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VPN Provider Removes Russian Presence After Servers Seized (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: VPN provider Private Internet Access has pulled out of Russia in the wake of new internet surveillance legislation in the country. The company claims that some of its Russian servers were seized by the government as punishment for not complying with the rules, which ask providers to log and hold all Russian internet traffic and session data for up to a year. Upon learning of the federal action, the company immediately removed its Russian availability and announced that it would no longer be operating in the region. "We believe that due to the enforcement regime surrounding this new law, some of our Russian Servers (RU) were recently seized by Russian Authorities, without notice or any type of due process," wrote Private Internet Access in a blog post. The company advises users to update their desktop clients. They also noted that its manual configurations now support the "strongest new encryption algorithms including AES-256, SHA-256, and RSA-4096." Putin has given Federal Security Agents two weeks to produce "encryption keys" for the internet.
Are we honestly going to pretend that an American VPN provider is secure and does not do exactly what they're told by American authorities?
Obey every law without question.
When you are a COMPANY yes. A company doesn't have a right to civil disobedience. A company may challenge the law in courts it cannot and SHOULD NOT choose which laws to follow.
You provided the citation. Any body that argues over "Freedom Of Speech" is looking to restrict "Freedom Of Speech".
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Generally, you are right. For a very extended meaning of "laws". In Russia, it means bribing administrative clerks, doing favor to "politicians" and always being ready to surrender your business to someone with power. Doing business in Russia means being forced to break both Russian written laws and your domestic laws (if you are foreigner and your domestic laws apply, and for US or EU citizens a lot of them DO apply).
So when you cannot comply, you close.