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

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 14, 2015 @06:02AM from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.

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."

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In Soviet Russia, Internet never disconnects YOU! by Thor+Ablestar · 2015-10-14 07:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

how-putin-tried-to-control-the-internet (In Russian)
In short: Russian govt (Comms Ministry and Comms Supervision: Minkomsvyaz and Roskomnadzor) had performed a simulation of disconnect of Russia from the global Internet this spring. They have found that Russia is still connected, and they could not understand by what means it stays connected. They think that the problem is in lots of small providers (up to 11000 Internet providers licenses total) that have satellite links abroad.
Full Disclosure: I live in Russia. And I am quite glad that the experiment failed.