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Putin’s control over the internet and information grows stronger as tech and media companies leave or are banned from Russia.
Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
About the author: Alexandra Givens is the president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit organization.
Over the past few weeks, governments and businesses around the world have rightly cut ties to Russia. Sanctions are a critical tool to pressure the Kremlin and denounce Putin’s unprovoked aggression, but all sanctions are not alike. Unlike shutting U.S. franchises in Moscow or halting trade in luxury goods, cutting off the Russian people’s access to the internet can do more harm than good. Indeed, such measures play right into Putin’s hands, strengthening his control over the news that Russians can access and stifling individuals attempting to organize against the war.
In recent days, Putin has strengthened his crackdown on free speech and furthered his long-sought goal to control how Russia’s internet connects with the rest of the world. Russia has now blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, each with tens of millions of Russian users, as well as news outlets such as the BBC. Russia’s new law against “knowingly disseminating false information” has forced independent news outlets to leave Russia for fear of exposing their staff to arrest. Meanwhile, thousands of Russian citizens have been arrested for protesting the war.
As global companies navigate these complex waters, some communications companies have pulled out of Russia altogether, and the Ukrainian government has called for the organizations that support the internet’s infrastructure to cut off Russia from the global internet. While understandable, these calls are dangerous, and were rightly rejected. As Putin works to suppress his citizens’ access to outside information, global democracies should be working to preserve that access – not to accelerate the Kremlin’s plans.
Civil society organizations (including my own, the Center for Democracy & Technology), recently came together to stress the importance of preserving communications access for Russian citizens, and urged governments to clarify their sanctions regimes to ensure this fact. We argued that actors contemplating steps that would limit communications in Russia should carefully consider the full impact of such measures, and act in a targeted, open, and strategic manner consistent with international human rights law. Companies should acknowledge, for example, that suspending personal communications services raises greater concerns than suspending ad sales or enterprise software accounts for Russian companies.
Fortunately, we are already seeing good examples of what companies and governments can do in the dire circumstances Russia presents. Twitter recently followed Facebook and news services like the BBC and the New York Times in launching a dark-web version of its site so that Russians can access the platform despite their government’s blockade. Russians are turning in record numbers to virtual private networks, which allow users to circumvent some restrictions on internet access. End-to-end encrypted messaging services give users comfort that they can communicate privately and securely. Since a Kremlin crackdown in 2021, Russia’s largest independent news source, Meduza, has been using servers in Latvia, educating its readers about VPNs and anti-blocking software, and receiving donations from around the world to make up for its disrupted revenue.
These acts of resistance large and small provide important lessons for the path ahead. In addition to clarifying the scope of sanctions related to information services, democratic leaders should internalize the importance of the tools that are preserving avenues for free expression in Russia and Ukraine. Now more than ever, policymakers must recognize the importance of end-to-end encrypted messaging as a tool to protect the privacy and security of journalists, dissidents, and ordinary citizens. We are also seeing the value of investing in circumvention technologies, which allow users to get around state-imposed firewalls to access information from around the world. For example, the Tor browser was developed with funding from the U.S. and Swedish governments, and relies on a broad spectrum of financial support from individual donors, the private sector, government and philanthropy. Democratic governments should continue to invest in these technologies through programs like the Open Technology Fund, the Digital Defenders Partnership of the Freedom Online Coalition, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Global leaders must also take a united stance against policies that feed online authoritarianism. For years, Russia has gained power over global technology companies through data and personnel localization laws, which require tech companies to store data in Russia and have employees in-country. Those laws give the Kremlin outsized leverage to enforce compliance with its demands. This concept is being replicated by governments around the world, including even by democratic allies such as India and in the European Union. In addition, a growing number of countries are blocking access to specific websites, or shutting down internet access in certain regions or around election periods, for political ends. Global leaders must firmly reject such policies.
Last year, President Biden gathered leaders from around the world for the Summit for Democracy, and announced a subsequent “year of action” for governments to commit to ways in which they will strengthen democracy at home and abroad. Russia’s tactics remind us how central technology must be to this effort: for global leaders to advance an affirmative vision for an open, interoperable internet that is free from digital censorship, and support technologies that protect individual users’ rights. As Putin works to pull the Russian people behind a new Silicon Curtain, and other authoritarians follow suit, global leaders and companies have a common duty to resist.
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