Slashdot Mirror
Russian Cops to Monitor All Internet Traffic
st. augustine writes "Just like the bad old days, only now with IP: according to
this
article in Mother
Jones, Russian ISPs are now being required to provide -- and
pay for -- 'black boxes' that copy all traffic to KGB, er, FSB
headquarters. The big news is that now not only the FSB but
'seven other federal security agencies, including the tax
police and the interior ministry,' are going to be given
access. Hope that Russian crypto is as good as they say it is."
They should have used beige!
slashdot ran this like 2 years ago.
Well, I'm certianly not going to use my mail.ru email account anymore.. crap, and that was one of the better free POP3 email accounts I've found! This sucks! This even violates the privacy of non-Russian citizens!
The slaughter in Chechnya is no biggie because the Russians aren't killing any people, only Muslims, and besides, Russia has to hang on to the oil fields in the Caspian Sea. Same in Sudan, no people are being killed, only Christians. Sheesh. Get with the pogr.., I mean program. I'll bet the Universal Sucker Taxpayer is paying Russia for this spying. Why not, we've paid for all the other idiocy.
What is the good reason we are harrassing Austria over?
So I believe UNIX passwords are stored in plain text?
Technically they would probably be illegal, but as you can imagine in the chaos that Russia is in today, even the important laws very seldom get enforced, let alone the dumb ones like this one.
Our (Russian) government tries to stop software piracy. But all these laws just don't work - you still can easily buy e.g. Windows NT Server for $2 in Moscow (this is why Linux is less popular here than in US, Germany etc.). I don't think Internet-related laws will work better.
The internet community joins together to incite a dirty nuke war in Central Europe. Great idea. Funny how these ideas are much more attractive to some Americans when they're staged 5,000 miles away...
Just like almost every Chinese law on the books.... Companies here are almost always in violation of a few minor regulations, any of which could be used against them if they get on the wrong side of someone with a powerful friend in the right department. That dog that one employee happens to keep in the office? Unregistered, illegal. That employee is a foreigner, he shouldn't be living in that apartment. This plumbing is installed incorrectly. You didn't register your crypto. Etc....
Very clumsy indeed, most countries makes sure that this kind of information stays secret.
Pretty soon, China is going to to the very smae thing. You'd think they would form an allience and find a way to ban all web pages except for ones praising the government to be seen. I just saw on the news that China is making sure all encription keys are registered with the government. I bet Russia will follow suit.
Yeah, they're great. If there was an Intelligence Community laughing stalk, it would be them. They're probably monitoring the entire Canadian network through a 64k ISDN and a P-90 running OS/2, using a super-stealth "web browser".
Trust me, once you get outside the States, it's never as monumentally cool as you think.
In fact, I recall reading that the British use Canadian spooks to spy on their local dissidents
Why on earth would they do that? Unless you mean local to Canada.. it's going to be a lot less effort for the British spooks to spy on British dissidents, what with being in the same country and everything.
Here's a new clause for software licenses folks, and UCITA may well make it enforceble:
The user of this software agrees to be bound by one of two conditions. Either the user will not monitor internet traffic for which the user is not one of the communicating parties, or the user will publically admit to illegally violating the privacy of those parties.
What are you babbling about?
Whether they're communist or not has nothing to do with whether they invade privacy or are otherwise authoritarian, just look around you. And the reason the West is funding Russia is that they see opportunities for profit, nothing to do with freedom and stuff.
we really should get this into the world media and start a discussion about it, even if everyone is afraid at the moment to say anything to russia in this state of transformation..
Or is collecting and tracking user's net activity only bad when the gov't does it? Why isn't the net community screaming about deja? Deja could easily have all their hardware suddenly siezed and it'd be just as if the gov't had done it all along!
Had Australia long had no guns, and then suddenly legalized them, and crime gone up by the *same* percentage, you can bet the media would be jumping all over the issue every week for years, finger pointing and saying "see! Guns == crime!".
Yet they remain silent...
I cannot control the decision of when to use crypto. FTP, Telnet, HTTP, DNS lookups of "controversial" hosts,... it's all in the clear. They know what you're doing.
And what US democracy is that?
Tunnel it baby!!
Sounds like you guys need another revolution over there.
Please go here.
Well the US wouldn't let Telsat launch a sat last year until they allowed the FBI to listen to any and all calls going in or out of the US. So if we let the US listen into it's own citzens why wouldn't we listen to ours? Oh wait this is Canada.
Communism never existed. True Communism is close to true anarchy. Problem is people just aren't nice enough to handle anarchy. It's the same reason pure capitialism doesn't work. Some idiot will always screw things up by trying to create a monoply leading to the need for the DOJ and anti-trust rules. We can dream about true Communism/Anarchy/Capitilism but until the angels descend on earth it won't happen.
Anything with the word "democracy" attached to it is too sacred to attack. Nothing more.
If I was running the KGB or whatever you want to call it I wouldn't ban encryption etc. You know why? I'm betting that my target audience is most likely to be using it. If I know that anything really interesting is going to be encrypted that's half the battle. I want you to stand out from the forest. I'd put 90% of my effort into keeping track of the people trying to keep stuff secret.
this is an outrage!!!!!!!!!! I thought they were supposed to be my friends after boris yelsin defeated mikhail gorbachof. what is the deal with these god dam russkies????? what are they up to now??? i don't know but THIS IS OUTRAGEUS
I have correspondents in Russia who use PGP, and they tell me that it's quite common over there. They are "not supposed to" have it, but so far, nobody is hassling them, not even the regulars in the Russian language crypto newsgroups.
If things do heat up, steganography (covert encryption, hiding data in "harmless" files) is a possible solution. Far and away the best stego program for Windoze (and therefore for most users) is S-Tools by Andrew Brown.
S-Tools has suddenly gotten hard to find. I urge Slashdot readers in civilized nations (a.k.a. outside the U.S. and Canada) to find and mirror this file, which is freeware: s-tools4.zip. The last live download site I could find was at ftp://ftp.imms.de/pub/pc/win9x_nt/security/.
"We" are harassing Austria for the same reason that "we" are harassing Iraq. Commentator Joe Sobran noted that even *Jewish* writers have boasted about their control of the U.S. government (read: the West) see www.sobran.com. The issue isn't Naziism. The issue is patriotism. Patriotism/Nationalism is inimical to those interested in operating pan-nationally. If you just do a bit of looking, you'll see that there *is* a nefarious group trying to subjugate the world. Only they're not Nazis! Look closer at who's smearing people who profess patriotism!
the us already has such a system in place... i think it is monitored by the fbi or cia
We did take a stand against Milosevic, and we forced him into submission. The fact that Russia is no longer under socialism is reason enough not to pick on them. 70 years of tough socialism can not be simply undone by 9 years of capitalism. That is the reason why we are helping Russia, why Germany is giving them millions, and why everryone else is buddying up. Is it any different from China? No. We expect China to also break out of socialism from our influence. It is just a matter of politics and time.
Oh well.
dont think that curtailing freedoms at home is a result of the fall of the soviet union. in fact the existance of the soviet union has been used as a reason to curtail many freedoms in the us. remember all the McCarthey (sp?) stuff. phones have been tapped for a long time.
hmpeople that know these things better can correct me, but i think that cryptography could overcome brute force attack. if i key is increased with 1 bit the number of possible values double. this is exponential increase... very hard to keep up with
The problem is to get to the Russian PEOPLE and mobilize them -- at least those that potentially are active enough to be mobilized. You see, the Russians right now have absolutely NO IDEA what's going on in their own country. All the big media, television etc. is in practice already under state (i.e. the clique that got rich thanks to Yeltsin) control. First of all, the Russians don't know that it was Mr Putin, The Man Himself, who gave the order to blow up those appartment buildings in which 300 people died. He was traveling in New Zealand at the time -- very clever, I would also make a point of having an alibi. There is convincing evidence for this, just ask the FBI. (And don't real terrorists always CLAIM their acts?) And ten days later, September 23, the Chechnian war started. Smart! Just like Hitler burning down the Reichstag and blaming the communists. Hitler had a gifted student... And then, of course the war. There is a lot of dirt we don't know about. Lately, the well known journalist (Free Europe) Babinski was murdered by the secret service people. It was disguised of course as a POW exchange with the chechnians, but his body will turn up soon enough. He knew too much. What was it? Don't ask me. Perhaps the Chechnian version of My Lai. We in the West should be REALLY concerned about this. Not only is Russian democracy as good as dead -- A nationalistic gangster state of this kind is MUCH more dangerous than the old tired Soviet Union! You read about it first here. Don't say I didn't warn.
It should be noted that Russian Crypto is crap. In windows 2k, microsoft implemeneted encryption into its filesystems, and it therefore breaks Russian import laws, since forien crypto to seen as bad. This would apply to any encryption method. Native russian crypto is almost worthless (are any of you using russian crypto? no) so any legislation would not do much
Where is my 4096 bit key? Hmmmm..... Maybe it's something from the monkeys?
absolutely nothing, as if the US hasnt been monitoring traffic, and as if any other country doesnt monitor traffic, whats the news here?
Yeah, but guns have everything to do with the incidence of male rape, as we all know that gunowners are all raving, priapic ass bandits.
Fuck you.
It can't happen here...'cause "here" isn't the US.
because americans do this kind of eavesdropping for years.
I am a "child" according to federal law and I support the execution of kids who commit murder. If you are going to commit an adult crime like murder then you are not a child. However not all crimes for an adult should be crimes for a kid. I am 16, why should I get in legal trouble for looking at a nude picture of a girl my age?
>Restrictions on smoking are based on employee safety laws, the idea that if you are an employer, you cannot require an employee to work in an environment known to be health-threatening.
Unless the employee is a slave, no one is being required to work anywhere. People can choose to not work in a smoke filled location.
Nice try, but the correct quote is: ``You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.''
Exactly right. Why not try the opposite? Start routing everything from neighboring countries through Russia when it's not necessary. Increase the volume of traffic to the point where their monitoring lines are no longer capable of doing the job.
> But where's your evidence? Hell, where's your logical thought process? ;-)
.sig said, the fact that you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. I hope it got you thinking, that's all.
I hoped someone would ask this
Evidence in the legal sense you can forget about; what did you expect, hey!
Just after the appartment bombings, the FBI contacted their Russian counterparts to discuss cooperation on apprehending the 'terrorists'. Expecting, of course, the offer to be accepted and a fruitful cooperation to be established, as had happened earlier. However... a brusque turning down. The good yanks were flabbergasted. Who would NOT want to do their best to catch dangerous international terrorists?
...and about Babitski, he hasn't contacted his family after the 'exchange', and the Russians haven't been able to produce a tape of the exchange ACTUALLY SHOWING CHECHNIANS. Case closed.
...and you're right, it's not really new; can you say 'Bay of Tonkin'?
Feel free to call me a crackpot if you like; but be aware you are helping 'them'. As a
[the original point was a straw man not] deserving of an argument.
Perhaps you had best stick to coding. Your "debating" style is seriously lacking. (Hint: you don't win an argument via flawed assertions based on arguably shaky foundations or by asserting that something is a straw man [two words, btw] just because you say it is.)
I had written a much more extensive counter to your assertions, but as I hit "Preview" I found that /. was down again. This late in the game I see no point in bothering any longer.
Oh yeah... I forgot this: it wasn't even a very good insult. Effective insults require some basis in reality. You made the unwarranted assumption that the original writer (that would be me) was a Rush Limbaugh-loving, die-hard right-wing, damn-the-environment-and-full-speed-ahead "conservative."
Whereas nothing could be further from the truth.
Bet my wife and I planted more trees in the last year than you did. Bet we planted more endangered species of flora in general than did you. That lived :-). Bet we got more wild animals in our yard than to you. Want to discuss "animal rights" next? Perhaps intelligent re-cycling? Energy conservation mebbe?
See? Anybody can make assumptions.
on New Year's eve, abc news was looking in the war room and they had all these false launch alerts in russia. it wasn't nukes. it was russia launching a missile attack on chechnya. on new year's f'in eve. the turn of the year 2000. way to go guys!
More accurately: there has not been a link established between violent crime rates and firearms ownership. I know that seems counter-intuitive, but it's true.
And in fact there is statistical (yeah, I know: lies, damned lies...) evidence to suggest that there is an inverse relationship between firearms ownership and non-violent crime. Go figure.
Some of them, yes. Many did not. And many recognized and acknowledged the hypocrisy. Some even slave-owners! Consider: if these "dead white males" and their progeny were all so evil, explain eventual emancipation. Doesn't excuse the years of evil that went before. But it does provide some context.
Those men established a framework whereby freedom for all could eventually be realized. Recognize their faults, yes. But praise their good deeds, as well.
Ever open a copy of Applied Cryptography 2nd Edition. I assume not, gost a russian encryption algo. is pretty good. I trust using any russian cipher, more than i'd trust using skipjack.
They routinely spy on their own people.
They ban listening to non-state-approved radios.
They do not allow private ownership of firearms.
Theydo not allow private ownership of land.
They restrict what you can read, or say, or worship.
We must not ever become like them.
Now, the Soviet Union is gone.
And without a massive looming evil empire (China does not present the same level of menace in most people's minds [We trade with China, and call them Most Favored Nation].), the US and other free nations no longer have a model of evil to keep them on the straight and narrow. The result is a curtailing or rights our leaders and legislators once fought to protect. When 'evil' is gone, who needs the tools to say 'good'? Examples:
Echelon/NSA/FBI/CIA spies on their own people. And mandates telcos to provide tappable [without having to notify telco] infrastructure to do it.
Radio scanners that can receive cellular are banned, later extended to cover cordless phones. Radio scanners that can receive any digitally modulated audio transmissions are banned.
More classes of guns banned. More hoops to jump thru to get guns mandated. More attempts to require gun registration and gun "permits".
Gov't siezure of land, assetts, and property on mere suspicion of drug crimes (and now for MPAA/RIAA crimes). No property returned to you even when you're not found guilty of anything.
Say "I can understand the frustration of the Columbine shooters" and get whisked away for mandatory "counseling" to correct your wrongthink. And jail for writing or distributing code (DeCSS).
They are not gone after all. We have become them.
And getting closer nearly every day. Consider:
And the list goes on. And on, and on, and on...
Slashdotter's would be well-advised to read Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty by James Bovard. (ISBN: 0-312-10351-4). A truly eye-opening book. As I read each chapter I thought to myself "Wow! I can't believe we've fallen so far!" Believing that I had now "seen it all." Only to be astonished anew with the next chapter.
What passes for a "free country" here in the U.S. these days would not be recognized as such by the heros that founded our Representative Republic.
ANY use of cryptography in Russia is strictly prohibited by law (even if it is 56-bit or even smaller).
FSB managed to get the law passed through the Duma (Russian parliament) because they said that they are too far behind in that area and don't have the technology/people to even break the weakest algorithms.
This post probably is incoherent and offtopic, but can't we, the slashdot community(!) use the supposed far-flung power of collaboration to take a stand on at least this one issue, and force the US and other governments to take action?
./ 'community' react when something about China or Russia is mentioned - and of course, everything they do is 'against the freedom'. But yet, in your own HOUSE, you have shitloads of problems related to privacy and freedom - but you just can't do ANYTHING to stop the govt. Why don't you clean your house first, then start cleaning others?
Uh, oh... Dear me, you yanks are really funny people...
It's quite amazing to see
DVD, Echelon, DCMA, etc, etc, etc... So many problem you need to solve.
Russians simply say "We're gonna monitor the traffic!" - and that's it. But at your place, you don't say "We're gonna monitor the traffic!" - you say "It's of interest for national security - we can not talk about that".
And you both do the same thing, but call it different names.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The Big Dig is the biggest fucking disaster in this history of the state of Massachusetts, IMO. Bigger than that stupid nightclub fire a few decades ago. Bigger than the Hancock Tower, even. It's a gaping money pit that just keeps growing deeper and deeper. It's *well* over budget, well behind schedule, and well-rehearsed at pissing off every single commuter that's been inconvenienced by it for the better part of 10 years now.
Will it ever be finished? I don't know. Nobody knows. I'll have entered college, spent 5 years here, and gotten my degree in less time than it'll end up taking, though, to give it some perspective. I probably could get another degree too before it's done. I guess all this time and money is making the mafia^H^H^H^H^H friends of the state government who run the construction firms really happy though.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
big time
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The USA isn't frightened of invasion by the Godless Reds anymore (they can hardly kick ass in a country still barely out of the stone age).
While Russians still haven't managed to make such advanced things as unprofitable companies with stock going up for years, they had companies' email addresses on ads long before US started mentioning anything Internet-related (even before WWW became mainstream, so there weren't URLs to mention). So even though economy is in ruins, "stone age" is definitely something from American propaganda.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Most Russians are at least decently educated, and probably wouldn't fall for ranting about superiority of the Russian people...etc.
Nazi-like movements in Russia are well-known, however a lot of "Russians" aren't even Russians by origin, so those nationalists have really hard time getting support even among stupid people. Antisemitism however is very widespread.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Restrictions on smoking are based on employee safety laws, the idea that if you are an employer, you cannot require an employee to work in an environment known to be health-threatening. And believe it or not, second-hand smoke is known to be toxic. If it makes you feel better, it's easy to put an anarchist spin on this: ``your right to poison yourself ends where my lungs begin.''
California Labor Code 6404.5, Smoking in the Workplace.
Uh, yeah, sure. That probably sounded better when Rush Limbaugh said it, didn't it?
It wasn't an argument, it was an insult. For it to have been an argument, the strawman to which it was a reply would have had to have been deserving of an argument. For example, not being absurd on its face would have been a good start.
That was a flame? ``You keep using that word. I think that you do not know what it means.''
I think the American love of lethal firearms comes from the Bill of Rights and the fact that Americans used firearms to remove a large, well established British Army from the US from 1775-1781...with the help of the French, Spanish and Dutch...but we used our guns for alot of it.
Alot of Federal and Confederate units at the start of the Civil War were also equipted with thier own rifles, and there is a tradition in the West of using guns to fend one's home and farm or ranch against preditors of the two and four legged variety.
It's tradition.
Then maybe they'll learn the error of their ways and not monitor people's traffic anymore! If all of the Slashdot people stopped going to Russian sites, I bet they'd implement whatever we want them to!
NOTE: This post not for the humor (or humour) impaired. Also, this post is not for anyone who doesn't know about Slashdot's tendency to boycott anything and everything they don't agree with.
Canada, AFAIK, is part of the international signals intelligence cartel that spawned Echelon. In fact, I recall reading that the British use Canadian spooks to spy on their local dissidents.
I suspect that the purpose of that law wasn't so much to register users of cryptography, but to provide a law which said users are virtually guaranteed to have broken, and thus allow for the arrest of people they can't prove to have leaked "state secrets" (a term which includes virtually anything the government wants it to).
Of course, it'll only be used to round up the bad people. And those who get on the wrong side of The Powers That Be.
The USA isn't frightened of invasion by the Godless Reds anymore (they can hardly kick ass in a country still barely out of the stone age). But they are scared silly that some boozy fool in the president's office will push the Big Red Button in a fit of pique. Okay so only one in ten nukes makes it to the USA without sputtering out, diverting to Azerbaijan, or blowing up halfway. But that is still a lot of nukes and some serious shit going down. So, the USA is going to tread softly around Russia, right up until those same nukes have rusted into radioactive junk piles.
Have the US take action?
Well, in case you haven't noticed, the political fulcrum for the Clinton
administration is just barely to the right of the Russian president, if at all.
Eschelon has been doing for years what the Russians want to do.
If you want to do something about freedom of the Internet then
start here at home. What Uncle Boris and Uncle Sam are doing to
destroy the freedom of the internet the big corporations are, with their
phony patents to thwart development of free software and their buyout
of weak or corrupt politicians in order to destroy consumer rights and
redress.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
As it was mentioned several times above, it was KGB that convinced everybody else in the demise of communism in USSR/Russia. And lest's call everythig by it's real name. That was not communism (or socialism for that matter) it was just regime where KGB rulled. They where the real rullers (owners) of the country. For a while the power sliped from their hands. Now they are back, whith the vengeance, so to speak.
.com's crap and p0rn anyway (wiht the /. being rare exception). What they need is just basis for actions against whistle blowers and dissidents on the internet. So, all they need just to monitor the traffic to the sellected websites (about goverment corruption for example). The point is that now they can do it without asking anybody. On the taxpayers money and ISP's will have to comply. Hell i will not be surprised that from now on ISP's in Russia will be forsed to have spooks on their staff. And more to follow; unwaranted arrests and detention on the undifined duration of time, and so on.
Now, i don't really know whether it is technically possible to monitore all traffic on the internet and i think it doesn't really matter. It is just first step. Most of the traffic on the internet is
As to the question on at what extent this all possible here, in US. Let me just quote the father of (surprize, surprize) russian anarchism
Powerful states can maintain themselves only by
crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.
--Mikhail Bakunin
(1814-1876)
Nuff said. Now you can moderate me down as a flaimbait. I don't fsking care
- Back off man. I am a scientist
>governments who oppress civillians (chechnya?)
Chechen military is well trained, armed and funded from abroad.
One may agree or disagree with their goals (muslim world domination), but they are not defenseless civilians.
Yes, this war happens in the cities and civilians suffer in Chechnya, as they did suffer in Moscow when three 9 stories apartment buildings were exploded during the summer of 1999 (before the military compain agains Chechnya started). Not a government building, like in Omaha for example...
Of course tapping the Internet is very bad. Russian wisdom says though - "the severity of Russian laws is relieved only by the fact that they are not well enforced". Same can not be
said about the US...
Vassili Leonov
This whole issue arises from government controlled libraries(you may know them as "public"). Libraries should not be run by the government. Non-profit and for-profit organizations should run them. The government has no incentive not to censor material available in its own libraries. Non-profit and for-profit organizations will censor material as the market dictates. Likely the market will dictate that some libraries have open access to everything(those used mostly by adults) and that some libraries have censorship(those used mostly by children). If library censorship really bothers you , then you should form a non-profit with some like minded individuals and build a library with open access to the entire Internet.
Stuart Eichert
Stuart Eichert
The documentary was originally made in 1995, and was still being shown late last year.
Anything that is possible today, and that there is a demand for, will be made easy for all to use much faster than any government can react.
- Sam Ruby
NASA administrators said today that they don't care if Russia implements their totalitarian spy system, just as long as it doesn't interfere with their obligations to launch the habitation module of the International Space Station.
Back to regular programming...
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
...no worse than ECHELON. At least they aren't pretending SORM doesn't exist! Hmmm, maybe I should've used AC for that msg...
I thought "Nazi" meant "National Socialist Workers Party of Germany"?
[grin] I had forgotten about that one.
The story I heard was....
One of Steve Jackson's employees was involved with LoD and got his fingers rapt by the Secret Service (not Jedger's boys, the original govt goons). The cops decided to checkout Mr LoD's office to see if any stolen AT&T files were present on the system. There weren't any, but while they were looking the cops found the entire text of Jackson's new "Cyberpunk GURPS" book and freaked out. They thought it was a manual for computer crime and confiscated the whole network!!
What a bunch of lamers! Can't tell the difference between a Role Playing Game and real life! And they say Geeks are out-of-touch with reality! Bah, I dereide their truth-handling abilities.
Echelon, by the NSA and international affliates. Your local search engine will have more information.
We harass Cuba and Iraq for human rights violations, because it is popular. We're harassing Austria (and with good reason) because it is popular. What about Russia? The Evil Empire of my childhood has become ruled by weak governments who oppress civillians (chechnya?) the same way that other unpopular regimes do (Milosevic?) but we do nothing. Now this happens, and we will say nothing. Why? Russia has the potential to be a huge market, and already is. They have nuclear weapons, and we're afraid to take a stand on anything with them because of this. This post probably is incoherent and offtopic, but can't we, the slashdot community(!) use the supposed far-flung power of collaboration to take a stand on at least this one issue, and force the US and other governments to take action? Let's put our resources to good use, eh? Let's save the Internet.
Andrew G. Feinberg
I don't know where Mother Jones picked up this crap but most part of the story is old. Second they are mixing two things in one. Third they are quite stupid to think that FSB is trying to hear everyone everybody. Fourth we have laws here, and while the system may work badly, it still works. And besides SORM-2 is as good as it is. A reglementation defining "rules of behaviour" between FSB and ISPs. For both sides.
SORM one was a piece of crap. A big piece of crap. It made a wholescale scandal as it was completely wrong and stupid in every way. And it was presented as a technical spec. After nearly one year of long talks everyone came into SORM-2. It is just a formal reglementation for cases when FSB needs to hear someone. Well its not pretty but that's their right, as far as they follow the law.
There is one site in Russia that monitors the use of SORM systems and publishes uses and abuses of it (in Russian):
http://www.libertarium.ru/libertarium/sorm
They also have a small and very outdated english page about SORM:
http://www.libertarium.ru/eng/sorm/index.html
On what concerns Mother Jones story about Bayard-Slavia Communications. In the region where these company works, Volgograd, the local FSB department decided to "look over" the law. And tried to force the ISP to provide them even means to control his network! Presently things have not ended yet but the attempts to revoke the license have already failed. The Attorney has already agreed with some conclusions of the ISP and ordered to stop a series of acts until court.
It sounds a lot like CALEA, the federal law designed to ensure that the switched voice network remains wiretap friendly. I'm not terribly concerned about the NSA, the FBI is the agency that has a long history of abusing wiretaps and harassing dissidents.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is a very interesting precedent because as per current FSB regulations:
;-) I have not...
1. No government institution may by any means interface its computer system to the internet
Anybody seen any email of anybody in the Russia state administration
This FSB action basically will lead ssoner or later to the abolishment of 1 because FSB istelf will have to be interfaced actively (not passively like now) in order to follow traffic. And considering that similar wiretapping regulations exist in almost any other country in the world and will have to be enforced in the US in the nearest future this comes to be an overall positive sign. FSB has finally acknowledged that there is a worthy flow of information over the internet. And 7 other govermnent divisions have followed it. From there to interfacing themselves is just one step...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
NSA monitors all text communication already,
but doesn't censor.
Call me naive, but how does this sort of system exist in the US? Whic 3-letter acronym spy agency here in the USA is responsible (CIA, NSA, FBI, IRS)? If its going on in Russia, at least people now KNOW it's happening, unlike here in the US...
How is it that a network which nearly 'formed itself' is now becoming fragmented into different governmental domains? What are the implications of, for instance, a Russian agency monitoring incoming email, directed at a Russian citizen, which was sent by a US citizen? Is this espionage, if the email's information is of a sensitive nature? When governments begin monitoring an international network which is not centralized, they inevitably attempt to make it centralized. Perhaps the only answer to this is public availability of stronger cryptography - even that has now been restricted. And yet, in the end, you can't monitor everything, and the vault's walls break eventually. I'm just waiting for the deluge. - KMS, breaking his own rules and ranting, for a change
To state the obvious, that's the weakest argument i've read in some time. Consider yourself deservedly flamed.
cheers,
sklein
In which case it contributed nothing.
Heat would have contributed nothing.
cheers,
sklein
BTW, may i applaud your work on the Mozilla project?
You're right, the Judicial branch doesn't always take action on things. However, there are plenty of porn sites on the net to brin issue to this type of thing, and all it takes is 1 lawsuit or criminal prosecution for them to need to take action. /. FUD about how evil the government is and how oppressed we are, etc. are just a bit ridiculous. /. crowd).
I'm not saying to not concern yourself with such things, I'm merely saying that the usual
As for the protecting children stuff and the grey area... thats totally true, it is a grey area. Thats basically why we need to keep porn out of libraries, schools, etc. and allow it only in private surroundings. I don't care who you are, having porn popup on a screen with a child at the keyboard is an outrage. Some people in Congress just recognize this. I wouldn't call them evil oppressors (not that you have, I'm speaking more to the stereo-typical
I wouldn't go so far as to say logging will ever occur without a court order. Those legislations are the equivalent of not allowing nudity on television. That juvenile law especially, is to protect kids against pron, which _is_ known to have lasting psychological effects (mostly when combined with sexual abuse). I don't have a problem with that because I don't really see that there's a need for someone to lookup pron in a library or a school. I don't consider that a necessity.
As for what appears to be all-out restriction of the Internet in exhibit b,c, I can't see that as passing and actually being enforced. See, we have this branch of government called the Judicial branch. Everytime something is unconstitutional, they nix it. So the only way something like this will ever come to effect (for more than a couple months) is if they write an actual amendment into the constitution. They're a long way away from taking a bold measure like that.
I'm not worried. We've already seen the Computer Decency Act or whatever it was called. That didn't hold up as much... just a waste of Congressional time and money.
...because this technology isn't confied to Russian citizens. If your email bounces through a russian ISP on its way to Japan or China or whatnot, guess what happens to it?
/. server. Use It.
I think it's time to add some Russian to my X-Jam-Echelon email header...
On a side note, my 4096 public key is in the
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
The KGB did, and most of the west believed. And as you can see, all the media now including the internet are still in under control of KGB and private encryption is still illegal. However, it even for them it becomes harder to pretend free capitalist state. When will the west wake up and stop funding Russia, it will be too late, I am afraid.
That is highly probable. However, they cannot do with it much right now if you apply some good encryption on it. At this momend they will not drag you from your family block into an Alaska working camp for using it.
Sure, there will be efforts to get access to everybody's pirvate mail through sneaky encryption legislative and the US citizens will have to watch that very carefuly, too.
That will be another fight, though.
The black box sits in the ISP office and obviously does some selection.
A) random
B) according to the selected text.
The second point is, that the russian police will slow or block traffic without even thinking of being challenged. Who was in Russia knows, that police are the absolute masters. If they work, you must wait. If you dare to complain, you'd better show first that you are policemen of a higher rank.
This is not about hypocrisy, you nobody agrees that US should do it. Also we would condemn every government that does such thing, including our own.
The difference is, that US folks can write to their representatives. Russians might as well write the KGB directly - just to get on their index of politically incorrect individuals, if not worse.
Practicaly the only thing they can do is what they are doing: write perhaps the last free e-mail to the western agencies and hope that they will make pressure to stop funding Russia - and indirectly their black boxes.
There are only two things that the Russian government will listen to: money and loss of popularity, because at this moment they want to look like a democratic government - until they become economicaly and militarily stronger.
Nonetheless, some US Internet and privacy experts find SORM-2 more disquieting than Echelon.
"Echelon and its allied systems in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand take the technology as it finds it -- that is, Echelon is not coercive. It does not rely upon government-mandated surveillance features being built into telecom systems.
Yeah, instead of using the stick, NSA and its kin use the carrot - how 'bout some free wireless spectrum for those who comply?
The chairman of Citizens' Watch human rights group in St. Petersburg, Boris Pustintsev, called the move "the end of all email privacy."
The feeble-minded are truly blessed - email privacy never existed!
What about those without responsible parents? There needs to be goernmental aid and assistance, but on an as-needed basis.
It doesn't work on an "as-needed basis." You have to either ban everything for everyone or ban nothing. You can't simply block porn at Joe and Margie Schmo's house. Censorship a little at a time seems to work at first, but in the long term, it ends up being the same as if you had a wide-ranging law like the CDA. They just censor more one bit at a time.
I call these laws "frog laws." Think about a frog when you drop one in hot boiling water: he's going to try to get out (and probably succeed.) But if you heat the water slowly, a few degress at a time, then the frog will sit there and not put up a struggle. CDA was hot boiling water. These new bills are water being heated slowly. The end result is the same: your rights end up getting cooked and eaten for dinner.
And, FWIW, I think that people who aren't responsible shouldn't be parents. Raising a child is a vast responsibility. If you can't handle it, give the child up for adoption or whatever. But don't come crying to me when you can't be responsible enough to raise your own damn child.
My journal has hot
This link doesn't verify anything. Hell. you can't even get to the home page hosting this link.
Anyone can post crap like this.
I think that this article exposes some of the real differences between what is happening in various nations as a response to the internet.
In the US we have legislation like the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act which places clear restrictions on tapping private data transnissions in the US. There have already been some punative lawsuits that have reuluted in large court settlements under this act. We also have arguments about just installing the ABILITY to tap communications in various transmittal devices, and a wide use of relatively secure cryptography.
In countries where basic human rights seem to never have been established we have the banning all encryption, and requirements that all transmissions be recorded, PERIOD.
How many firearms related crimes do you think occure in the UK?
Shot, knifed or beaten, you are still dead.
Suicides by gun are rare in England, however the actual suicide rate in England is essentially the same as in the US where most suicides are by gun. Switzerland has the highest gun ownership per capita in the world, but one of the lowest murder rates.
Crime rates have nothing to do with gun ownership.
Monitoring internet traffic is not a new idea and is certainly not a new practice. I believe that most governments conduct routine monitoring of internet traffic - perhaps not to this extent, perhaps to a greater extent. Consider that the Russian government has allowed knowledge of the monitoring to become public - in the US, such monitoring is kept secretely under wraps by the NSA - nobody knows to what extent the NSA is monitoring their connections to the outside world. I think, given the choice between telling and not telling the people, telling people is certainly better. This is not trouble because everyone knows that anyone who controls larger servers can monitor large amounts of traffic that flow through them (these people aren't in the government, just admins/etc. of corporate/educational networks). So monitoring is not a new thing, we all assume that it takes place and besides, we can encrypt anything that we don't want the government to know about, and even use anonymous secure proxies (such as anonymiser.com) which encrypt standard web browsing and ftp. In short there is no real problem.
http://www.jonmasters.org/
Transmeta Corp. has secretly worked on a VLIW implementation of quantum gates which can decypher all known crypto schemes known to date. A code morphing layer designs and runs a suitable quantum VLIW code from a plain C crypto cracking program. The innovative separation of low-level quantum programming from high level crypto cracking allows for adaptation of well established methods for crypto cracking, and is able to run free and proprietary cracking systems. Transmeta officials have accomplished a near room-temperature demonstration of their cracking solution in KGB headquaters in August, 1999.
It has been known that Transmeta, in accordance with their relationship with leaders of the former Communist Party of Russia, has received funding for research and development of these new technologies from KGB. Linus Torvals who is the acclaimed creator of Linux kernel and one of the prominent employees of Transmeta, also works closely with KGB and is a technology advisor for FSB.
--exa--
According to the book "The Puzzle Palace" (sorry, don't remember the author), the NSA has been monitoring Internet traffic for years.
Britian, US, Australia and Canada have laws preventing agencies such as the NSA from monitoring their own citizens. No problem, pay a 3rd party to do it for you.
Canada monitors U.S. / Britian, U.S. monitors Canada / Britian, Britian monitors U.S. and Canada... toss Autralians into the mix someohow and you might just figure out there isn't a government on this planet worth trusting.
Course, since nobody trusts politicians why should this be a suprise?
Aside from the fact that they dont have a NAP in Russia, and that commercial networks are only going to route information to where it needs to go. The Internet is a big network of switches, not hubs. Your email is not being routed from Orlando, through Moscow, on it's way to Denver.
Now to the really funny stuff. Does anyone have any idea how much money it would cost to monitor everything that comes through the pipe in Moscow alone? More than they have. I really have a hard time believing that the NSA can do it, because it's such a monumental task. I figure, though, if the CIA can sell cocaine to fund itself, than the NSA has probably gotten the heroin end of the deal covered...
Does it bug me that various governments around the world want to snoop on my private communications? Yessir! Is there anything that will stop them? I seriously doubt it.
I think that we need to take a serious look at the way that we think about communicating over public media. When you send something out over the internet, you have no control over who reads it along the way. The same goes for cellular phones, and to a lesser extend conventional phones as well.
Why on earth is it illegal for me to record a cellular phone call, for example? After all *they're* the ones bombarding me with *their* photons. Why can't I just record what they are? It's silly.
If you want to keep something private encrypt it. By default you really ought encrypt everything. Why not?
I seriously believe that we as a community have to get over the "BigBrother/BigCorporations/MrIdiotWithAScanner is watching me" complex in situations where we can easily keep them from doing so.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
So if the new computer you are thinking of getting promises improved FSB bandwidth, READ THE SMALL PRINT!!!
Bob.
This is another example of governments using a sledgehammer where a scalpel is more appropriate, and in the process are bludgeoning everyone to death except their lawful targets.
Information security is a reality nowadays. Want to browse the Web securely? Use https (but don't forget to verify the certificates). Want a secure remote login? ssh. Want to keep your EMail safe from prying eyes? That's why God (er -- Phil, I guess) gave us PGP. Want a secure VPN? IPsec.
The tools exist, and when used properly these tools are guaranteed to give the signals-intelligence agency of your choice a migraine headache. (Notice: using the tools properly is hard. It's far easier said than done, but it can be done.)
People who use the Net to commit crimes (or as an aid in committing the same) are probably tech-savvy enough to (a) know they're being monitored and (b) to use these tools. So I don't see that this Draconian measure will have any significant effect on computer crime.
It will have a chilling effect on the communications of law-abiding citizens who are not tech-savvy, though. As a rule, they either don't know these tools exist, don't know why they should use them and/or don't know how to use them -- so they get their civil liberties raped over a cheese grater, all in the name of apprehending criminals who are smart enough to use basic information-security techniques.
Gotta love it, huh?
In Germany, all mobile phone providers where required to 'upgrade' their relay stations with decryption/listening devices.
Also, as an ISP you are required to install and maintain at your own cost remote access devices for 'big brother'. I.e. a dedicated ISDN link with access to your customer db. (I am not sure, though, if the latter is being enforced. Haven't heard about it for a while, but we got 'the letter' about 2 years ago.)
bla
I dunno, but I'd think it would take alot of media to hold the amount of data that goes through russia (or any other country).
Does this mean I can run RC5 on my low power laptop :) ?
Regardless of the mystical shroud around government spooks, I really question the feasability of this kind of monitoring
The only place for feasible monitoring would be on Ethernets or Fast Ethernets that connect server farms, and that would require the placement of monitoring devices at every server farm
This is true if the monitoring agency wants to monitor ALL traffic, but why not just grab TCP header info on new connections?
I don't think that any government particularly cares to read all the slashdot comments I'm reading today, but if they have the URL's i'm using, they can go back at any time and recreate what I was doing.
The headers can't be more than 10 or 15% of the throughput on a line, which dramatically decreases the hardware needed to monitor a connection.
The other question is how many interconnects are there into a country? Yes, you can always use an international phone call to create your own, but usually there's only 3 or 4 external switching points (in Canada, there's Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver for most everything) as everything tends to congregate in star-type networks. With only 3 or 4 physical locations, it sure makes it easier to monitor as well!
There was another site that I saw recently, but I forget the URL that had a sequence of servers providing this service and which would scramble routing information between servers thereby making it very difficult to backtrack along packet paths any further than the first 'secure' server.
Once you extend this to cover all common protocols coupled with strong encryption in both directions (on top of whatever normal encryption that would be used between you and the client if you where surfing normally) then you arrive at a situation where snooping is very difficult.
Of course the authorities could then put these servers on a black-list and block traffic to them, but what if there was an open-source module that could be optionally compiled into any sympathetic server in the world that would provide this service? Every time that they would block one site, there would be hundreds more available offering the same service...
The only Good System is a Sound System
Oh wait, that's us.
No one EVER saw anything like this coming in Russia, of all places. That would be like Massachusetts raising taxes.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Um..Since the internet is a huge network if someone monitors 1 part of it arent they monitoring the whole thing? So now russia will be monitoring the whole world. Since traffic usually takes the wierdist routes some has to go through russia. Does the law say anything about monitoring just russia's citizen's traffic or ANY traffic that passes through russia?
:)
(they couldnt inforce it but the day russia and the US trade secrets on eachother's citizens I'm screwed
Read article first. 1.5 million russians online..not 50 million
It seems to me that this is why the US shouldn't be restricting the export of strong encryption. Aren't we better off making strong encryption availible to dissidents in those countries whose governments we are most concerned about?
I understand that Chinese students in the U.S. were sending news about the Tiananmen Square massacre over BitNet to Beijing, and that news was faxed all over the rest of China. And yet, somehow, our NSA believes that, in the unlikely event that they can contain domesticly developed encryption technology (you know, all that encryption developement that hasn't been driven overseas yet by our silly laws) within US borders, US national interrests are best served by keeping this technology out of the hands of Russian and Chinese dissidents.
But wait! Billy C. has changed our policies. Now it is only dissidents in countries like Iran and Lybia that are to be denied the fruits of all that advanced encryption technology that's only availible here in the good old USA (right?).
I'd suspect that the governments of Lybia and Iran paid him off to keep thier dissidents from getting strong encryption, but I don't think he has enough of a clue about the real benefactors of his regulations to know that he could looks for such a source of income.
Why do I always have to feel embarrased by the elected officials in my own governement? I suppose we elected them, so they are the governement we deserve. But still.. Why?
Oh well.
Adrian
Here in Russia all security-aware people use international open-sourced strong crypto, not GOST or something like - because it's proven to be strong.
OpenSSH, SSL and PGP are strong enough to use even here, in Russia :)
I don't know any popular program which use GOST except latest versions of ARJ.
Brain is my second favorite organ.
One definiton of a police state is a country where everybody is on probation.
The problem with a plethora of bad laws that are largely ignored and selectively forced is that it results in a stiuation where everybody is breaking a law.
Once this happens, the exectuive branch has complete freedom to arrest anyone they don't like. The internal rules they make on whom to go after become the effective laws of the land, rendering the legislature moot and making the judiciary a rubber stamp. And any civilian that any policeman, bureaucrat, or executive branch politician doesn't like can be sucked into the system on a charge unrelated to the grudge.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Doing that would reduce the load on the Russian section of the net.
This would reward them for their misbehavior by reducing their ISP operation costs (helping to pay for the bugging equipment), reducing the amount of traffic they have to filter, and reducing the dilution of the signal they are after (Russian Dissident communication) by extraneous material (such as American animated advertisements).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The FSB has been requiring ISPs to provide monitoring links forever. The difference now is that now several other agencies have the right to monitor email traffic. Putin signed the law almost a month ago - it isn't anything new. Also, don't forget that encryption is not legal in Russia and many other contries, France included.
The good news is that the Russian technical infrastructure is in such a tatters that it's doubtful that much detailed analysis of the millions of email messages could actually be done by anyone. This is unlike the NSA, who has billions to pay for the greatest minds and fastest computers to listen in on your phone and email.
"You can't have everything. Where would you keep it?" -- Steven Wright
I'm not saying you aren't right; I have no evidence of that. You may indeed be right in every detail. When is the last time I listened to an "official" news release without a very large grain of salt?
The problem is that you and others like you are going to be considered crackpots. Not just by the "uninformed," either. By me and by others like me. You like to throw around these accusations; very well. It's all possible. There are plenty of odd things happening.
But where's your evidence? Hell, where's your logical thought process?
Don't talk to me about plots and conspiracy. Do they exist? Certainly. The primary goal of every government is to keep power, democratic or no. But what plots? What conspiracy? How do you KNOW Putin ordered those bombings? How do you know that journalist wasn't killed for sticking his nose in where it wasn't wanted? By either side? Every journalist does that, and when you do it in a war zone you've got to expect to have it cut off.
We live in interesting times. The government is corrupt, unfeeling, unfair, and tyrannical; well, yes, that's true to a greater or lesser extent depending on your country. The Socialist/Communist tendancies of most of the Open Source Nazis on Slashdot aren't much better. Like 99.9% of all revolutionaries, they want to throw out the rats in government and replace them with their own. The solution is the same it has always been. Break the law.
Quietly. The government outlawed guns? Well, then, don't own a registered weapon, and be careful with the unlicensed ones. The government outlawed encryption? Use it carefully, with those you trust, and only when absolutely necessary. Better never to use it at all; use circumlocations and code phrases instead. Not stupid things like "The penguin flies at midnight." Use things like "Jill is sick; we'll be late to the party. Say midnight or so?" The person you're sending it to will know what you mean, if you laid it out ahead of time.
The point is that all through history, governments have pulled things like this. The dumb ones get caught, which smart governments use to prove the need for the systems and the dumb governments use to publicize their stupidity. Some do both. Smart individuals stay smart, work the angles, stay free, and have no problems. The Internet and other modern communications/computing devices make such tasks EASIER, not harder. They give the governments greater powers over the masses, but they give even greater FREEDOM to those with the wit to use it.
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
Why use a gun when you don't need one? Crime rates aren't lower in the UK - they're higher. It's just that instead of gang-bangers shotgunning someone on the sidewalk, it's a drunken football fan knifing an opposing fan. Gun or knife, you're still dead. The statistics are clear; the looser the gun control laws, the lower the crime rate. Period. Very few crooks are dumb enough to try anything when they know their target might be armed.
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
If Russian Peasant X is under suspicion, they tap his Internet connection at his ISP. The ISP is aware of the law and doesn't squeak. Peasant X is monitored until they have enough to convict him and off he goes to Lefortovo.
Compare that to the legal system in the US. If Citizen A falls under suspicion, the "proper authorities" get a warrant and tap your phone line. If your data is unencrypted, they gather data until they have enought to convict and off you go to Leavenworth.
The US system of phone lines is largely digital and taps are almost impossible to detect. In Russia, the phone lines are analog and tapping them makes all kinds of hisses and clicks and drops the line voltage. The wiring system at COs is so messy that just going in to set a tap is likely to take out phone service for a city block. It's much easier to tap at the ISP. This law makes that possible.
The Russian FSB won't be sitting there monitoring all data on the line. As many here have said, that's technically infeasible (not impossible, just very difficult.) What they WILL be doing is setting themselves up to be able to monitor certain "suspected criminals" at regular intervals and a current criminal suspect as soon as the need to do so arises.
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
Sorry, you are missing the point. As is the case with many extant laws, what happens is this monitoring becomes one more way "the powers that be" can trip you up if you come into their notice.
Consider: Some agency decides they don't like the look of you. So, they go fishing for an excuse. Maybe you use encryption, maybe you don't have your vehicle registration in your car, maybe you aren't carrying your drivers' license while you are out for a walk. Whatever it is, it becomes the hook for further investigations. Given enough time, they WILL find something wrong.
The solution to bad laws is to repeal them as quickly as possible, before they dilute the good laws. As a wise man says, "If you add a bucket of dirty water to a bucket of clean water, you get dirty water."
www.eFax.com are spammers
The only difference here in the US is that the NSA and other agencies who have reduced us nearly to a police state don't brag about it like in Russia. The NSA intercepts _everything_, including any kind of phone call, Internet traffic, email, etc. I know a university professor whose research provides software which instantaneously extracts and flags "potentially harmful" messages from any transcript it's handed for the government. They could in theory even have hidden microphones all over the place aimed at the windows of our businesses and homes.
Of course the DMCA is even closer to what's happening in Russia, since it's very open about eliminating your rights. It's the Big Brother is Watching system enacted in legislation.
OK, try this sometime. Put a hardware IDS on a Fast Ethernet feed, ask it to cap all packets across the wire, and load the FE 80%. See where it starts to fall apart.
... the rate that we are pushing data on the backbone is astronomical, and we have achieved that by reducing the amount of packets that must be processed. Technologies like CEF or flow switching on Cisco routers speed packet processing up by touching as few of them as possible and switching as many as possible through ASICs. This doesn't give you a whole lot of room for surveillance equipment.
... not likely to go unnoticed.
Now, take an Internet router, connected via OC-3 or OC-12 (dunno if Russia is doing OC-48 yet, but likely), with several circuits feeding it, and try to find the place where you would put a device that is going to pull traffic off and write it anywhere. The router can't redirect all traffic, because it doesn't have the buffers, memory, or processor to do so. I haven't seen any kind of transparent hardware tech that would sit on an OC-12 and copy all bits running through the wire.
Regardless of the mystical shroud around government spooks, I really question the feasability of this kind of monitoring
The only place for feasible monitoring would be on Ethernets or Fast Ethernets that connect server farms, and that would require the placement of monitoring devices at every server farm
I think this might be the Russian gov. blowing smoke. It doesn't strike me as a technical possibility right now.
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
I haven't looked closely, but I don't think that Russia (or any part of the former USSR) is going to see a lot of transit Internet traffic anyway.
... the whole point of the 'net is universal connectivity, and you would have to do something very scary to cause the rest of the world to muck with your traffic.
As to the work-around, it would be trivial to assign high routing metrics to all traffic originating from Russian Autonomous Systems, and even easier to blackhole the country entirely. However, it is unlikely
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
The ability to tap a line on both Nortel (DMS?) and Lucent (5ESS, etc) phone switches existed long before Oklahoma City. It has been a legal requirement for as long as I can remember.
... perhaps that was the post-OK-city law?
At one time, Congress was wondering about requiring the same for Internet routers, but were told that it wasn't feasible
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
Pardon my lack of in-depth knowledge of the way the routing protocols work, but would it be possible for neighboring links to route around any Russian ISPs unless absolutely necessary?
My initial thoughts are that while it wouldn't be normal for a packet to get switched thorugh a Russian-based route, in some cases that might provide the optimal pathway and someone's unsuspecting packet will get logged. Might a work-around in "protest" be to configure the neighboring routers to only move data through a Russian point unless absolutely necessary (i.e. destination IP actually in Russia)?
I imagine this is easier said than done, but it would seem like a first step in the right direction...
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
Does anyone know if Canada has such a system of monitoring the internet?
I swear, when i left that country it was doing better as far as civil rights go. Now, it looks like the country is heading back into the dark ages, where one wrong word made an extra hole appear in your head, and made the 'friendly' folks at KGB smile. Why are the people so helpless? Why do they let the government have so much control? Because they think an individual's opinion will not matter on the grand scale. Russia and China are by far the most evil places to be for one who does not enjoy being told what to think under the threat of death and torture. I think planet wide slashlaw.org (*sniker*) shall be thought of as a possibility, where everyone could get a chance to voice an opinion which would influence the making of policies and laws. We have the technology to get together just like the ancient Greeks and truely have democracy now. Our advantage is that people across the GLOBE are now able to participate. Sometimes i think the government should work for people.. Not the other way around. Poshel nahui Putin Pardon my russian.
Obviously, this is similar to the NSA-based Echelon. Although, echelon does monitor all technology based communication, while the russian system doesn''t. The major problem, though, with the Russian system, of goverment-mandated black boxes that monitor all internet traffic, is that people can possibly tamper with them. On the other hand, since the "No Such Agency"'s Echelon system uses the concept of security by obscurity, and since no one know's truly anything about it, besides what it does, there is almost no chance that it could be broken into.
The funniest part of Echelon, is that, there might not even be an Echelon.
This article made the hairs at the back of my neck stand up. I have to agree with A. Feinberg on that the /. community should at least try to undertake some action. A sort of call to arms. Surely the 'commies' have not covered all their bases. There is no such thing as a full-proof system, hence an effort should be made to find away around their nosy black boxes. Let's face it: it may be a democracy on paper, but it still acts as if it's a society with a 'brotherly' masterplan. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then it is not a swan:)
I'm working in a small ISP company in Moscow. Why I say "Balooney!"? Here are some thoughts:
1. Hardware and dedicated lines are EXPENSIVE. FSB is unable to pay for their part of equipment. They will have to spend more than the government spent in Chechnya. And they tried to pass costs of extra dedicated lines and hardware on ISPs themselves. Since the whole idea is unconstitutional, they will fight, because it means loosing huge money. But SORM-2 appeared many months ago and nobody cares and nobody enforces it. Everyone sees it as total utopa.
2. What they will do with that traffic?! If our routers are working hard just to pass traffic from one point to another what hardware they will need to SCAN the traffic?! They will need a lot of people and hardware. Again: money, money, money...
3. Most of LEOs are exceptionally stupid. Actually, the whole mess happened because creators of SORM-2 did not understand realities of existing internet.
4. About crypto: it's illegal to use unlicensed crypto in banks. Period. It has nothing with private people or businesses.
Summary: total stupidity of the government * stupidity of the media = this topic
Only two countries in the world have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child : Somalia and the USA. The USA is one of the countries to still execute minors. http://www.freethechildren.org/ratify.htm
I am aware that there are many countries with *much worse* human rights records than the USA but I think we should all try to improve our own countries' human rights records as well as working to improve others.
For the record I think its terrible situation that ISPs are being put in the Russian Federation, SORM-2 sounds like bad news. I'll be very interested to read the opinions of slashdot posters writing from this country.
you mean those guys who owned slaves ;-)
This is of course "to protect Americans from terrorism".
Ignore Alien Orders
Bizar technology?
You forgot to mention the cracks (such as in http://www.crack.ru/ )
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
This CNN article may shed some light on that inquiry. In China, all users of crypto were supposed to "register" with the gov't in some little federal office somewhere. Well, the 8 million people didn't show up to register, and no one did much of anything :o).
It wouldn't surprise me if the Russian situation succumbs to the same fate. Most of the time surveillence is just a scare tactic, but citizens have to take each one seriously to defend their privacy.
And, FWIW, I think that people who aren't responsible shouldn't be parents. Raising a child is a vast responsibility. If you can't handle it, give the child up for adoption or whatever. But don't come crying to me when you can't be responsible enough to raise your own damn child.
Ideally, we could (and probably should) deal with it this way. Practically, we may not be able to - irresponsible will always be parents, and it'd be an invasion of the very rights we value to stop them.
I tossed in the quoted sentences primarily as a second thought - there are going to be people who can't control their children. I don't have any easy answers to this, and there may not be any. When I wrote it, I was almost thinking more of economic assistance - which we already have. Whether or not we want to keep that is a whole other issue. I meant to imply that there are options (mainly economic) for assistance in raising children, not that we need more. As far as government-assisted censorship goes, I consider this to be altogether intolerable. The gov't shouldn't circumvent the parents' wishes, though, on either side of the "free speech" spectrum.
Everytime something is unconstitutional, they nix it.
... heh...)
...to protect kids against pron
That magical place called the judicial branch doesn't always nix these things on their own. The opinions of representatives have always been at least partially influenced by their constituients (that is, the voting body or state/city responsible for electing them). An apathetic attitude of "they'll fix it for me" is one of the first steps toward governmental control. If citizens don't control things, the gov't will have to.
Those legislations are the equivalent of not allowing nudity on television.
Now, about the porn thing - I firmly believe that viewing porn at a public library or school is a little (ahem) outside the realm of free speech. This is a reasonable limitation of expression - I wouldn't do it, and would probably be a bit dismayed if people could. The language in the bill, however, is much broader than this. The bill calls for a local determination of "decent", differing from site to site. What's legal at one location may not be at another, and local/corporate interests could easily make their way into the filtering. Even worse, locations may just rely on some NetNanny crap that filters out all pages with the word "breast" in it. Anyway, how hard is it to simply prohibit using public computing resources to display things defined as pornography? For enforcement, employ the human nodes - if Joe Schmo views porno at his library, Joe is asked to leave. Debates as to what porno is would be relatively rare, especially if libraries drafted a quick policy on what porno is and isn't. These restrictions on intrusive "indecency" are a good thing - the definition of "decent" needs to be limited and tightened up. Nudity is on my television alot (HBO). It's voluntary, though, and within my definition of good taste. (Okay, so HBO was a bad example
"Protection" of kids is a very gray area, infinitely granular depending upon the circumstances. I've known parents who abhor violence yet accept nudity and even to a certain extent pornography. Even a certain kind of pornography. I'm trying to tread lightly here, but I really do believe in a minimum of involuntary governmental control and a delegation of this authority to parents. What about those without responsible parents? There needs to be governmental aid and assistance, but on an as-needed basis. Wait for a parent ask for specific limitations on Internet access for their children - it shouldn't be forced down everyone's throats.
I probably left a bunch of holes in this, but there's a pretty simple central idea - there are easier answers to fostering control over indecency than federal restrictions and mandatory purchases of approved "filters". Those of us with good judgement shouldn't be forced to use some "filter" instead.
...but not far removed, either. If you take a look at the EFF site, there's a link to H.R. 1501, the Juvenile Justice Bill. If you remember the CDA, this should be old hat.
Exhibit A:
SEC. 1402. NO UNIVERSAL SERVICE FOR SCHOOLS OR LIBRARIES THAT FAIL TO IMPLEMENT A FILTERING OR BLOCKING TECHNOLOGY FOR COMPUTERS WITH INTERNET ACCESS.
Exhibit B:
Senate version, 401-406 - formation of industry cartel to restrict access to First Amendment-protected content that some find offensive.
Exhibit C:
Senate version, Section 1504 - mandatory ISP provision of filters
Yeah, we're not logging it yet. BFD. Prohibiting information from libraries/public institutions and forcing private companies to comply is a giant step toward Russia's situation. In fact, logging that information is the next logical step toward compliance with censorship. Before we sit back and laugh at Russia, let's take a good look here at home (in the US).
In the year 2000 the russians saved all the internet traffic into databases. They soon find they can't keep up with the analysis and just dump the project. In 2100 a russian historian stumbles across the discarded tape and finds a way to hack a tape player to read it. S/he has a perfect snapshot of russian society circa the new milennium. Hopefully the historian has methods to extract the useful data from all the packets.
Archeology will be much different in the future!
no sig.
If the Government can pass a law forcing all network traffic be copied, and saved so that they can reveiw it, then either Russian Crypto isn't good, or a law will be passed against it in the near future.
For many of the years I was participating, the mere act of posting publically was seen as a huge step. First, since most people only had net access through work, you were essentially coming out to your company, esp. since you had no idea who else was reading the group. But you also had no idea who was out there eavesdropping. On the optimistic side, that never-heard-from person was just not read to make himself/herself public but used the group as a resources to what was out there, and certainly first postings frequently had comments of the "I've been reading here for ### months" variety. More pessimistically, it could be your neighbor, your boss, etc. Or if you wanted to invoke a conspiracy theory, the gov't was compiling names, etc.
So, one of the running paranoid "jokes" was that someone was "out there" recording everyone and everything. It was feasible --- the entire USENET feed was only a few MB/day at the time, which was still a lot of storage, but not out of the reach of a gov't budget and a lot of 9-track tapes.
It was an in-joke --- people would refer to it from time to time by putting in parenthetical comments (And a big hello to the person in the basement of the FBI who's reading this!) or in .signature files. Even as late as 1991 or so, I completely expected that if I ever applied for a "real" gov't job that required a background check that they'd carry in this 6-inch stack of printed postings to soc.motss.
Around the second-generation IRC period we once did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that all of IRC could be compressed onto one CD ROM per day. Since USENET and IRC are basically "public", there wasn't any way to be certain anyone wasn't just archiving a full USENET feed, and had hacked up a server to listen in on all IRC channels. It might not have been done, but it was technically doable.
Of course things have become MUCH larger with time, but so have recording media.
So my point is, that while it's an issue that the Russians might be requiring ISP's to feed them traffic, there's really nothing stopping our own government from slurping off the Internet at will. It could be happening now! The bad old days might have always been the same as today (and tomorrow).
--------------------------- footnotes
USENET "generations"
IRC "generations":
This doesn't seem too different from the telecommunications furor in this country a couple of years ago when the FBI wanted phone companies to provide tapping services (at the companies' cost!).
What ever came of that, BTW? It all got quiet all of a sudden, which makes me think that the FBI got its way.
Here's the crux: most internet trafic is unencrypted, so some packet sniffing and whatever anyone is saying can be read, especially within your LAN.
...
No-one should be able to do this. Everything sent through any network should be encrypted. The initial structure of the net did not include encryption in its standard protcols, but it does not prevent it, and there is no way anyone can prevent it (I hope) so why is it not more common?
Lack of education on how simple it is I guess
Yep, I also hope that Russian crypto is good. But I hope they start using it. I hope every citizen in any country does.
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Damn ... that sounds like a serious amount of traffic. I wonder what filtering technology the FSB has ...
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The NSA has been doing this for years, and is still doing it, Echelon also goes on. So what do you complain about? Besides, what would you get from the Russian traffic except MP3s and pr0n? :)
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The U.S. has been doing this for ever. Beneath the Pentagon there's supposed to be this huge mile long room filled with guys who couldn't tell ya what the sun looked like, who sit around all the time doing nothing but cracking codes with supercomputers. Think THEY don't have the latest toys?
What's the name of that project to snoop out all the interesting stuff that goes across the internet that the NSA is in to? Slashdot was all over it in November and December.
You're worried about Russia? Let the Bear cup his hands behind his ears, we got bigger problems at home.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
...but nobody has/uses them. If IP had been built from the ground up with a system like freenet with public key crypto this could never happen (or, it wouldn't /work/). But with straight (HTTP|SMTP), anonymity is near-impossible. Even if the Russians use encryption -- and they won't -- their government will know with whom they're communicating and when... And in most cases, that's enough to find out *what*'s being communicated. Try to go to flag.blackened.net and they'll *know* what you're thinking. Sure, it is technologically possible to get around these systems -- with (non-existent) cooperation from sites outside of Russia -- but that doesn't mean squat, because it's not PRACTICALLY possible to get people to use those technological means.
Tell me, how do I go to smash-the-state.com without the Russians knowing I do it? https? But the gov't will just use https too, and they'll see it (securely). Sure, I can ssh into a shell in the US or elsewhere and fire up lynx, but only I can do that. If I give the pw to the shell out publically so that my comrades can join into the revolution, the government is gonna catch on. In one stroke they've prevented any means of anonymous mass dissemination of information. Any site the public can go to -- or any publically available information in any form -- the government can (a) see, (b) monitor.
You're right, this isn't going to stop a lot of computer crime, but I don't think it's meant to. This is the means to prevent *thought* crime, and I'm sure the government knows it.
One solution, and probably not the best one, would be to include certain words (warez, filez, crackz, etc.) in every web page. Although not exactly a solution, it would certainly make the work of anyone trying to find criminal pages more difficult.
This alone is not a solution. But this, combined with protest of such laws might be.
Let's be blunt, this is a law designed and passed by paranoid politicians who have no clue what kind of hardware and wetware will be involved in implementing this project. There is no realistic way they'll be able to monitor all of the Internet's traffic without building one of the largest technology centers outside of Redmond. In the end, it will be a paper tiger, a wooden gun. Great for intimidation, but of little use to the thought police.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
"How is it that you see the splinter in your brother's eye and are not aware of the beam in your own eye?"
With the police knocking down doors in New York at the behest of Microsoft to find a package that Microsoft themselves misaddressed, it seems that you have a pretty big plank in your own eye.
Do you think your Department of Justice is there to protect you?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects the few and powerful at the expense of the many.
Do you think you have free speech? Check out this recent CNN story:
Park's Jesus statue is unconstitutional -- even on private land.
Do you think you have the right to a fair trial and protection from cruel and unusual punishment? Wen Ho Lee has been held without bail in solitary confinement with his arms and legs shackeled, and this was after the US DOE said he passed his polygraph examination. The FBI "reinterpreted" the results, and Lee is now imprisoned without a trial. Sure, he'll get a trial someday, but only after he's rotted in the hole for good long while.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. While Russia's destination on the path they're taking is obvious to most slashdot readers, the "good intentions" are obscure. Tax evasion is rampant in Russia, and the government needs money. This latest outrage may be nothing more than an ill-advised attempt to collect more taxes. But its probably more sinister, judging from the past.
Back at the ranch, you should get your own house in order and stop worrying about the affairs of others.
Probably the worst problem is not that Russian people will be monitored by FSB and 'other' agencies such as tax collectors (there is no First Ammendment in Russia) but the problem is that this information will be sold to criminal structures and this will provide such structures with more information about their potential victims. At the end it is the Russian market and their new businessmen who will suffer, and thus Russia will suffer in the long run. Russian government must realize that it does not have the credibility to enforce such actions, they simply can not be trusted with other people's information.
You can't handle the truth.
There are no more than 1.5million Russians on the Web, most of them get their access from work and they do not pull 30MB a day (which is nothing much , really, I pull over 4Gbs on some days, but then again, good old ADSL) most of those Russians use internet for email, chat, ICQ, and searching, they have no fast speed access. BTW, it was clear that the ISP's are responsible for filtering and searching through data, so ISP's will have to install some "black boxes" that will have the appropriate software in them. The only messages sent to the 'appropriate channels' will be the ones identified by the 'black boxes'. Cheers.
You can't handle the truth.
Speaking of monitoring "all" the traffic that flows across their boundaries, this is exactly what our Radio Ham SysOp's in Australia must do, i.e. if they wish to continue to operate their (X.25) Packet Radio BBS's.
Why? Because it's STILL forbidden to connect AX.25 Packet Radio networks to landline telephone networks. (Still crazy, after all these years! ;)
So, it's -not- all happening "over there" in the (former) USSR.
I'm sorry for my bad english.
Yes, cripto is prohibited, but there is no real penalties assigned, so many peoples, including
goverment companies, use it. This law doesnt works.
But, cripto is not a solution. Most of the users
is to lame to use cripto, becoude it is hard to understand for him.
Hi, All!
This story is 2 years old. There is a SORM-1 tech rules for ISP, according to it, ISP must start spying for some user on cops requiring with judje permission. You cant get ISP license without it.
But, 2 years ago, cops (KGB mostly) wants to require SORM-2 tech rules from ISP. Really, it includes leased line from ISP to KGB, and transparent traffic passing throw it. In Russia, leased lines is dear, so providers protests against it, referring to Constitution. But there is a better way. My boss gives a box of vodka (20 buttles) to local KGB office, and gives them some free accounts for their children. (KGB officers themselvs are too stupid to use the Net.) So all was happy.
If you are interesting in this story, I will say you a story about my user sending a letter to Eltsin, and KGB reaction about this.
So let's say SORM just passed, and your ISP is now relaying all communications to the FSB. Okay, you start using SSH/SSL/PGP to encrypt everything that goes to and from your computer. Maybe you even use anonymizing proxies so they can't tell who you're talking to. Great...
...or maybe not so great. Next year, they pass a law outlawing anonymizing proxies as "instruments of terror that aid criminals." Okay, so you use a foreign one. Year after that, they outlaw all encryption over 20 bits, and since they're watching your every transmission, they can tell if you're complying. Not that they'll come for you the next day, there's far too much data for them to scrutinize it that closely. But, if the FSB/Kremlin/Customs agents/Tax agency/whoever ever decides that you're behaving a little funny (or just doesn't like you ever since you published that nasty editorial about them), they can pull up your internet connection, see that you're still using 1024-bit PGP, and haul you away. Too bad.
Moral of the story: if they can get away with making this law (and it looks like they may already have), they can make just about any law they damn well please. But now, they've got the surveilance tech to enforce it.
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
I know I pull about 30MB of data a day. Assuming that 50Million russians are on the net, and they pull 30MB per day...
That's 1,500 Million MB per day. Down one pipe. Into some government building somewhere.
I pity the poor flatfoot that has to read all that :)
Peter Doege
pbd84033@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu
I'm not sure about Russia, but I know a lot of post USSR companies inherited a lot of the old laws... Such as sending/recieving ANYTHING encrypted across the border being a federal offense with harsh penalties. I know this is the case in Ukraine, and I think it is still also the case in Russia. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
This is pretty old news... saw this in a norvegian newspapers about a month ago...
Anyway, crypto isn't gonna help much, as it probably will be made illegal...
Yes, I can confirm no crypting is allowed. My ...
brother is living in Moscow and we can only
communicate by unencrypted plain e-mail.
So only steganographic methods are possible
====================================== No sig, no ideas, no money
You have forced Milosevic into submission - I see it differently. You destroyed an independent country without declaring a war and put about 10 million people on the brink of hunger in order to pay billions of dollars to the american defence contractors! ...
At the same time the power of Milosevic over Yugoslavia is just the same. What a sick joke of concept - to make a people suffer, so they will allegedly overthrow a tyranny. It never works
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Oh the outrage, Russia is going to monitor net traffic. When the US tries it we're ticked off, but it has a different quality when it's an "oppressive government.
Likewise, when the IETF discussed wiretapping people expressed suprise that the government they were getting the most pressure from was not an "oppressive" government, but the US.
Governemtns seek more power. All governments seek more power. We have a constitution that protects us somewhat, but don't expect the government to follow the spirit of it any further than it has to. Yes, individuals in government generally believe in limiting the governments power, but as a whole it seeks power.
Condeming Russia for this in hypocrisy until we assure that the same thing isn't and won't be happening here.