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A Russian appeal court has lifted the country's block on the Tor website – the anonymous browser developed by nonprofit organization the Tor Project – digital rights advocate Roskomsvoboda has announced.
The reversal came following a decision from the appellate court last week, citing process violations during the initial proceedings four-and-a-half years ago that ultimately resulted in the blocking of the Tor browser website in December.
A new trial date has been set to commence on Thursday, May 26 with the Tor Project now being involved, having not been summoned in the initial case.
🎊 HUGE news worth celebrating!🎊 The Russian block on our website (https://t.co/Bfvw4mqWAV) has been successfully lifted for now, thanks to tireless work from our legal team in Russia, @RuBlackListNET. https://t.co/WCYhZvJkGyMay 19, 2022
Process violations proved
The blocking decision against the anonymous browser was ruled by Saratov district court, a regional court, in December 2017.
But Roskomsvoboda's lawyers managed to prove in the appellate court that procedural violations occurred during the first reading. In particular, they had two core arguments within the ruling.
The first was that, in 2017, the court did not summon the Tor Project itself. “That is an absolute basis for setting the decision aside, since the decision to block the site affected the rights and obligations of its owner,” explained Roskomsvoboda's attorney Ekaterina Abashina in a blog post.
The second argument is that Russia laws do not technically ban the spreading of information related to anonymizing technologies, like Tor, VPNs or proxies.
Even though it's not certain that Russians will be able to enjoy the anonymity of the Tor network for long, a step for greater internet freedom seems to have been made forward.