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9 December 2016

Russia Updates Plan to Counter Cyberattacks and Foreign Influence


By ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW — The Kremlin published a new plan on Tuesday to defend Russia against what it described as stepped-up cyberattacks and “information-psychological” methods by foreign intelligence agencies bent on influencing its population with online information.

The plan updates a similar information security doctrine put in place by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2000, early in his first term, that staked out a renewed role for post-Soviet government in monitoring information.

The latest iteration of the doctrine comes as American officials have mulled retaliating against Russia for what the Department of Homeland Security said was government-orchestrated hacking before the presidential election, including stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee.

The plan, signed by Mr. Putin on Monday but published on Tuesday, described a threat to Russia of technological malfeasance similar to what the United States has accused the Russians of committing. It did not mention, however, any specific online strikes against Russia indicating that American retaliation could be underway.

Russia, the document says, is at risk of attacks on systems of “information support for democratic institutions” and the spread of harmful, false information.

It notes the “increasing scale of certain countries and organizations using information technologies for military and political goals.”

The 16-page document sketches out what the Kremlin sees as the main threats to its security and national interest from foreign information making its way into the country, and sets priorities for countering them. It identifies terrorist recruiting and financial crime as dangers.

Under Mr. Putin, the Kremlin has staked out a role as a defender of conservative values, notably pushing back against gay rights, and the new doctrine is no exception, with a clause raising concern about risks to “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” of Russian young people.

It also notes the risk to Russia of “a tendency toward an increase of materials containing biased assessments of the state policies of the Russian Federation in foreign media.”

The doctrine supports a plan, in the works for some time, to gain control over the Russian segment of the web by basing more servers inside the country. The plan envisions operating the Russian internet autonomously, if needed in time of war, by switching it off from the rest of the world.

And it directs Russian diplomats to pursue the Kremlin’s policy goals on information security at international organizations like the United Nations.

Russia has advocated, without much success so far, replacing the nonprofit group that now controls top-level domains with a global agency, the International Telecommunication Union.

The document calls attention to “information-psychological actions” from abroad undermining Russian “patriotic traditions of defending the Fatherland.”

Russia has already passed laws aimed at regulating internet content and forcing foreign companies to base data servers in Russia. Last month, a Moscow court ordered internet service providers to block LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, for failing to comply.

Under a separate law governing news aggregators, sites with daily traffic exceeding 1 million users would bear responsibility as publishers, including a requirement to verify the truthfulness of the articles reposted on their websites. The law would apply to Google, among other aggregators.

A spokesman for the regulator, Roskomnadzor, on Tuesday denied a report in the Izvestiya newspaper saying Russian officials had already instructed Google to comply.

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