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Russia Seeking To Ban Tor, VPNs and Other Anonymizing Tools

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-secrets dept.

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."

12 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. This is (sort of) good news for Americans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anything the evil former Commies do now is held up as a destroyer of freedom. If someone here proposes a similar law, half of Congress will (hopefully) stand up and say "That's something the Russians would do to suppress Freedom(TM)."

    1. Re:This is (sort of) good news for Americans by ihtoit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      oh, so Putin invaded three countries immediately following the world trade centre incident on the pretext of finding the one man they held responsible? No wait, that was the United States.
      Putin bombed Serbia? No, wait, that was the United States.
      Putin aided in bloody coups against legitimately elected Governments in Liberia, Haiti, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Egypt? No, all the United States.

      Who's the asshole?

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    2. Re:This is (sort of) good news for Americans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As someone who has works with people from Russia, the best description of how the country is run would be similar to Chicago with the Mafia in charge. There is just enough order so that things can function, and not much else past that.

      One example are Russian cars. By law, they have to have sets of cameras on them... because there will be no other way to find who is at fault if a wreck happens. The police don't have enough resources to find who is at fault, so one has to "pack their own parachute" in order to get insurance money if there is a wreck.

      Is Putin another Stalin? No. Russia has its issues, mainly underpopulation, and thousands of miles of borders with countries that would love to nick off some Russian territory. Plus, here in the US, Islamic extremist aggression makes the news often. There, border skirmishes by combatants is common, and there is a sizable death toll.

      Another part of it is that Putin has to be an asshole. He has to run the country with an iron grip or else separatists will fracture the country... and if this happens, it would have far reaching and severe consequences.

      The real truth is that Putin is an ass... but there is a lot worse that could be running the country. However, Russia has only to gain in future years. Oil prices are going back up, and will be at three digits a barrel by Memorial Day due to OPEC production cuts. While fracking has depleted US reserves, Russia still sits on incredible deposits, which are only going to be worth more as everyone else runs dry.

    3. Re:This is (sort of) good news for Americans by mjwx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'll see your former Soviet states and raise you a Columbia, Panama and Zaire.

      I could do this all fuckin' day,

      Gentlemen, gentlemen,

      Both countries have small penises. Can we please move on.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    4. Re:This is (sort of) good news for Americans by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      By law, they have to have sets of cameras on them... because there will be no other way to find who is at fault if a wreck happens.

      Dashcams are a good idea. I live in America, and I have one. I bought it for $39 from Amazon. It hasn't recorded an accident yet, but I did record a robbery that occurred in front of my car in a parking lot. I emailed the video to the cops, and they said it helped them nail the guy. The victim was an Indian woman. They are often targeted by muggers because they wear a lot of solid gold jewelry.

    5. Re:This is (sort of) good news for Americans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I could do this all fuckin' day,

      Yep. Of course you can do it all day. Because you can live in a country where you can do that without fear of retribution.

      But. Y'know. Keep fighting the good fight, comrade.

  2. We need a distributed Tor immedietly by buddha379 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Tor and other centralized VPN proxies are coming under attack from authoritarian/totalitarian governments all over the world. China started assaulting VPNs recently as well. The Arab dictatorships won't be far behind. As long as there are central servers to ban/block/attack then there is no way to stop them. Eventually they will seize control of their local internet and cut themselves off from the world. There is only one answer.

    We need a distributed VPN/Proxy.

    We need a ubiquitous p2p proxy that is both a client and server. It needs to be ridiculously easy to set up, as in download it, click a few buttons and you are browsing the web through random onion routing and allowing others to do the same. 100s of millions of server/clients cannot be shut down if they run over https.

    Lantern may fit the bill. https://www.getlantern.org/ If there are others they need to get funding and widespread publicity as quickly as possible.

    1. Re:We need a distributed Tor immedietly by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Those three governments qualify.

    2. Re:We need a distributed Tor immedietly by sk999 · · Score: 4, Funny

      "China started assaulting VPNs recently as well."

      China has been blocking VPNs since 2011. It seems like an annual ritual. Here is a typical article from back then:
      http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

      Eventually the blocking eases, or people figure out another way around. It becomes a game of "whack-a-mole".

  3. Incorrect text in the summary by yurik · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Vadim Roskomnadzora Ampelonsky" -- the second word is not part of the name, that's the organization name he is working for. It should be "Vadim Ampelonsky".

  4. This sounds vaguely familiar ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... oh, here it is.

    “If we find evidence of a terrorist plot and despite having a phone number, despite having a social media address or email address, we can’t penetrate that [encryption], that’s a problem,” Obama said. He said he believes Silicon Valley companies also want to solve the problem. “They’re patriots.” ...

    Emphasis mine.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  5. (bdum tish) by jhantin · · Score: 4, Funny

    Both countries have small penises. Can we please move on.

    I dunno, Alaska and Kamchatka are both sizable peninsulas.

    --
    ...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k