I learned it by watching you! New Russian anti-encryption and data retention laws look sadly familiar.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Column

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA--Did legislation in the United Kingdom and the United States inspire Russian authorities to adopt strong new domestic spying laws?

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Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the anti-encryption and data monitoring "Yarovaya Law" on July 7. Named after Irina Yarovaya, the ultraconservative legislator who pushed for it, the legislation is styled as an "anti-terrorism" measure. Among other things, it mandates that internet service providers and other telecommunications companies store all telephone conversations, text messages, videos, and picture messages for six months. In addition, telecom companies must retain customers' metadata--that is, information about with whom, when, for how long, and from where they communicated--for three years.

Under the Yarovaya Law, providers of telecommunication services--such as messenger apps, social networks, email clients, and websites that encrypt their data--are required to help Russia's Federal Security Service decipher messages sent by users. In other words, the new law essentially requires internet service providers and other tech firms to install back doors in their services.The fine for refusing to cooperate can be as high as a million rubles (more than $15,000).

In order to comply, telecom firms operating in Russia claim that they will have to build vast new data storage infrastructure costing many times more than they now make in profits. They also point out that most of the required data storage technologies are manufactured outside of Russia. And they plausibly argue that the new rules will bring information technology investment and innovation in the country to a halt.

From the authorities' point of view, the fact that most Russian telecoms will not be able to comply with the Yarovaya Law is a feature, not a bug. As the U.S.-based Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, those companies are now"de facto criminals," giving the Russian government "the leverage to extract from them any other concession it desires."

Russia Direct, a website funded chiefly by the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, tellingly observes that "in Russia, the legislation is compared to the USA Patriot Act." No doubt the extensive capabilities exercised in secret by America's National Security Agency (NSA) and disclosed by whisdeblower Edward Snowden in 2013 elicited considerable professional envy among Russian spy agencies.Those revelations did provoke alarm among civil...