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Russia Lawmakers Pass Spying Law That Requires Encryption Backdoors, Call Surveillance (dailydot.com)
A bill that was proposed recently in the Russian Duma to make cryptographic backdoors mandatory in all messaging apps, has passed. Patrick Howell O'Neill, reports for DailyDot:A massive surveillance bill is now on its way to becoming law in Russia. The "anti-terrorism" legislation includes a vast data-eavesdropping and -retention program so that telecom and internet companies have to record and store all customer communications for six months, potentially at a multitrillion-dollar cost. Additionally, all internet firms have to provide mandatory backdoor access into encrypted communications for the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency and successor to the KGB. The bill, with support from the ruling United Russia party, passed Friday in the Duma, Russia's lower legislative house, with 277 votes for, 148 against, and one abstaining. It now moves to Russia's Federal Council and the Kremlin, where it's expected to pass into law.
Seems like exactly the kind of thing a corrupt government that doesn't respect the privacy and rights of its citizens would do.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The Russian government already has a well-mapped plan to isolate the country's internet by 2020, roughly following the Chinese model. Of course, there will always be ways around restrictions, but the aim is not to completely wall off the country, it is to ensure that the vast majority of the population can be kept under tabs and that it doesn't see too many things that the state doesn't like.
I'm very happy that Russian legislation doesn't apply to the rest of the world. Nonetheless, claiming that this law is only a problem for Russia and needn't bother us here, tends to obscure the fact that there are at least a couple of hundred thousand people in Russia who are just like us, and it's sad if our nerd peers there suffer.