The latest blocking websites in Azerbaijan is wrong, the expert

Baku / 09.08.18 / Turan: In March last year, significant changes were made in the legislation to the law "On Information, Informatization and Information Protection" adopted 20 years ago. The amendments dealt with the order of closing the sites. The amendments allowed the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies to warn websites for publishing materials against statehood, national and spiritual values, calls for extremism, terrorism, etc.

The initiator of sanctions against such publications may be the Prosecutor General's Office, which sends an appropriate appeal to the Center for Electronic Security of the Ministry, from where a warning of violation is sent to the site. At the same time, the Center can block the site and without warning if there are serious violations.

According to the expert in the field of telecommunications, the president of the Azerbaijani Internet forum Osman Gunduz, it is not just about news sites. Restrictive measures may be applied to gambling, pornographic, erotic and other sites.

However, in Azerbaijan, for some reason, the news sites are blocked in the latter.

At the same time, access to the whole news resource is closed, although it is possible to restrict technical information to "harmful" information, he noted.

Gunduz also noted that when clicking on a blocked site, information should appear on the decision and reasons for closing access to this resource, as it is done in the legal states.

Legislation requires the Ministry of Communications to prepare a list of blocked sites, so that users have information about the reasons for this, and they themselves judge how right or wrong this decision was.

This issue has remains unsolved. At the same time, the blocking the site should take place by the court decision and only in the special cases. The last cases of blocking four sites on August 7-8 were carried out in spite of all this, the expert noted. -0--