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Net Users In Belarus May Soon Have To Register
Cwix writes "A new law proposed in Belarus would require all net users and online publications to register with the state: 'Belarus' authoritarian leader is promising to toughen regulation of the Internet and its users in an apparent effort to exert control over the last fully free medium in the former Soviet state. He told journalists that a new Internet bill, proposed Tuesday, would require the registration and identification of all online publications and of each Web user, including visitors to Internet cafes. Web service providers would have to report this information to police, courts, and special services.'"
Apart from internet cafes, which are blanketed with CCTV cameras, all users in Western nations also need to register to use the internet. Registration is with a third party, but the government has access to all third party information, so effectively the same thing. This is simply "the east" catching up with "the west".
People who felt the government shouldn't turn too big have largely been proved right when it comes to the area of surveillance - every Western nation will have total online oversight.
President Alexander Lukashenko is going a long way towards making identity theft even easier. Imagine how much simpler it would be to steal an identity with the existence of 'accounts' like this- especially as they aren't tied to specific addresses or machines, as TFA mentions that the requirements also apply to Internet cafes.
I wonder how much Prez Luka would like it if someone posted on 4chan under his "Internet passport?"
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
It seems unthinkable that this could happen in western democracies, but it is only a matter of time. The freewheeling and uncontrolled nature of the net was a grand experiment, but it is not tolerable to political power structures because they do not control it or even quite understand it. It can also threaten them (see Iran).
It's not politically feasible for most western governments to come out and take such steps directly, but it'll be rolled out slowly over time "for our own good", with each step along the way being justifiable to protect us against something that everyone agrees is bad.
The only way to fight this is for everyone to start using strong encryption for everything and protecting their anonymity even if it isn't always convenient, and even if they have nothing to hide. But that is less likely to happen than for Paris Hilton to win the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics.
I give the mostly-uncensored internet a total lifetime of less than 25 more years from the present, if we're lucky. For a while it'll be possible, but criminal, to access it anonymously, but eventually that'll become impractical as governments clamp down to protect IP/the children/stop terror/prevent civil unrest.
Wait, and watch.
How many times will "Hubicha Kokov", "Miles O'Toole" and "Leck Depolski" turn up before the scumbag authorities notice something weird? Along with appropriate "catch me if you can" software, of course.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I rejoice to see Belarus coming to sense and to follow the brave example from my country Italy.
Instantly Belarus will become a culinary heart in the world, it will start producing magnificent sports cars and will have centuries worth of art stored in its churches. Surely it is for that reason they come up with such a law as I cannot see any other symptoms as to why Italy benefits from its laws.
Belarus has something going for it and they already have a president that challenges the eternal wisdom of our beloved Silvio.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Can somebody with more knowledge comment on what are the significant differences between Belarus and Italy? In Italy they are obliged to scan your ID when you want internet access and also they have to log many things and be sure to be able to correlate them with you. Free anonymous internet ("normal" open wifi) is forbidden as far as I know.
As a side-note in Italy if you're a guest your host (at least the "organized" ones, like hotels and such) are obliged to take all your data and report you to some authority. I'm sure there are many countries with the same requirement but the first one that comes to mind is Cuba...
The imminent suppression of free speech on the Internet likely foreshadows the same sort of suppression in Russia.
The gravity of the situation cannot be overstated. The Internet-capable folks in both countries are the only people who have access to uncensored news from the West. These people know the horrible state of their countries. Knowledge is power. Only these knowledgeable poeple can change both countries into liberal, Western democracies.
If the government censors the Internet, then both nations will become Chinese-style states. We Westerners will not see any political improvements in both Belarus and Russia within our lifetimes.
...and tomorrow it’s us.
Those were my first thoughts. Pretty sad.
But then I thought: And what would it change, to have all people of the country in yet another database? I mean they already have a list of their population, don’t they?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I asked this on the google india article - is there any country in the world where information passes freely from one person to another without abuse from the thought police and "artists"?
How come there's no 1984 tag here?
Apple has "Mac vs PC", Microsoft has "Laptop Hunters", Linux has recession
> requiring all websites with over 100.000 (IIRC) visitors to require registration with using the national ID number.
I fail to see how this could possibly be effective. Valid national ID numbers can't be spoofed? Or is SK already at the point where breaking the ToS of a website is a heinous crime?
Besides which, personally I think I'd merely partition my website into different segments and make sure that only 99,999 people were registered at each one, providing a "mix-em up views" top-level website which does not allow for registration at all. It would seem to me that this would probably be OK with the law as you state it. And it would be an interesting challenge to do effectively, while demonstrating how technology easily bypasses artificial restrictions like this law.
Sure, we're dealing here with totalitarian regime which likes to lock up people who are not in line...but at the same time it likes to have, formally, everything done properly during the proceedings. That means documentation of crime, evidence, etc. It might as well be fabricated, what's important is that it gives a bit more legitimacy to the whole circus.
Such internet account is perfect for this.
One that hath name thou can not otter
> using the Internet without SOMEONE knowing who you are ... is pretty much impossible in Germany.
International proxy and/or VPN use is illegal? I think what you meant was: "anonymity is a bit more expensive in Germany".
> where someone who "enables" you to do illegal things (not necessarily crimes) can be held
> responsible for what you do if you can't be caught
Sounds weird and not well-defined. If the bank robbers flee in a vehicle identified as a Volkswagen and don't get caught, can the bank sue Volkswagen for "enabling" them?
As we all know the fax destroyed the Soviet Union. The whole forbidden books were transmitted by fax.
If the KGB with all its unlimited power and resources could not win over the fax, how could puny Belarus government hope to win over the Internet? This uneven struggle will exhaust the scarce resources they have without bringing anything in return.
Will they spread the iron gauze over its cities to shield the satellites? Will they jam Wi-Fi along its 2500 km border with Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland? Will they search for flash memory cards (tiny in physical size but huge in digital capacity) in airports? Look through gigabytes of memory in phones and MP3 players?
Good luck you there...
I'm not sure, but it looks to me that in Italy, you need a case to retrieve this data and correlate it through few layers (update on web -> ip address -> who was sitting there in Internet Caffe at this very moment). From what I understand about Belarus, they want to skip most of intermediate steps, so you will be able to link person with online publication without sending police with prosecution order to internet caffee.
On top of that, you can do a lot of data mining- 'give me all people who posted on both "Free Belarus" board and "Home Chemist" interest group'. It is not that easy if you have bunch of random IPs and would have to get 'mapping' info from all access points constantly.
Yes, there is a privacy loss in both cases. Difference seems to be that in Italy, they have to start from publication (and with considerable effort they can trace the publications to people), in Belarus you can start from person (what is this guy doing on the internet) - and you get publication->person mapping for free.
Obviously, there are blocking technical/social difficulties to get it implemented in real world, but we are discussing about the idea here.
One is either for or against censorship. There is simply no in between. It is like pregnancy. You either are or are not pregnancy and just like pregnancy censorship gets bigger and bigger until you pop.
Well, "I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free...". I hope that this type of government communications rule does not spread to other countries. :(
I've read several of the posts so far and have noticed a few people relating how this is no different from Western countries, that there is a great similarity between them. I do not profess to be an expert of law in any country, but I did notice one difference with regards to current US law:
With Belarus, you are automatically tracked. Once you do something, it's logged and [probably] viewed by the authorities. In the US there is a slight difference: in order for a law enforcement agency to observe the activity of a specific person, they [usually and ideally] have to subpoena it or provide a warrant for the information to an ISP. This is an extra protection of rights offered in the US that is not apparently offered in Belarus.
( Yes, I acknowledge that certain agencies {cough} ...NSA...{cough} have the capability to and probably do go around the system anyways. And yes, due to the amendments to FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), they can monitor the public as a whole as long as they are not targeting a specific person (i.e. looking for something rather than someone). )
(((dB)))
> Basically, as far as I understand it, there is no anonymity allowed.
And that sounds like a good business opportunity for non-SK-citizen Korean speakers in the US to set up websites which do allow anonymity.
Too bad I don't speak Korean...
The ID number hooks into the national database
But does it hook into an international database? How can the Korean government look up personal information on national ID numbers from other countries, such as the Social Security number that U.S. companies like to misuse as a national ID number?
with temperatures we have today, nobody would even blink an eye at me being dressed in a way that effectively disguises me.
That's what global warming is for. Making the climate like Florida throughout the developed world will make it less necessary to cover oneself. I'd bet even the copyright industry is in on it: Pastafarianism teaches that reducing piracy warms the earth ;-)
.. should have named this the "Protect our children act".
Way to go before he catches up with the West.
Belarus is the last USSR style communist state in Eastern Europe. The USA readers would probably better understand it as a European version of North Korea. The statue of Lenin still stands in front of their nation's capital building and there is a statue on a side street commemorating the site of the founding of the USSR's KGB.
There is no private property in Belarus. Everything is owned by the state which is tightly controlled by President Lukashenko.
But they do have free medical care for all its citizens. :-\