Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Tor Browser

The Saratov Regional Court has upheld the decision of the Leninsky District Court of Saratov to block the website of The Tor Project, as well as the Tor Browser in Google Play. This was reported by Ekaterina Abashina, a lawyer from Roskomsvoboda who represents The Tor Project in court and attended the online hearing. All parties to the case were present, except for Google.

“The Prosecutor’s Office and Roskomnadzor label the Tor Browser as an illegal technology for disseminating information, and its functionality for accessing materials blocked in Russia is also considered illegal, even though no one has actually examined or studied the application,” notes Ekaterina. “The decision is based on a substitution of concepts: access/dissemination of information, information/application/information technology.”

“Moreover, the law on information does not provide for a ban on any technologies. There is a special procedure for blocking ‘means of accessing prohibited information’ (non-judicial, Article 15.8 of Federal Law 149-FZ): blocking is tied to a specific procedure and conditions, which were not initiated or followed in relation to Tor (this should have been done by the Ministry of Internal Affairs or FSB together with Roskomnadzor),” the lawyer summarizes.

Arguments Presented in the Appeal

In their appeal, Roskomsvoboda’s lawyers pointed out that:

• The court of first instance made its decision based on circumstances that were not proven in any way.
• The court of first instance misapplied the provisions of Federal Law No. 149-FZ of July 27, 2006, which establishes a ban on distributing certain categories of information in Russia.
• The court of first instance ignored established judicial practice, which requires substantiating the need to restrict human rights and freedoms based on established facts.

For these reasons, the appellate court was asked to overturn the decision of the Leninsky District Court of Saratov.

Additional Details and Concerns

An interesting detail: when attempting to access the Saratov Regional Court’s website, browsers warn of potential danger due to expired security certificates. This highlights a concerning lack of attention to user security by the site’s administrators—a problem that affects many Russian court websites.

“Another nuance,” says Ekaterina Abashina, “is that in the first instance, the prosecutor clarified the demands and added a request to require Google to remove Tor from the app store. Therefore, there was a demand to recognize the information on the Google Play page as prohibited and to require its removal. The court issued such a decision, but before doing so, the court of first instance excluded Google LLC from the proceedings and separated the claims against Google into a separate case, for which Tor did not receive any summons or notifications. So, the court excluded Google from the case but still made a decision regarding its rights and obligations. This was an unconditional ground for overturning the first instance decision, and I repeatedly drew the court’s attention to this at the hearing, but the court decided to continue and upheld the decision of the Leninsky District Court of Saratov Region.”