Yury Ziser: BelTA case showed one can be found without obligatory identification

The Ministry of Information has presented the draft of a Council of Ministers' resolution titled “On preliminary identification of Internet users.” The draft can now be discussed by professional communites and members of the public.

The preliminary identification means that Internet users will have to report their personal information (name, date and place of birth, e-mail address and the time of posting a comment) to the owners of Internet platforms.

Founder of Belarus' leading online portal TUT.by Yury Ziser reckons that the need to submit personal information will prompt users of Belarusian forums to move into social media platforms where ‘nobody can get them.’

"People report their real names and go through the phone number identification in social media including Facebook. The same is done by Google but nobody cares about it. The thing is Google and Facebook do not reveal their users’ personal information. The situation in Belarus is absolutely different – people may become wanted for expressing any criticism," Yury Ziser told Euroradio.

Most European countries do not use the kine of identification proposed by the Ministry of Information. However, if a person violates the law,  he or she can easily be found. “The same is happening in Belarus and ‘the BelTA case’ has proved it,” Ziser noted.

All the measures have been invented to cow people so that they would not post critical comments that officials dislike, in the view of TUT.by founder. However, the number of such comments will not drop since they will reappear ‘on foreign platforms.’