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KGB Wants Control of Email and VOIP
blair1q writes "The FSB (really just a rebadged KGB) is worried about the abilities that internet communications services such as Hotmail, Gmail, and Skype give to people they consider black-hats. In particular, they don't like the fact that these services allow encryption. They say they aren't going to seize or block them, yet, but are just 'studying' the situation, with an eye possibly toward implementing controls like those in China. Their increased interest in the tools may be related to a DDoS attack on Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's own LiveJournal account, which he termed 'revolting and illegal.'"
The U.S. government wants the exact same thing. I'm pretty sure that almost every government at this point wants *at least* a way to bypass encryption, a "kill switch" for the internet in their country, and some form of email monitoring (all these without any pesky warrants, of course). If your country is an exception, count yourself lucky.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And this is different from NSA, et al ... how?
Clean up your own back yard before you go knocking on your neighbors door.
The NSA has hardware in Google HQ and most likely other US data centers too.
This is why everyone should be running freenet, stick your virtual fingers in the mans eyes. http://freenetproject.org/
than competition.
So the argument is made that the interwebs need control, a la Great Firewall of China.
In Post-Soviet Russia Freedom means more control over YOU.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If the FSB / KGB, NSA, etc. come down too hard on Gmail, etc. then people who need or desire security will probably start using Open PGP or some other, stronger form of encryption. The smart spook should work on cracking the lowest-common form of encryption and try to get people to use it and think it's secure.
If this will just force people who care about privacy to start using encryption. Considering how few people care about privacy, that means they will likely have reduced the set of people they 'should' be looking at by quite a bit (i.e., now just terrorists, subversives, and geeks instead of everybody). If the occasional security-concious geek gets caught up in the net and looked at a bit too closely, so be it, might still be a win so far as they are concerned.
Under these kinds of circumstances, hiding 'in plain sight' without using encrypted traffic (just use coded phrases and the like) would probably garner less attention. Maybe send your terrorist communications using unencrypted leet speak.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So you want Slashdot to report on nothing that is negative outside of the US, so long as they US does it as well?
Why? Just general US-hate?
Seems to me this is news no matter where it happens. I've seen Slashdot report on the US government doing plenty of stupid shit, including all the AT&T stuff, so why can't they also report on Russia?
I love how anytime someone points out how any other government than the US government might be doing evil things, it's immediately assumed to be some attempt by Americans to make themselves look better, and compared to some similar American program. It's as if it is somehow more important that an insult be hurled at the US than attention be diverted to some other country's less-than-honorable behavior for a few moments.
Trust me, we are all well aware of the failings and bad behavior of the US government. I see about ten articles a day about it. But don't ignore the serial killer next door because a loud, obnoxious, schizophrenic drunk is making noise down the street.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
>>The FSB (really just a rebadged KGB) What is this bigoted and nationalistic editorializing nonsense? What if I said "Federal Republic of Germany" is just a rebadged "Nazi Germany"?
Calling the FSB a rebadged KGB is a bit disingenuous, isn't it? I mean, one doesn't have to live in Russia to discern that these are two different organisations with different structures and, most importantly, goals.
Anything which reports to Vladimir Putin is still a Cagey Bee in my book.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We're the officially appointed sneaky cheaters! They're cheating and ignoring us! Mother Russia, tell them to quit it! Unfair, unfair, unfair!
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Nice story "Chips & Dips"
Slashdot (really just a rebranded "Chips & Dips") can't resist pulling an acronym out of the mists of time
Seriously, not that hard to say "Russia's Federal Security Service (aka FSB) wants..."
The 1980's called and said they wanted their Cold War propaganda back
-- How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.
As if you'd need "soviet" for that anymore. Face it, the Soviet Union protected our liberty. As long as they existed, the "western democracies" had to play nice to be seen as the good guy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I mean, look at them! They have an economic growth in times of a recession, so their model of society has to be right.
Let's face it, folks. Communism was the right idea.
(may contain traces of nuts or sarcasm)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"That's right, don't use Jitsi. I repeat, don't use J I T S I. Or Debian Empathy. Emmmmmpathy."
Why are all the governments of 2011 acting like it's 1994 and the internet is this hot new thing to control after they sorta let it slide for 17 years? Separating forest from trees, all these gov desires are pretty low IQ. "MMMMM. Email. Gimme!" They couldn't have thought of that back when AOL was still the rage? Why now?
Theory: Fishbowl Effect. After we have finally had our fun with memes and made a fer .com dollars, the endless years of hyperconnectedness are going to drag on with not even a religious apocalypse to distract us, so those in power have nothing better to do than start salivating over hypertracking. Back in 1994 the web was still fun.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Did you not notice that the "News for Nerds" slogan has been gone for a while?
Slashbloid's main purpose is to generate advert impressions now. It doesn't matter how cheap and wrong the summaries are. FOX News would be proud.
Why are they doing this now? One word: Egypt. The fact that with Internet organizing one of their old boys club could be run out on a rail? I'm sure that scares the shit out of them.
As for TFA? I'm sure we'll be seeing more of this in the coming months. Anything that can threaten power the way it did in Egypt will have to be monitored (for the children/terrists/etc) and sadly most folks won't know nor care that everything is being monitored as long as it isn't THEIR door that gets kicked in. If you're doing nothing wrong, right?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Dude, you still have plenty of governments left. European, Flemish, Walloon, French community, Brussels Region, German speaking. You still have, like, 85% of your governments left + an-old-but-still-kinda-in-charge government. And a king. And 2 queens.
Better get used to ... *sunglasses on* Democracy. YEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHH
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's own LiveJournal account, which he termed 'revolting and illegal.'
I agree. LiveJournal accounts can often be revolting and illegal.
There is no KGB. Putting it in the title is pretty dumb and factually incorrect.
Yeah, the FSB is the success to the KGB in the Russian Federation, but if you tell a Russian there's no difference between it and the Soviet Union, half of them will probably punch you in the face.
This kind of stuff just makes Slashdot read like an amateur blog that can't be trusted for news or fact checking.
Their increased interest in the tools may be related to a DDoS attack on Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's own LiveJournal account, which he termed 'revolting and illegal.'"
This is very much oversimplifying the part of Medvedev in this story (as well as the story in general).
This whole mess started when an FSB official (head of their department of information and telecommunication security), in the course of an official meeting, brought up GMail, Hotmail and Skype as an example of a "security problem" due to impossibility of wiretaps (as servers are outside the country, and HTTPS ensures secure connection to them from within), and suggested a ban (neither TFS nor TFA mention this!).
Shortly after, an official from president Medvedev's administration stated that the ban - and, more broadly, the whole idea that foreign-hosted services are a "security issue" - is a personal opinion of that particular FSB person, and does not represent the official position of that organization nor government as a whole.
Shortly after that, prime minister Putin's press secretary stated that this is incorrect, and the position is the official position of FSB, that it is well-argued and reasonable, and that Putin takes it with all due consideration.
So basically it's more of the same thing that we've seen before. Whether it's a genuine power struggle between president and prime minister (the elections are less than a year away), or whether they're playing out a scripted "good cop / bad cop" in preparation for the same, is yet to be seen.
The same murdering MOFOs still work for them, that have no concepts of freedom or 'hatred' for government controls. They think they are 'above' the elected government.
Oh and im sure their mothers beat them silly when young and didnt give them their potatoes.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
One simple solution, and if every girl ignores or doesnt date or marry any and all govt stooges / spies / LEOs. Then you will quickly see very few applicants to these agencies if it casts you as a 'virgin' outcast.
Or if you are already with one, leave em.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Belorussian KGB of course makes the usage in the headline even more moronic - FSB would do fine, clarification at the beginning of TFS left as is.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Fishbowl Effect. After we have finally had our fun with memes and made a fer .com dollars, the endless years of hyperconnectedness are going to drag on with not even a religious apocalypse to distract us...
Life / internet: pretty much the same crap, over and over, forever.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Really. Stop the sensationalistic headlines. KGB is long gone. It's the FSB. Period.
"I'm taking this loop off." - Jack O'Neill
I don't know if it looks like an attempt to make Americans look better, but it is clearly an attempt to make Russia look bad. First off, it wasn't reported anywhere that Medvedev said that no such measures would come to pass, even if the FSB ends up suggesting it after the end of the "studies". Second, statements like "The FSB (really just a rebadged KGB)" really does not help with objectivity. It's like saying, the French Foreign Legion (the one that was causing havoc in Algeria), or the CIA (America's coup d'etats planners) which already tries to paint those institutions in a bad way.
Also, a sentence like "with an eye possibly toward implementing controls like those in China" was clearly written by somebody who didn't even read the article. What they said is that Russian people were commenting on the Internet, and I quote from the Reuters article: "with many saying Russia could follow China's attempts to limit the Internet".
I have been to Russia and I understand that it must not be easy to just let go of a country that was pointing nuclear weapons towards the US, and probably still does, but to be honest they are more worried about World War 2 history and how they won, than competing with the US. If anything, they want to be friendly with the US but they are very independent by nature, and this gets reflected in the fact that it's hard to spot foreigners in Russia unless at the usual touristic places, that they build a lot of the stuff they use, even stuff like Yandex replacing Google, vKontakte replacing Facebook, Rutube replacing YouTube and so on. So that independent culture only gets more reinforced. It was very curious to see that at the hotel I was staying, I didn't see any foreigner, and we are talking about a hotel complex that has like 4 huge towers.
So really, just let go and report stuff in Russia as if you were talking about the French. Something along the lines "that's silly, but well, they are French, they like to be different".
China and Russia are constantly attacking the west.
It is time for us to install this as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.