U.S. Government Authorizes the Export of Internet-Based Communications Tools to  Crimea

Internet users in the Crimea region of Ukraine should soon get a boost thanks to updates to U.S. sanctions that will help promote the free flow of information in the area.

Last week, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) revised and clarified its licensing policy for the Crimea region of Ukraine, authorizing the export of mass market, widely available software that is “necessary to enable the exchange of personal communications over the Internet.” At the same time, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published General License No. 9, which similarly covers services and software “incident to Internet-based communications.” The policy makes clear that U.S.-made products like chat, email, instant messaging, web browsing, and social networking services can be exported to the region — an important step that should help human rights defenders and ordinary individuals who live there communicate more easily and securely.

In December 2014, the U.S. government imposed new sanctions on the Crimean region of Ukraine in an attempt to influence the ongoing armed conflict in the region. The Crimea sanctions program is the first comprehensive set of restrictions imposed by the U.S. government since it began introducing authorizations for personal communications tools to countries like Iran, Cuba, Syria, and Sudan five years ago. Since 2009, the U.S. government has engaged in a broad effort to update its comprehensive sanctions to support the free flow of information, primarily by issuing General Licenses that authorize the export of free and publicly available personal communications tools — and, in the cases of Iran, Cuba, and Sudan, the sale of software and hardware — to the affected regions. But when the new restrictions for Crimea were announced, there was no carve out for the export of Internet-based tools and services. That meant that American companies like Google, Apple, and GoDaddy began notifying customers in January 2015 (just before the new sanctions were scheduled to take effect) that they would soon lose access to services and important software updates.

In response to this news, a coalition of groups that included OTI, Access, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Global Voices sent a letter to OFAC urging it to “act immediately to protect the free flow of information in the Crimea region of the Ukraine.” Four months later, we got our answer: OFAC and BIS implemented a coordinated policy change to address the problem, which was likely overlooked when the sanctions and initial authorizations were implemented. Now, American companies can reverse any policy decisions they made earlier this year to comply with the restrictions, and the license should help prevent users from being cut off from these services in the future because of U.S. sanctions.