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?

[Anonymous Coward]

So mutch propaganda against Putin and Russia... you must be really buthurt by their legal intervention in Siria against USA sponsored moderate terrorists...

Stop it already!!!

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?

[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?

[Zak3056]

This illustrates a common misunderstanding of the constitution.
The constitution is not the law of the land. It is a framework that defines what all laws of the united states must abide.

While the spirit of your post has it right, the wording of it leaves a little to be desired The Constitution itself does in fact claim (along with federal laws and treaties) to be the supreme law of the land.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

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

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

But this reads purely as propaganda.

It does because you don't understand how Russia works. Are you aware that Russia requires almost all foreign citizens to have visas to travel there? Nothing so unusual in that. More developed countries do that all the time. Australia's rules for travel there are possibly even stricter than the ones the USA has. But do you know why Russia requires visas? It's because that's how it always was. Back in the days of the tsar, he had to personally approve foreigners getting legal permission to visit Russia. The USSR continued the practice of requiring visas for foreigners (well, I can't speak to what requirements were for Eastern Block citizens but people in the West needed them) to limit access because foreigners have "dangerous" ideas. Russia still requires visas today for almost everybody even though outside of some of the ex-USSR, few foreigners actually want to stay illegally in Russia today. And until a few years ago you would not believe what foreign "guests" had to do in terms of getting visas registered each time they stayed in a city more than 3 working days. They did get rid of that requirement at least. I've read accounts of it taking many hours of waiting at a local police station just to get them to register your visa. The penalty for failure to register was a possible large fine that had to be paid in cash on departure (I think it was $1000 US or so) and the possibility to have future visa applications automatically denied. This is all about control and "It's how we've always done it" more than anything else.

Have you ever talked to Russian people? I mean those who live there. You might be surprised that there's a really common belief that goes back to the days of the tsar that the guy in charge is benevolent and kind and caring and all those who work under him are responsible for the evil that gets done in his name and if only the top guy knew what they were doing, he'd stop it. This is part of why a surprising large percentage of Russians still believe that Stalin was a great guy even though Khrushchev gave a famous speech repudiating Stalin and his evil deeds and his "cult of personalty". Khrushchev's time in power was probably the high water mark of the USSR in terms of achievements and quality of life and he was forced from power and I suspect today viewed very negatively by the same people who believe that homicidal maniac Stalin was the greatest leader they ever had.

The reason Putin wants control over the internet within Russia is the same reason that China controls it. They fear that power of it to link protesters who might overthrow them. Their fears are different (ie. Russia has no problem with Facebook while China fears it) but both control it to keep the status quo in power. The big difference is that Russians unfortunately grow up believing that everything their government tells them is true, especially if the guy at the top says it. In China, few educated people believe anything their government tells them, but as long as the government mostly leaves them alone, they accept the reality of living under what in effect is an illegal dictatorship.

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.

Re:Putin's View of the Internet

[Sperbels]

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.

In Soviet Russia, Internet never disconnects YOU!

[Thor Ablestar]

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.