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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."
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.
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.
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!
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.
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/
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
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 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?
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.
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
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
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)
This is of course "to protect Americans from terrorism".
Ignore Alien Orders
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).
There are several similarities between proto-nazi Germany and Russia in it's current state.
Both are formerly powerful, well-to-do countries. Both have fallen on extremely hard times, and both because of some obvious turning point. In the case of Germany it was losing World War I, and for Russia it was the fall of the Soviet Union.
In situations like this, easy answers are very attractive.
I'm not saying that Russia is going to turn into the next nazi Germany, and I hope it won't. Most Russians are at least decently educated, and probably wouldn't fall for ranting about superiority of the Russian people...etc.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
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.
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
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.
The old secret police did not have relational databases and datamining tools to give them a realistic shot at making any sense of the data they had collected. The information that will be woven into the data they collect will be far to interesting and far to accessible to go untouched.