Protecting the Free Flow of Information in Crimea Under U.S. Sanctions

Internet users in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine and Russia are starting to feel the effects of U.S. sanctions on the free flow of information in the region. In response to the latest developments, OTI joined Access, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Global Voices, and several others last week in a letter to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) which urges OFAC to “act immediately to protect the free flow of information in the Crimea region of Ukraine.”

In late December, the U.S. government levied new sanctions on the Crimean region of the Ukraine in an attempt to influence the ongoing armed conflict in the region. As our letter notes, “The December embargo against Crimea is among the first comprehensive U.S. sanction programs introduced since authorizations for personal communications over the Internet were put into place in Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria beginning six years ago.” Since 2009, the U.S. government has engaged in a broad effort to update its comprehensive sanctions to support the free flow of information, primarily by issuing General Licenses that authorize the export of free and publicly available personal communications tools (and, in the cases of Cuba and Iran, the sale of software and hardware). Although OFAC released three general licenses for the Crimea sanctions program last month, none of them directly address the export of Internet-based tools and services. That means that users in the region risk losing access to vital American products as companies take steps to comply with the new sanctions program.

The recent general licenses, which cover non-commercial personal remittances, mail and telecommunications services, are built on a precedent that sanctions should not impede the free flow of information in the targeted areas. But the authorizations do not ensure the continued availability of Internet-based communication services, hardware, and software in Crimea — despite the fact thats online communication has largely replaced telephony and postal communication in the digital age. In late January, just before the new restrictions were scheduled to take effect, Google Apps users in Crimea (and users elsewhere in Ukraine who had recently been to Crimea) received notice that access to services within the territory would be suspended shortly. They also learned that Chrome, a browser used widely in Ukraine, would no longer receive security updates, making Crimeans more vulnerable to malware, which the Russian government has used to target political opponents in the past.

The popular domain registration site GoDaddy also warned Ukrainian customers last month that it would be forced to revoke domains and terminate service to comply with sanctions. This may force those who wish to communicate about the situation in Ukraine to move to free communication platforms like popular social media sites, which raises additional free expression concerns due to recent efforts by the Russian government to force these sites to comply with local censorship laws.

Without explicit authorization for Internet based personal communications technologies, more and more companies are likely to take the risk-averse route and shut down their services in the region in order to make sure they’re complying with the sanctions. That’s why it’s so important that OFAC act quickly to issue a general license authorizing the provision of services, software, and hardware used for personal communication over the Internet — before more users in the region are cut off.

Read the full text of the letter and blog posts from Access and EFF on the situation. For more background on technology and the free flow of information under U.S. sanctions, see OTI’s December 2013 paper on the subject.