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

Ignore them. Problem solved.

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This is only relevant to companies that have assets or personnel in Russia. Everyone else can safely ignore them. The US and Europe are not going to extradite anyone to Russia over this or cooperate with a Russian investigation. Putin have been pushing too hard at returning to cold war nonsense for any government to take this seriously.