Before the elections, the Ministry of Digital Security wanted to disconnect communications in case of emergency for everyone, except for the security forces and the military

During emergencies (ES) “natural or man-made”, mobile operators should give priority in using communications to security officials, while disconnecting ordinary Russians from the network. Such proposals contained in the draft government decree prepared by the Ministry of Finance. Attention to this drew RBC.

Only servicemen of the Ministry of Defense, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSO, the FSB, the National Guard, the Ministry of Justice and the special services will be able to use cellular communications during such emergencies. If approved, the resolution (currently at the stage of public discussion) will enter into force on March 1, 2022 and will be valid for six years.

In document it saysthat operators will be required to give “absolute priority” to all human safety, major accidents, epidemics and disasters “related to urgent public administration, national defense and law enforcement.”

Such a measure that, as supposed, will be mandatory for all operators, will have to “prevent congestion in communication networks” and “meet the needs of priority users,” the document says. “Priority users” refers to employees of the security and rescue agencies.

In emergency situations, limiting cellular communication is a forced measure in which it is necessary to use all the resources of operators in order to prevent communication failures, stated RBC CEO of Telecom Daily Denis Kuskov. According to him, it is technically possible to disconnect users from communications, but everything depends on the team of security officials.

The most important thing is that such a measure is not used during rallies and protests, pointed out he. Earlier, in 2000 and 2004, the authorities had already adopted similar resolutions, however, unlike them, now the document has included the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Guard, who are used at rallies, as “priority users”.

The day before, September 13, Rostelecom proposed prohibit access to the use of public DNS servers Google, Cloudflare and the DoH protocol “in order to organize stable access of subscribers to the Internet.” Experts noticedthat Roskomnadzor began testing the possibility of blocking them. These servers allow you to exchange data over an encrypted protocol, speed up page loading and bypass blocking. DNS servers Google and CloudFlare, in particular, are used for the operation of the Navalny application and the associated Smart Voting.