SBU and officials are fighting for the right to block objectionable sites
Ukrainian intelligence services and officials cannot share among themselves the right to influence providers to block objectionable sites.
This was stated by the head of the Digital Security Laboratory NGO Irina Chulivskaya during the conference “Power VS Internet: A Year of Attempts to Restrict the Internet in Ukraine,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Chulivskaya said that throughout this year there were at least nine different bills, resolutions and letters that in one way or another tried to force providers to block certain sites.
“Why this trend worries us: firstly, there are a lot of players in this field. That is, the role of such a Ukrainian “Roskomnadzor” was taken by various institutions - the Ministry of Information Policy, which collected lists of what they demanded to be blocked. They were the first to try to create some kind of procedure for how sites should be blocked. According to their vision, MIP officials create a list of “bad” sites, submit it to the expert council at the ministry, it approves, then the SBU and the Verkhovna Rada committee look at this list, and in case of general agreement, the court should accept their blocking,” she said.
“The second player is the SBU, which does not publicly send out letters to providers with “recommendations” to block certain sites. One provider asked: “On what grounds should we comply with this letter?” and published a letter on his website with a list of 80 pages that need to be blocked. We contacted the SBU with requests to tell us how many websites they have that are banned, to which the intelligence service responded that they do not maintain such a list. As it turned out, decisions regarding websites are made solely by the deputy head of the SBU Main Directorate with the last name Stasyuk,” Chulivskaya added.
The third “player” in the pursuit of blocking, according to the social activist, is the Ukrainian courts.
“Over the past few months, there have been two unprecedented decisions where the courts, without the authority and legislation to do so, obligated providers to block sites, since in one case intellectual rights were violated, in the other it was a matter of protecting honor and dignity. In general, the law provides for blocking a site only if it contains child pornography. And the courts force providers to implement such illegal decisions,” she said.
“Another player is the State Special Communications Service, where they decided that in order for them, together with the SBU, to check whether providers really block the sites they prohibit, they need to install special equipment for this - “SBU black boxes” that read traffic. Back in February, the National Commission for Regulation of Communications and Information adopted this resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers at a meeting. Many public organizations protested that such methods of mass traffic monitoring are unacceptable due to the opening up of opportunities for manipulation. In principle, after that we did not hear about this resolution anymore, but such a threat remains.
Also, throughout the year, there were several bills that could provide almost unlimited opportunities for investigators and judges conducting investigations to block sites for a huge period without any court hearing on the orders of government agencies belonging to the cyber defense system,” Chulivskaya said.
Summing up, Irina Chulivskaya emphasized that throughout the year, attempts by various structures to limit anything on the Internet have not stopped.
“Ukrainian special services and officials want to create a structure for themselves in order to have one button that can be used to turn off “bad sites.” Such methods of restricting our information rights and freedom of speech on the Internet are unacceptable,” concluded the representative of the public organization.
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