MOSCOW -- The Russian government's desire for a Cyrillic Internet suggests an attempt to oversee Web access despite claims of Internet security, a British newspaper said.
Kremlin officials are looking at imposing greater control over the Russian-language portion of the Internet by creating a Web that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, the Guardian said Thursday.
There are technical issues regarding top-level domain names as the ASCII suffix ".ru" translates to ".py" in Cyrillic -- the domain name for Paraguay. Kremlin officials said the ".py" suffix opens Russian users to phishing scams originating from foreign servers.
Officials with an international domain naming agency told the Guardian that Russia was lobbying for an ".rf" domain but that would mean Russia controlled the domain and anyone hoping for a ".rf" suffix would have to register the site for Kremlin approval.
Wolfgang Kleinwachter with the Internet Governance Forum said the ".rf" domain protects external server access but also cuts off Russian citizens from accessing the international Web.
"Russians estimate that 90 percent of the communication will be within Russia and just 10 percent will go outside," Kleinwachter said in the Guardian report.
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