FSB Will Monitor Companies' Traffic To Detect VPNs

Violators can have their accreditation revoked.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) will start monitoring traffic on the services of Russian IT companies in order to detect access to them using VPNs, informed sources told Kommersant. According to them, if such access is detected, the FSB will have the right to make proposals to the Ministry of Finance to strip IT companies of their accreditation. The latter provides tax benefits to businesses: developers are exempted from VAT, the income tax rate is reduced from 25% to 5%, and there are reduced insurance premiums. In addition, employees of companies that have passed accreditation have a deferment from the army and can get an IT mortgage.

The Ministry of Digitization has also drafted a government decree, according to which companies may lose the right to pre-install their applications on devices in Russia if they skip VPN traffic. Before that, Kommersant's sources reported on the idea to exclude services that can be accessed using blocking circumvention tools from the "white lists" available when the Internet is shut down. Mobile operators were also required to set a traffic limit of 15 gigabytes per month when using VPNs. All this is happening against the backdrop of the authorities' dramatic strengthening of the fight against blocking circumvention: at the beginning of the year, Roskomnadzor restricted the work of more than 400 VPN services in Russia, which is 70% more than in the three months before.

The measures under discussion are necessary to prevent the introduction of liability for Russians for using VPNs, Kommersant's sources say. The head of Russia's Ministry of Cifra Maksut Shadaev also said earlier that the agency is "against the introduction of administrative responsibility" for the use of blocking circumvention tools. However, he said, his ministry is tasked with reducing the use of VPN services in the country. BBC Russian Service sources said that the FSB was behind the initiatives to restrict VPNs.

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