Russia\u2019s censorship agency (Roskomnadzor) has sent a notice to Tor, threatening to block the web browser unless it removes \u201cprohibited information\u201d from its landing page, reported digital rights group Roskomsvoboda on Tuesday, December 7.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The letter from Roskomnadzor was published on GitLab on December 6, a few days after Russian Tor users first reported problems accessing the browser.<\/p>\n
The censorship agency has ordered Tor to delete unspecified \u201cprohibited information\u201d from the site torproject.org, which provides information about the browser, as well as download link.<\/p>\n
The website torporject.org was added to Roskomnadzor\u2019s registry of sites that contain \u201cprohibited information\u201d following a court ruling in 2017. However, the court ruling didn\u2019t restrict access to the site.<\/p>\n
Tor users in Russia began experiencing problems accessing the browser on December 3. According to the RuNet monitoring project GlobalCheck, Tor is being blocked using Internet-isolation equipment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On December 6, lawmaker Anton Gorelkin, the chairman of the State Duma\u2019s Information Policy Committee, said that he saw no alternative to blocking Tor, alleging that the browser\u2019s main purpose is to enable access to the Darkweb, mainly to buy illegal drugs.<\/p>\n