companies, the agency needs money solely to expand the staff who will send requests and receive answers to them. At the same time, according to the specialist, the problem could be solved by a competent distribution of available personnel.

“As for the storage of information, this function will be assigned to their operators and owners themselves, that is, the ILV will need to store a maximum of separate logs within the framework of current requests,” the expert explained. – In this regard, the amounts requested by the department should not be significant. But knowing that the RKN regularly asks for additional payments for various improvements and training, and sometimes we are talking about several billion, it is obvious that this time the department will want to use the money.”

What Operators Already Store

Recall that, according to the amendments to the Federal Law-374 “ On Countering Terrorism ”, which entered into force on July 1, 2018 (“ Yarovaya Law ”), telecom operators and Internet providers must store telephone conversations and correspondence of users for six months, and messages – in within 30 days. Some types of information are required to be kept for up to three years.

In 2021, the requirements were extended to the owners of technological networks, obliging them to store metadata about the actions of their users for three years – pictures, written and voice messages , phone calls. At the discussion stage of the document, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs ( RSPP ) criticized this initiative, saying that it would bankrupt companies.

In the summer of 2022, CNews wrote that regional telecom operators figured out how to legally refuse to integrate systems of operational search activities ( SORM ) into their networks and not store user traffic. Providers began to unite in ” consumer Internet cooperatives” (PIK). These organizations provide Internet access to their customers, for which they purchase traffic from larger operators.