Slashdot Mirror
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."
Freedom and government are mutually antagonistic concepts.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
In Soviet Russia, the internet is searching you!
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.
Wow Putin's troll brigade is out in full force. Dasvidanya Comrade.
Really? The US is far from benevolent, but it's far more benevolent than Russia in terms of censorship and dragging you off in the middle of the night to the gulag.
Wow that's a lot different then how the US is trying to control the internet. Yay for thinking out of the box!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I had the same problem with a manager back when the Internet was new and we were beginning to use it where I worked. He called me in one day and wanted to know exactly WHO ran it and how they could be reached if necessary. When I explained that there was no one person, organization or country that ran it an how it was a network or more or less independent networks he really couldn't get his head around that at all. I guess it was kind of mind blowing for him coming from a background in SNA ( IBM System Network Architecture). I guess I got off easy. I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to be the one that gave that news to Putin.
How is this a Putin thing? Many if not most other governments are trying different approaches to pretty much the same goal (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...).
So the Russian government doesn't have any clue about the internet and wants to control it and control what content may and may not be published.
*sniff* I never thought that I'd live to see the day when the Russkies embrace our culture!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
I'll just leave this here.
You have to click the sorting cell, or if you are too lazy, here's a spoiler:
USA #2
Russian Federation #11
Of course this only includes countries we can know these numbers, North Korea isn't #1 as their numbers are not known
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
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.
Every bit of control over the Internet, that the US surrenders, is the bit, that governments like China and Russia pick up.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Putin's plan was to take over the Internet and censor it. That is unequivocally a bad thing, and opposition to it shouldn't be dismissed as bickering or "not sharing." Dope.
It never ceases to amaze me that he's got a group of shills for Slashdot. I had no idea we were so important.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Effects in GCHQ (...) Now major part of business - 5% of Operations
Propaganda, Deception, Mass messaging, Pushing stories, Alias development, Psychology (quotes from the EFF slides, punctuation is mine)
While I do think controlling the content of the Internet is wrong, and I'm glad the Russians can't do it, it seems wrong to criticize those who wanted to do it in self-defense from people who is actually controlling it, specially without mentioning that and pretending they were paranoid.
1. Russians were (in various ways still are) bad in psy-ops. Internet, as a great medium for subverting Russians was (and still is), a threat to the regime. For better or worse for the Russians being subverted, is a separate question - but in that regard, the generals were correct. :)
2. Controlling the internet the Chinese way is certainly a way to mitigate the psy-warfare, but the cost is way too high. Not going to preach merits of free flow of information and discussion to the slashdot choir.
3. As Russians got better at waging this war, they realized there are ways to deal with this within the existing Internet framework.
Overall, the article is an anti-Russian and anti-Putin propaganda piece, which is not surprising nor remarkable (not that it matters much though, as it does raise a few valid concerns).
What is more important today is not what the article is about. The biggest potential problem with the Internet architecture is the possibility of the US cutting off Russia's access to it, should the relationship between the two countries degrade to that level. This is not a theoretical scenario; Apple and Google went as far as shutting off their services for a part of Russia, and that can be seen as a first step of cutting Russia off the network. This prompted the Russian Security Council (that really makes all high level decisions in the country) to consider providing an alternative system that can be switched to in case of things going down fast. I suspect this system, once live, may be seriously considered for switching over to, partly for the reasons outlined in the article, with the "rest of the internet" accessible through some sort of a government-controlled gateway. Which would be a loss for everyone, but what are you going to do.
"How are you gentlemen? All of your Internet are belong to us." --Cats
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.
sigs are hazardous to your health