Russian Leader Putin Signs Controversial 'Big Brother' Law (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Today Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the controversial "anti-terrorist" legislation adopted by the lower and upper houses of parliament in late June, despite the flurry of criticism from opposition-minded circles and the serious concerns expressed by Russian telecom and internet companies. As reported earlier by East-West Digital News, the new legislation -- which Edward Snowden has called "Russia's new Big-Brother law" -- is not only severe against those involved in "international terrorism," its financing or non-denunciation. Law-enforcement agencies will also be granted access to any user's messages without any judicial oversight. Several key provisions will directly affect the internet and telecom industry. In particular, telecom operators and internet resources will need to store the recordings of all phone calls and the content of all text messages for a period of six months. They will be required to cooperate with the Federal Security Service (FSB) to make their users' communications fully accessible to this organization.

Comments

Putin's political opponents are lucky

[mikeabbott420]

if they have an argument with their spouse about any past conversation they can settle the argument by just calling up the kremlin and asking for a transcript

Re:US ISPs already store text messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon does it for 90 days. The Russians do for 180 days. What's the difference?

90.

Re:Link to law text

[cbiltcliffe]

Phonetically writing the Russian sounds using /. compatible western characters, it comes out like this:

Vse vashi bazy prinadlezhat nam

And Google translate is apparently smart enough to still translate this properly, so I should have just done it this way in the first place. D'oh!