Russia Seeking To Ban Tor, VPNs and Other Anonymizing Tools

An anonymous reader writes Three separate Russian authorities have spoken out in favor of banning online anonymizing tools since February 5th, with particular emphasis on Tor, which — despite its popularity with whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden and with online activists — Russia's Safe Internet League describes as an 'Anonymous network used primarily to commit crimes'. The three authorities involved are the Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, powerful Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor and the Safe Internet League, comprising the country's top three network providers, including state telecoms provider Rostelecom. Roskomnadzor's press secretary Vadim Roskomnadzora Ampelonsky describes the obstacles to identifying and blocking Tor and VPN traffic as "difficult, but solvable."

Comments

Re:This is (sort of) good news for Americans

[ladoga]

You mean, Georgia, Ukraine and (brewing) Moldova? With functional takeover of a number of ex-USSR countries as well (Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova differ only by daring to stand up to Russia)? And aiding bloody coups elsewhere?

Don't forget Chechenya. That war basically brought Putin into power.

Moscow apartment bombings were executed to get a pretext for invading Chechenya (2nd war). FSB even got caught planting one of the bombs. Guess who was leading the FSB back then? Guess who blamed it all to Chechens?

For Putin, killing thousands of people is nothing. He will do just about anything to stay in power. I don't really think he needs to be paranoid even. With all the crimes he has done, whoever follows might not be easy on him