Russian Bill Requires Encryption Backdoors In All Messenger Apps (dailydot.com)

Patrick O'Neill quotes a report from The Daily Dot: A new bill in the Russian Duma, the country's lower legislative house, proposes to make cryptographic backdoors mandatory in all messaging apps in the country so the Federal Security Service -- the successor to the KGB -- can obtain special access to all communications within the country. [Apps like WhatsApp, Viber, and Telegram, all of which offer varying levels of encrypted security for messages, are specifically targeted in the "anti-terrorism" bill, according to the Russian-language media. Fines for the offending companies could reach 1 million rubles or about $15,000.] Russian Senator Elena Mizulina argued that the new bill ought to become law because, she said, teens are brainwashed in closed groups on the internet to murder police officers, a practice protected by encryption. Mizulina then went further. "Maybe we should revisit the idea of pre-filtering [messages]," she said. "We cannot look silently on this."

Comments

Opposing country's bills

[MobyDisk]

Russian bill: All messaging apps must have a backdoor that only Russia can access.
US bill: All messaging apps must have a backdoor that only the US can access.
EU bill: All messaging apps must have a backdoor that only the EU can access.

Yeah, that'll work just great.

Re:Stop providing services

[Orgasmatron]

Security, Liberty, Multiculturalism. You might be able to get 2 of the three, or just one. Never all three, not even once in recorded history, not even in myth.

A multicultural society is necessarily a low trust society. Low trust societies are dangerous, even when monocultural. You can give up liberty in the pursuit of security, or give up security in the pursuit of liberty. History says that you won't get the one you want, even after giving up the one you are willing to sacrifice.

If you want security and liberty, at a minimum, you must stop importing people that want to destroy your culture. History suggests that you'd better

Oh, and this is done by vote, most people will rank security at the top of their list, and will not budge.