Baltic States – CIS, Internet, Latvia, Legislation, Markets and Companies, Technology

Inese Laizane, the chairwoman of Saeima human rights and public affairs committee said in an interview with Latvian daily Neatkariga on Thursday that the law on international and national sanctions that will come into force on March 1 can be put into operation then. The law will provide that sanctions may be imposed on a legal entity or individual who harms Latvia's foreign policy interests or national security.

At the same time, the responsible institutions have to think how to protect the Latvian national domain .lv.

Ivars Zviedris, a representative of the National Electronic Mass Media Council told the daily that in Estonia, for example, anyone who wants to buy .ee domain has to inform on the planned contents of the website. He also noted that Latvia needs a new law on electronic mass media as digital environment is not regulated in Latvia.

Latvia has already decided to strengthen local media contents in the Russian language. However, there is a shortage of creative ideas to attract Russians living in Latvia to contents that is friendly to Latvian national policies.

The Latvian version of the Russian propaganda outlet Sputnik, Sputniknews.lv is now up and running. The portal features news in the Latvian and Russian languages about the current events in Latvia, Russia, and elsewhere in the world. The portal will focus "on what everyone else prefers not to notice".

Opening of Sputnik's Latvian version once more proves Russia's attempts to disseminate its propaganda in Latvia's information space, said Security Police spokeswoman Liga Petersone.

As Sputnik is part of the Russian state information agency Rossiya Segodnya, headed by Dmitry Kiselyov who has been included in the European Union's sanctions list following his propaganda supporting Russia's incursion into Ukraine, operations of the portal in Latvian is a negative fact, said Petersone.

The Security Police calls on Latvian residents to carefully assess all information published on different Internet portals.