The lawyer explained the specifics of the law on combating extremism

One of the new draft laws aimed at combating extremism establishes responsibility for searching for knowingly extremist materials that are included in the relevant list of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation by court decision. This was announced on July 16 by lawyer Ilya Craft.

"Concerns about the impossibility of searching for "forbidden" information. The draft law establishes such a ban only for knowingly extremist materials, that is, for such materials that are included in the relevant court decision published by the Ministry of Justice of Russia. A list of extremist materials, which is exhaustive," he wrote on his Telegram channel.

According to him, the rest of the "dangerous" materials can be searched for, since it is just as unpunished as the fact of searching without access. He stressed that in the future, the body that will hold the Russian accountable will have to prove the deliberate intention of searching for materials from the list. At the same time, the lawyer noted that it is almost impossible to find extremist materials by chance due to limited access.

In addition, Craft stressed that there is no provision or plan for any liability for the use of VPN services. According to him, only fines will be imposed for VPN advertising, while an approving statement about the service cannot be considered as such.

"Thus, the new bill does not contain any new significant risks associated with the use of VPNs or SIM cards. It is aimed against phone scammers and distributors of extremist content who violate the law knowingly and with direct intent," the lawyer added.

Digital cleansing: Russia plans to impose fines for searching for extremist materials and VPN advertising

The new law will strengthen control over access to prohibited content on the Internet

Earlier that day, the State Duma Committee on State Construction approved amendments to the draft law on liability in the form of a fine of up to 5,000 rubles for searching the Internet for extremist materials and gaining access to them. At the same time, it is noted that only deliberate search and visiting pages with deliberately extremist content will be punishable. Access to other types of restricted, blocked, or labeled information is not an administrative offense.

So, the presence of intent may be indicated, for example, by repeatedly entering the name of prohibited extremist material in the search bar, using a VPN service to bypass the established locks, and so on. The registration of offenses, in turn, will be carried out on general grounds, there are no innovations in this matter.