Russian Court Overturns Block on Tor Project Website

Lawyers from Roskomsvoboda have successfully overturned the blocking of the Tor Project website. The appellate court canceled decision No. 2-1-1373/2017 from December 18, 2017, issued by the Saratov District Court of the Saratov Region, which had led to the blocking of The Tor Project website in December of the previous year.

The appeal hearing was held online and attended by Roskomsvoboda’s media lawyer, attorney Ekaterina Abashina, who shared the details. Since the Saratov District Court’s decision has been overturned, torproject.org should now be unblocked, according to her.

“We had two key arguments,” Ekaterina Abashina explained. “First: in 2017, the court of first instance did not involve The Tor Project Inc. in the case—this is an unconditional basis for canceling the decision, as the blocking order affects the rights and obligations of the site owner.”

The second argument was that Russian law does not contain any general ban on distributing information related to VPN technologies, anonymizers, and similar tools. “At the same time, the prosecutor, as the plaintiff, did not submit a written response to the complaint and only briefly and generally objected to the arguments during the hearing. Roskomnadzor, as an interested party, did submit a written response, stating that the court can declare any information prohibited and is not limited in this regard,” the Roskomsvoboda media lawyer said.

Abashina clarified that the appellate court upheld the complaint, canceled the previous decision, and sent the case back for a new hearing, this time with the participation of the website owner: “This means the grounds for cancellation were procedural violations, as we pointed out in our first argument.”

“I think the case will return to the court of first instance within a month, and we will continue to argue our second point—that there are no legislative bans on the distribution of information and technologies similar to Tor,” the media lawyer concluded.