Forms of self-regulation existing in the Russian national domains .RU and .РФ as well as in the Cyrillic domain .ДЕТИ to prevent dissemination of illicit content will serve as a basis for a new bill.

On June 28, the Russian Civic Chamber held a regular meeting of the Working Group on Children’s Information Security of the Public Council with the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights. The working group includes representatives of the Smart Internet Foundation, administrator of the .ДЕТИ domain.

Subjects discussed during the meeting:                            

1. Terminating delegation of domain names related to physical or cyber humiliation of children, propaganda and trafficking of drugs or promotion of extremism, that were registered by Russian registrars accredited outside the national domain zones.
2. Security matters related to biometric identification of minors
3. Involving young people in the educational and awareness activity on information security

The first point was covered by Viktoria Bunchuk, Smart Internet Foundation Project Manager, who presented a report on self-regulation practices to terminate delegation of domain names used to disseminate unlawful content in the Russian national domain zones of  .RU и .РФ, the transnational domain zone of .SU, city domains .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА, and the subject-specific .ДЕТИ domain. Specifically, it was stressed that these practices are efficient; however, they do not apply to Russian domain registrars accredited in other domain zones.

The discussion participants concluded that the problem could be resolved by introducing national legal regulation mandatory for Russian legal persons (domain registrars), namely through amending Federal Law No. 149-FZ On Information, Information Technology and Protection of Information, according to the existing self-regulation practices in the .RU, .РФ and .ДЕТИ domains.

Speaking about the second matter, the participants noted that the range of threats related to the trafficking of minors’ biometric personal data includes both preventive and responsive elements. The discussion covered the following two key aspects of enhancing security:

• Principal classification of the biometric identification methods and tools used in everyday life and in connection with state or trade secrets (which makes collection of biometric data “for the long term” meaningless);
• Speeding up the response by authorized government bodies and personal data operators to incidents related to leaking or unlawful use of biometric personal data, including upon complaints from personal data owners.

The discussion resulted in a decision to develop recommendations to improve protection of biometric personal data collected from minors.

The third topic was covered by Viktoria Bunchuk, who spoke about the practice of a Youth Council with the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, and Director of the Russian Safer Internet Center Urvan Parfentyev, who spoke about the practice of youth internet chambers. The participants found it reasonable to develop the practice of engaging teenagers in the creation and broadcasting of positive content, including the content that raises awareness of information security. The participants found it particularly important to involve teenagers in reviewing educational material developed by adults for younger audiences, in order to adapt such material for better perception of the target audience. It was pointed out that it is unacceptable to involve minors in the search for and analysis of illicit content.

The final decision was to suggest that the Working Group members present information on projects to involve young people in creative educational and awareness activity on information security in the regions to develop recommended practices as part of the Decade of Childhood events.

The next meeting of the Working Group will take place in mid-September 2018.