Los ciudadanos extranjeros no podrán utilizar el wifi sin la presentación del pasaporte

Amendments introduced by the government into the bill of rendering of communication services will deprive foreign citizens of the opportunity to access public Wi-Fi networks without registering the passport data.

The amendments establish the rule of the obligatory identification while accessing the Internet via public connections. Russian citizens will be able to identify themselves by mobile phone number or via portal of public services.

Meanwhile, this opportunity won’t be available for the foreign citizens as, according to the law, foreign mobile operators are not obliged to reveal the customers personal data at the request of the state bodies of the Russian Federation. Thus, the phone number registered abroad cannot serve as a means of identification.

However, the experts say that this way of identification will stay inviable in future. In the comments given to the newspaper “Izvestia”, the Russian Internet ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev notes that in a year or two the number of devices that can connect to the network will so exceed the number of people that it will be impossible to identify each of these devices individually.

At the moment, the new rules of public Wi-Fi networks using only concern the points established by the government structures and do not affect private access points installed, for example, in a cafe or restaurant.