Russia to unplug for test

Tech providers are planning to temporarily cut the Russian internet off from the World Wide Web amid attempts to increase government control of information flows.

A group of major private and state telecoms led by Natalya Kaspersky, co-founder of Kaspersky Lab antivirus maker, have decided to conduct the test to disconnect “Runet” from the rest of the internet sometime before April 1.

That is the deadline for amendments to “sovereign internet” legislation that ostensibly will allow Russia to protect itself from foreign aggression in the digital sphere. Lawmakers are worried that Western accusations of Russian hacking could lead to retaliatory cyberattacks and are trying to develop a way to isolate the Russian internet.

The bill would require telecoms to be able to redirect all traffic through routing points controlled by the state, giving it a brake on the flow of information to networks abroad. Experts say developing such sweeping capabilities would be expensive.

The system will be monitored by the state communications oversight agency Roskomnadzor, which has become known for banning both extremist speech and criticism of the Kremlin. It will be able to filter out foreign content it doesn’t like. Last week, Google reportedly agreed to receive lists of sites banned by Roskomnadzor every day and to block some of them. So far, it’s blocked three-fourths of the sites forbidden in Russia.

Moscow is seen to be moving to a model like China’s “great firewall,” where certain words are blocked and users can’t visit blacklisted sites.