Recommendations on the Improvement of Legislative Support in Countering Technological Terrorism in the CSTO Member States

You may remember that back in 1979, the Soviet film Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears explored the concept of technological terrorism, albeit in a slightly jocular manner, as something that concerned “them” and not “us”:
“So, what’s going on in the world?” asks after a binge Gosha, aka Goga, aka Georgy Ivanovich, performed by Aleksei Batalov.
“Instability. Terrorists have hijacked another plane,” his interlocutor replies.
Many different things happened since then, including 9/11 with terrorists flying planes full of people into skyscrapers.
The draft Recommendations on the Improvement of Legislative Support in Countering Technological Terrorism in the CSTO Member States were developed on the initiative of the Standing Commission on National Security of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus, with Management Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation acting as its principal developer. The project was designed in accordance with the 2016–2020 CSTO PA Action Plan on Approximation and Harmonization of National Legislation of the CSTO Member States.
The Recommendations on the Improvement of Legislative Support in Countering Technological Terrorism in the CSTO Member States, adopted at a CSTO PA plenary session on November 24th, 2016, are aimed at establishing CSTO Member States’ common approaches to regulation of countering technological terrorism.
Of course, by that time all CSTO Member States had already established and used a certain terrorist-attack response system, allowing them to address the main tasks of protecting the interests of individuals, society and the state from terrorist threats.
At the same time, according to the drafters of the Recommendations, in a time when more and more industries use potentially dangerous technologies, the transformation of society increasingly enables terrorist activity, leads to the evolution of traditional forms terrorism and poses a real threat of nuclear, chemical, biological and other technologies and cyberinfrastructure being used to commit terrorist attacks.
Considering the development of modern technologies, including information technologies, technological terrorism is characterized by its international nature. Therefore, joint countering technological terrorism has become one of the main elements of the system of comprehensive international-security measures.
National legislations of the CSTO Member States must take into account the specificities of various facilities utilizing potentially dangerous technologies and establish additional requirements for ensuring the anti-terrorism security of said facilities. For example, waterworks and heat and power facilities are the most critical facilities in terms of possible harm that can be inflicted at any given moment. Therefore, additional measures to ensure the anti-terrorist security of such facilities must be formalized.
At present, most CSTO Member States to some extent regulate the issues of countering technological terrorism by a large number of laws and regulations. At the same time, most CSTO Member States has so far only partially formalized a number of key concepts of illegal use of potentially dangerous technologies.
Therefore, in the current context it is particularly important that CSTO Member States develop a legal framework to counter technological terrorism, eliminate contradictions and fill regulatory gaps. This is due to the need to establish a hierarchically organized and consistent regulatory system governing social relations in this area and the need for improved efficiency of competent authorities in countering technological terrorism.
The adopted Recommendations provide an in-depth review of the purpose and tasks of regulation of countering technological terrorism and contain principles, priority areas and measures to be put in place to regulate counteraction of technological terrorism.
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