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Google Closing Engineering Office In Russia
An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal reports (paywalled) that Google is closing its engineering office in Russia. This follows ever-increasing crackdowns from the Russian government over internet freedoms, and intrusive data-handling requirements on internet companies. "[A] new law that takes effect next year requires information on Russian citizens to be stored in data centers in Russia. The law will also penalize Web firms for infringing on personal data rules in the country. Another law passed earlier this year requires bloggers with 3,000 or more daily readers to register with the government and provide their home address. The ruling prevents these bloggers from using foul language and forbids them from spreading false information."
... why not stalinesque? you know putin's actual role model?
Google is leaving russia due to data security and intrusive legislation that harms the internet, but sees no problem maintaining an office in the United States, where the government has created secret courts to warrantlessly wiretap what ostensibly amounts to the entire country. Google is just fine with a corporate office in a country that uses state sponsored terrorism and maintains a torture prison. Its Fine with opening offices in a country that jailed Chelsea Manning for whistleblowing or rather spreading "false information" and subsequently ensured 2 years of her forcible detention under suicide watch stripped nude and prevented from sleeping. Google has no problem with a country that runs secret torture prisons and "targeted killings." but whenever Russia passes legislation to force Internet sites that store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so inside the country, it closes shop because it doesnt want to maintain a russian datacenter? or rather is it because in America its not a requirement thanks to a rendition network that just takes people and servers regardless of the country.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So if the russian government doesn't like a blogger, all it has to do is hit the blog 3000 times within a day to force him to register, give his name and address, and have him under control.
Captcha: unfair
What Russian actions in Ukraine?
-The relief convoys sent to aid the molested masses left in the wake of the actual self-described Nazi thugs which seized the elected government and drove it into the ground?
Or their make-believe invasion/s which Washington insists took place, but of which there is zero evidence? (If Russia decided to invade, Ukraine would be under Russian rule. Seems simple enough. Since that is not the case, there was no invasion.)
Careful what you read; the air is thick, thick, thick with psychopathic lies from an increasingly desperate Western elite. The US descent is picking up speed and the rats are getting squirrelly. Or the squirrels are getting ratty.
My take is that Putin's KGB days left him well aware of the CIA regime change tactics, and how they start with the infiltration and propagandizing of a target population by agents seeking to destabilze a country from within. If all your people are constantly being told that their government is evil and that they should rise up against it... Works like a charm unless you kill it at the bud. And what sane country would want a giant NSA organ working in their territory collecting data on their citizens?
I think people are all too quick to credit every action Putin takes as being part of some grant overarching plan. Does one think his grand overarching plan included the Ruble falling 40% and the economy solidly on path to contraction after a bunch of failed poorly thought-out attempts to bolster them while turning Ukraine from a militarily-incompetent country with a largely very pro-Russian population into a Russia-hating country full of veterans and causing its neighbors to start clamouring for (and in some cases, getting) NATO bases that NATO had previously been reluctant to do?
Putin's not some brilliant chessmaster pulling all the strings, but nor is he some sort of bumbling fool. He's just a person. He's made some moves in the past that have turned out to be excellent strategically. He's also made a number of blunders. But he's now committed to this path, so he has to walk it wherever it takes him. Given his style, he'll probably keep doubling down.
"We consider that six courts and an asylum claim are a rather odd way of returning to Sweden within a month."
Yeah, who do they think they are? America?
I feel what you say is entirely true, and yet am compelled to add ...
NSA (mass surveillance proven), CIA (torture, kidnapping, coups against democratic countries, assasinations, propaganda, funding of insurgents/terrorists/narco terrorists proven), America being instrumental in creating Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc (blowback) and ... Microsoft, Google, Apple, all the American tech companies who have a cosy relationship with their government.
At a certain point the difference between Russia under Putin and America under any number of presidents is largely that the USA has a more polished public relations strategy.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
There is also unintended consequences. Say every country demands this where their citizens' stuff is stored on domestic data centers. Now, the government of Elbonia passes a law stating that for anti-"terrorism" purposes, their version of a secret police has to have real time access to all servers, which in addition to a vague law or two about seditious speech, starts getting people tossed into prison.
It is the lesser of two evils. The US isn't perfect, but I can have a banner in a window cursing the President and Congress out and not worry about a knock on the door, or a kick in the door. Other countries, citizens there may not be so lucky, and a law forcing Google and others to store data domestically might just be the exact thing a repressive government is dreaming of.