The speaker of the Federation Council upper house of the Russian parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, said on Wednesday she was against tighter rules on Internet access and government control over the Internet.
“We are against restrictions on access to the Internet or a total control over it, against restrictions on legitimate interests and possibilities of the citizens,” Matviyenko said in an interview with the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily on Wednesday.
“The right to free access to and distribution of information is a basic principle of democracy, and our country does not intended to backtrack on it,” the speaker said.
Matviyenko said she shared fears as to threats to psychic, moral and physical health of children and teenagers from websites advocating terrorism, violence, drugs, child pornography and stirring xenophobia, as well as ethnic and social enmity.
“The international community has amassed huge experience of fight against such threats. Those circulating them are punished harshly. Our country will act, or to be more exact already acts, in the same way, closing such sites, bringing to responsibility their owners, authors,” Matviyenko said.
Russia will be neither limiting access to Internet nor subjecting the World Wide Web to total control in the country, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on October 1.
“We are not planning to restrict access to Internet and subjecting it to total control,” Putin said addressing a session of the Russian Security Council.