In recent days, the voices of political decision-makers and those responsible for digital governance in Western countries have been heard to demand the removal or blocking of Internet addresses attributed to Russia at the global level.
Policymakers and digital governance officials in Western countries are calling for the removal or blocking of Internet addresses attributed to Russia. This request, radical to say the least, is made mainly by the Ukrainian representatives within the Company for the allocation of domain names and numbers on the Internet (Icann) which is the organization responsible for working to preserve the security, stability and interoperability of the Internet. The objective of this proposal would thus be to stop the Kremlin’s online propaganda and to prevent Russia’s attempts at cyberattacks.
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But if shutting down internet access to an entire region is technically feasible, the cure may be worse than the disease. Banning a country from the global network could also harm all communications carried out via the Internet in the world.
Pressures on global internet governance
The effects of these measures, which are wrongly compared to the decision taken by Europe to prohibit the overflight of its airspace by Russian airliners, would have deleterious repercussions for most countries of the world, alert Pierre Bonis, Director General of theAfnic, the French association for internet naming in cooperation, in charge of the management of .fr, and in particular with its European partners, that of Ukraine. “ It would be quite simple technically to remove the .ru, which is that of Russia, from the file registered in the domain name system. Internet browsers would no longer be able to reach the country’s web addresses and this measure would wipe out part of the global internet, he explains. This request was made officially by the Ukrainian representatives to ICANN but also to the organization that manages the allocation of IP addresses in Europe. She just got rejected. But what worries us is that this kind of request is made by people who are not in charge of critical internet infrastructures and are exerting ever-increasing pressure on the managers of these management bodies by asking them to order to take sides in international conflicts, however appalling they may be. And it is not the role of these organizations that ensure the proper functioning of the critical protocols of the Internet. Their role is that the internet works permanently for everyone and everywhere. »
At the end of 2019, Russia adopted a law allowing it to set up a “sovereign internet” called Runet. The country prides itself on being able to cut itself off from the rest of the world. But already tested on several occasions, this local internet serves rather to censor the information disseminated by foreign social networks. Runet is therefore a new “digital iron curtain” comparable to the systems put in place by the Chinese and the Iranians. On the other hand, the proliferation of these regional intranets around the world is worrying. Their generalization would gradually lead to a fragmentation of the large network of networks, which was originally designed to be as interoperable as possible, neutral and accessible to all Internet users, regardless of their place of residence.