Leonid Levin, chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Communicating and Information Policy asserted that Russian computer security would really enhance by controlling the distribution of spyware and malware. Subsequently, Russia’s Roskomnadzor — believe “FCC State-sponsored censorship agency” — released a statement declaring that it would support any move to limit access to Tor or similar anonymizing services.

Russian Tor use has spiked since last May when the authorities started driving them to enroll and cracking down on bloggers. Allegedly up to 25% of all Russian users use a VPN service, though this amount can not be independently confirmed. In america, VPN use is mainly a small business attribute or a means to prevent ISP toll roads, but in states with greater degrees of censorship, they serve a goal that is more essential.

Tor has been decried by the Russian government as a sanctuary for illegal content and child pornography, spurred on by the creation of other darknet and the Silk Road -hosted sites. Asserts that 80% of Tor traffic associated with child pornography made headlines this past year, but that statement referred especially to the concealed services of Tor. Those services account for only 1.5% of the total traffic that Tor takes. The authorities may nevertheless be smarting after this past year, when activists used after Roskomnadzor blocked a Facebook page calling for a rally on January 15, 2014 to support a known critic of Vladimir Putin, Alexei Navalny Tor to arrange demonstrations. Another anti-Putin demonstration is apparently scheduled for March 1, which could be part of the reason the government anonymizing networks and is improving strategies to further limit access to VPNs.