The Ukrainian parliament’s committee on security and defense approved on July 4 a draft law that enables prosecutors and the National Security and Defense Council to block websites they deem threatening to national security without a court ruling.
Lawmakers failed to garner enough votes for a reading of the bill on July 5. But there is a good chance the draft legislation will be put to the vote new week.
“Only the public and journalists can prevent this,” said media expert Tetiana Popova, a former deputy minister on information policy.
While several media watchdogs saw the bill as a way to introduce internet censorship, the committee approved it for first reading with recommendations of amendments for the second reading.
The bill was authored in 2017 by Ivan Vinnyk, a lawmaker from the pro-presidential Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, and People’s Front lawmakers Tetiana Chornovol and Dmytro Tymchuk, but it has only now reached the stage of being considered by parliament.
Under the bill, websites can be blocked if they “threaten national security” or “have an impact on decision making, or the action or inaction, of national or local government bodies, officials of these bodies, associations of citizens, or legal entities.”
Internet providers would have to purchase equipment chosen by the state communication service that would allow the security services to monitor traffic and block websites when they find it necessary.
If an internet provider fails to comply, it must pay 1 percent of its annual revenues as a fine. For repeat offenses, the fine is 5 percent.
Popova called the bill worse than the notorious laws that had been passed on Jan. 16, 2014 that intended to make street protests illegal, but instead provoked a new wave of the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
Popova said the bill violates Ukraine’s Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. She compared it to the internet censorship carried out by Roskomnadzor in Russia.
Maxim Tulyev, the head of internet service provider NetAssist, said the new bill would destroy anonymity on the internet because the security services would be able to follow the traffic. “You can say goodbye to privacy on the internet,” he said.
Howver, Vinnyk, a co-sponsor of the bill, said that the accusations were “groundless,” and that the bill wasn’t aimed at restricting the freedoms of internet users but at combating the activities of terrorist groups.
“I can’t understand how this is being interpreted as an attack on free speech or censorship, because the law does not even mention mass media,” Vinnyk told the Kyiv Post on June 26, when commenting on the law. “It’s stupid to pretend that the problem of cyberterrorism doesn’t exist.”
Staff writer Oleg Sukhov contributed to this report.
