How Putin Tried To Control the Internet (vice.com)

derekmead writes: In this excerpt from the recently published The Red Web, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan describe how the Kremlin has been trying to rewrite the rules for the internet to make it "secure" as it is understood by Russia's secret services. "Vladimir Putin was certain that all things in the world—including the internet—existed with a hierarchical, vertical structure. He was also certain that the internet must have someone controlling it at the top. He viewed the United States with suspicion, thinking the Americans ruled the web and that it was a CIA project. Putin wanted to end that supremacy. Just as he attempted to change the rules inside Russia, so too did he attempt to change them for the world. The goal was to make other countries, especially the United States, accept Russia's right to control the internet within its borders, to censor or suppress it completely if the information circulated online in any way threatened Putin's hold on power."

Comments

Why don't we just say it?

[Chas]

Freedom and government are mutually antagonistic concepts.

Re:Why don't we just say it?

[mrchaotica]

How is this a troll? It's fundamentally correct!

That's why in America, the Bill of Rights -- whose purpose is to protect the people's freedom -- is written in terms of imposing limitations on the government. In other words, it doesn't say "the people have X right," it says "the government shall not infringe the people's right of X." That's totally by design, because the Framers understood the point the OP just made.

Re:Why don't we just say it?

[fightinfilipino]

Freedom and government are mutually antagonistic concepts.

that's an incredibly silly comment. there are extremes of course (China, Russia, North Korea...), but in democratic and open societies, governments are necessary to ensure freedoms exist. who else would there be to ensure criminals don't deprive others of their freedoms? who else would there be to ensure contracts are enforced and not just useless words on paper? without courts, who would determine if people have been injured or mistreated and ensure justice for those people? these are roles that only the government can play, not corporations or for-profit organizations, or individuals on their own. and what do you call individuals getting together to ensure the rights of all, not for a profit but because it's the right thing to do? a government.

Re:Why don't we just say it?

[roman_mir]

No government is required to settle individual disputes, people invented courts for such thing around the world that can operate without any government structure. This is also true for criminal courts, no government authority is needed for that.

The rights of all ensure the right of individuals to not be oppressed for profiting.

Before any further discussion, realize that rights are protections against government oppression and nothing more. The concept of a right only makes sense as a protection against government oppression, that's because a government is a structure, not an individual or another form of organization. An individual or a private organization infringing on an individual life, freedom or property can be dealt with via a criminal court (again, no government required). A government however cannot ever be punished through any criminal court, no government official will be blamed personally and there is no way to dissolve a government simply because it infringes on individual life, freedom and property.

Because there is no way to punish a government, if a government is allowed to exist at all it should be forced to abide by the rules that prevent oppression, those are individual rights: protections against government oppression.

A right of an individual not to be oppressed by a government must not be infringed, if it is, if a government takes away individual life, freedom or property it has to be done only within very strict limits authorised to the government. Of-course that is how USA started (supposedly) but very quickly that idea degenerated and individual rights are routinely abused by government structures and officials.

A government is not only antagonistic to individual freedom, a government is inherently antithetical to individual freedom, which is why government structures degenerate into oppressive even if initially set up as protective of individual freedoms. That happens because politicians cater to mob (majority of voters) desires for free stuff, which implies abuse of rights of (always) a minority of voters.

Vast majority of people (the mob) are not really interested in ensuring that their government does not oppress rights of individuals, they are only interested in their own specific benefit and class warfare shows that their interest goes beyond simple desire for free stuff, many (collectivists: socialists/fascists/communists/Marxists) are specifically interested in removing individual rights of those, who manage to be better off than they are under any circumstances.

Collectivism (socialism / fascism / communism / Marxism) and individual rights are incompatible in nature, governments tend to be collectivist if they are not specifically dictatorial.

Re:Why don't we just say it?

[ememisya]

I agree with you. The Constitution pretty much states: "Don't be a dick. The English were, that's why we're here and not there, shit can get pretty complicated and people can legally become slaves to the King. So you're free (ish, slaves aren't really one of us so, don't mind those guys) and we won't document your every fart 24/7-365. Also we're not going to charge you money for bullshit reasons without showing you clearly what we're doing with it. Our whole purpose is to make sure this game doesn't break apart and make sure no single power owns it all. Right now that's the case with England so screw those guys, lets just raise our families here away from all that monarchy in peace. Thanks."

That should be the spirit of every law as it's the core abstraction of our nation. So yea, fuck Putin, that asshole! Who does he think he is? Taking over Ukraine and shit! What is he gonna do? Bomb brown people next? Heeeell naw, you Internet controlling douche bag!

(samzenpus was useful for a change, that's quite refreshing.)

Re:Why don't we just say it?

[Chas]

There you go then.

The US isn't a democracy.

It's a democratic republic.

While, semantically, the difference seems tiny, the actual difference is fairly significant.

Re:Why don't we just say it?

[Immerman]

Nobody said opposite - merely antagonistic. There is a delicate balance to be struck.

Any time you have a government, or at least all the attempts to date, you concentrate power into the hands of a few people. That power attracts those who would like to exploit it, and they invariably seek to increase their power (aka the power of the government), necessarily at the expense of the power of the populace (aka freedom). This is apparent in every government in the history of the world, and we have yet to find any way to keep to avoid it. If the populace wishes to preserve their freedoms then they must actively resist those seeking to consolidate power for their own ends.

Thus the two are mutually antagonistic, both pulling the balance of centralized power versus individual freedom in opposite directions. Ideally they would remain in some happy medium where freedom was at a maximum, where decreasing government would lose more freedoms to anarchy than it gains from granting more liberties, and likewise increasing government would lose more freedom to oppression than is won from reducing anarchy.

In practice we've yet to find any system that maintains such a benevolent steady state. In recorded history the balance tends to follow something like an inclined sawtooth function - government gradually expands and freedom declines, until things get bad enough that the populace unites and demands their freedoms back, and usually some new ones as well, and the cycle continues, plotting a ragged increase in freedoms over time. Of course there's always those failed states where the balance has tipped strongly towards anarchy, but the global trend seems to suggest that as a species we're still firmly on the "excessively strong government" side of the game.

I'm not normally one to say things like this...

[Sasayaki]

But this reads purely as propaganda.

"Putin is Lawful Evil, guys. He wants to control the Internet! He wants to rule over it, and over YOU, and you should hate and fear and oppose whatever he does because that's what's good for America!"

It may be largely true, maybe, that Putin believes that Russia should have domain over the Internet as it exists within Russia's borders, and there's certainly some precedent for that. Even sense. Nation-states exist to further their own interests, and the interests of their citizens.

The USA installs leaders in third world nations all over the globe based on the single, sole criteria of how loyal they are to the USA.

Russia does the exact same thing.

Great Briton did the exact same thing in the past.

The People's Republic of China will do the exact same thing in the future.

It's not news at all that governments seek to control the affairs of their citizens domestically and as much as they can internationally. This is the world of global politics. It's not different simply because it deals with the Internet; that's not to say it's necessarily good, or moral, or even wise, but that's how the game is played.

Re:I'm not normally one to say things like this...

[phishybongwaters]

I agree, this is pure propaganda. We're supposed to demonize Putin for attempting to do what the US government, CIA, NSA, DHS, MPAA,RIAA are actively doing? Get fucking bent with this blatant anti-russia propaganda.

Re:I'm not normally one to say things like this...

[He Who Has No Name]

...or, we could be a free people and demonize them both, equally, for attempting to control us.

It's not propaganda if it's an objectively accurate depiction of events. Then it's simply uncomfortably truthful.

Re:I'm not normally one to say things like this...

[Sasayaki]

I am also Australian. I have no love for Putin, but I also have no love for blatant propaganda dressed up as news.

Re:I'm not normally one to say things like this...

[Sasayaki]

I agree. Just because the NSA does it doesn't make Russia doing it right, and just because the NSA does it doesn't make Russia doing it wrong.

Russia interfering with the Internet is wrong because it's wrong.

The NSA interfering with the Internet is wrong because it's wrong.

Re:Putin's View of the Internet

[Chris Mattern]

I'd trust the Russians 1000%+ more than the US with the net.

Then you're a fool. The US wants to eavesdrop on everything said on the net, and that's bad. The Russians want to control what's said on the net, and that's worse.

Comparing the incomparable

[mi]

IF you do something don't critisize the others because they do the same!

The same? There has not been a single misdeed done by the US in the last 100 years, that USSR/Russia or China has not exceeded with gusto in the last 50.

You, spoiled Westerners, simply don't realize, how deeply evil your opponents are. After moving to the US, I was flabbergasted, for example, over people sincerely comparing Senator McCarthy (responsible for several dozen people losing their jobs) with Beria (responsible for several million people losing their lives).

The US — under the internationally-celebrated moron named Obama — may have been sponsoring "moderate terrorists" in Syria in the last couple of years, but the USSR/Russia has been sponsoring — arming and protecting — the very Assad regime for decades.

And note too, how reluctant Russia is to bomb the real assholes in today's Syria — the ISIS. So reluctant, one may be forgiven for suspecting, Russia had a hand in ISIS springing into existence in the first place...

"The same" my tail.

Re:Smart man

[Thor Ablestar]

No. As a Russian I think it's just not a Putin's idea. It looks as an initiative of Parliament that went out of control. We name our Duma "a rabid printer". The govt opposes it but cannot do against the law.

For instance, our law requires to add "The terrorist organization prohibited in Russia" every time ISIS (and a lot of other organizations) is mentioned in media. Also, the photos from the famous Victory Parade (where Hitler's banners with Swastikas were thrown to the basement of Lenin's Mausoleum) are banned because they depict the Swastikas. And also it's a requirement for me to know all the list of prohibited information in order to avoid posting something from this list. We use this list as a recommendation list and wait impatiently for the next issue.

Re:In Soviet Russia, Internet never disconnects YO

[bentcd]

Full Disclosure: I live in Russia. And I am quite glad that the experiment failed.

Failed? No, it provided a roadmap.

What Russia needs to do to control the domestic network is start consolidating/nationalizing the ISP sector so that you end up with half a dozen big ISPs which can then be controlled by the government directly or indirectly.

Next the network hardware market will need to be heavily regulated so that only approved entities can legally get access to the equipment necessary to establish satellite or radio uplinks.

With this in place the rogue uplink problem can be eliminated and Putin can have his control. So I'd look out for those things starting to happen, if they do you have 5-10 years of internet freedom left before the lockdown sets in.