LinkedIn-Russia: US Says Concerned Over Decision to Block Professional Networking Site (ndtv.com)

The US government said on Friday it was deeply concerned over Russia's decision to block public access to networking site LinkedIn, saying it created a precedent that could be used to justify blocking other sites operating in Russia. From a report: LinkedIn, which has its headquarters in the United States, is the first major social network to be blocked under a new law that requires firms holding Russian citizens' data to store it on servers on Russian soil. Internet services analysts say other tech firms, including Facebook and Twitter, could also find access blocked unless they move data onto Russian-based servers. Maria Olson, spokeswoman at the US Embassy in Moscow, said Washington urged the Russian authorities to restore access immediately to LinkedIn, and said the restrictions harmed competition and the Russian people. "The United States is deeply concerned by Russia's decision to block access to the website LinkedIn," Olson said in a statement sent to Reuters. "This decision is the first of its kind and sets a troubling precedent that could be used to justify shutting down any website that contains Russian user data."

Comments

Honest doubt

[ruir]

What the hell has USA to do with the will of a sovereign country? Are you fucking joking with us?

Re:Honest doubt

[Archtech]

There is a powerful segment of opinion, mostly among the rich and influential in the USA and elsewhere, that nation states are on the way out, to be superseded by some vague but wonderful world society. Rather less wonderfully, two forces look set to take over the power and authority that nation states are supposed to relinquish: multinational corporations and the US government. (Those two forces, of course, are far from separate and in fact are heavily intertwined). These ideas are associated with the so-called "neocon" movement.

In this particular case the argument is that the Russian government has no right to insist that its citizens' data must be stored only in Russia. Information wants to be free! As for what right the US government has to dictate to the Russian government, well that is the issue that is being tried right now. If the Russians had stood for LinkedIn's previous practices, that would have been one tiny step away from national sovereignty and towards the rule of corporations. (As prefigured by TTP and TTIP). Now that the Russians have come out against the practices, Washington denounces them for being petty tyrants.

The only national government that is not scheduled for destruction under this scheme is, of course, the US government. Well, someone needs to be at the wheel while the world undergoes creative destruction! Thus the US government is the only one that stands relatively unchallenged by corporate power. Perhaps, gradually and almost imperceptibly, the US government might shade into a world government. However, the recent moves by the BRICS and others to reduce their reliance on and commitment to elements of the Washington-centric world structure, such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the ICC, suggests that many national governments are fully aware of the plan for their dissolution, and have no intention of going quietly into that good night.

Re:Honest doubt

[NatasRevol]

I wonder how long before the left passes out from hyperventilating?

Probably about the time all the white supremacists Trump is installing choke us out.

Re:Honest doubt

[unixisc]

Not just that, why is the US involved in what is essentially a transaction b/w a foreign country and a multinational corporation, like Microsoft? And how does it affect US national interests regardless of whether or not LinkedIn is banned?

Re:Honest doubt

[Narcocide]

I gotta admit I'm having trouble feeling sorry for LinkedIn here too. They've run afoul of US privacy laws too. We just don't seem to have any teeth in our privacy laws here.

Re:Honest doubt

[fmoliveira]

I'll buy that when I'm allowed to move to the US and/work for US companies. Until that happens, this globalization shit is nonsense coming from them.

Re:Honest doubt

[anegg]

Yes, it was kind of crazy for the right wingers to be certain that any given year of the Obama administration was the one in which he would "take our guns." After all, not nearly enough groundwork was in place to make that leap. However, when the engines of the government are being employed to root out ideological impurities, it may not be all that big a leap to fear the end game.

"Operation Chokepoint," an initiative to reduce unlawful fraud by "choking" illegal players out of U.S. financial institutions, was turned against legal businesses that the Obama administration didn't like, including gun stores and other firearms-related companies, as described here http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2015/01/30/fdic-admits-to-strangling-legal-gun-stores-banking-relationships/#326dcbb327fd and here http://www.infowars.com/holders-latest-scandal-doj-now-pressuring-banks-to-refuse-service-to-gun-stores/ with results like this http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/28/operation-choke-point-forces-bank-to-dump-gun-stor/.

Trump hasn't implemented any policy decisions yet. He doesn't even have the authority to do anything yet, other than start to build his team. So although people may be looking on in trepidation for fear of what he might do, he hasn't (yet) started using the government bureaucracy to further his personal ideology in excess of the law. So let's wait and see what he really does, and judge it whether it's based in law, or based solely in personal ideology.

Re:Honest doubt

[Hylandr]

He didn't get our guns because we remained vigilant.

Re:Honest doubt

[Hognoxious]

a transaction black and white a foreign country?

Re:Honest doubt

[Archangel Michael]

SO, by your form of logic, Hillary was a lap dog of the Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Qatar who were also funding ISIS, so she is a Muslim extremist.

Glad we got that bitch out of the way.

(No, I didn't vote for Trump)
(I Love playing guilt by association)

Re:Honest doubt

[NatasRevol]

Also, because no one wanted to take them.

You paid 10x for bullets & 5x for weapons because the NRA made you believe someone was coming for them.

You are a sucker.

Re:Honest doubt

[rtb61]

You'll be buying nothing, you are the one to be bought and sold. The US government is already owned by multinational corporations and those corporations are just using the US government that they already own, to extend their ownership to all the other nations across the globe and basically enslave everyone. Real full fledged delusional nut burgers, they call people crazy when that is pointed out because yes that stuff is crazy but they still try to do it. It's simply time to get those crazies out of executive boardrooms and politics and into insane asylums where they can attempt to cure them. They will always try and always fail but they will cause considerable harm in those attempts, real harm, millions do actually die as a result.

So does the US government care, nope, they were simply instructed by their corporate owners to issue that stupid statement and they did. A corporation, paid a lobbyists to issue an instruction to an owned politician and that owned politician obeyed that instruction with complete total and utter indifference to the outcome. Mind you this statement coming out within days of a complaint by the US government about the Russian government interfering in US sovereignty because they apparently non US lobbyist approved methods ie paying those US lobbyists to do it.

Re:Honest doubt

[Nethead]

Oh, you got the $20 check too?

Re:Honest doubt

[lsatenstein]

What the hell has USA to do with the will of a sovereign country? Are you fucking joking with us?

Linked in is an embarrassment to the Russian government, as it leaks out information about US salaries, and US standards of living and job opportunities that the Russia does not provide to the general population.

There is a good reason

[Archtech]

The rationale is that LinkedIn has not promised to keep personal information about Russian citizens on servers that are physically in Russia. The government believes that information on Russian citizens should be stored in Russia only. That seems a reasonable principle for a government to follow.

Re:There is a good reason

[MightyYar]

It's not reasonable if I have it right. Slashdot probably has "personal data" about Russian users, but is not intentionally stored in Russia. It's a law completely at odds with the global, distributed nature of the internet.

Re:There is a good reason

[ArtemaOne]

Unless you want some of that internet distributed to you.

Re:There is a good reason

[MightyYar]

It will do a little of that, but I suspect the consequences will lean heavily toward even more speech suppression of the Russian people.

Re:There is a good reason

[ArtemaOne]

Gotta keep that unemployment rate high by cutting off the job contacts!

Re:There is a good reason

[Archtech]

"19 Oct 2016 - Russian unemployment rate was recorded at 5.6 percent in May of 2016, down from 5.9 percent in the previous month. The figure came below market expectations of 5.8 percent and was the lowest October 2015. The number of unemployed people decreased by 217 thousand to 4.3 million". http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

Re:There is a good reason

[spire3661]

And? That is their problem to deal with.

Re:There is a good reason

[ArtemaOne]

And they'll be able to reverse that trend by eliminating one of the top professional job sites.

Re:There is a good reason

[mysidia]

No.... a reasonable principle for a government to follow would be to require warnings, and let people make the choice; it's their personal information after all, they should be able to make informed consent, and accept the risk (to derive the gain), if they want.

Also... a reasonable protest would be to have an Internet-wide blackout where millions of the US-based websites that are most popular in Russia will of their own free will block access to all Russian IP addresses in protest of the censorship, and maintain the protest until Russia agrees to unblock Linkedin.

Re:There is a good reason

[MightyYar]

I'm inclined to agree, but it's also reasonable to care about the freedoms of all people rather than just the small arbitrary group that you were born into.

Re:There is a good reason

[Cederic]

No, for personal data too.

The EU does however primarily focus on data protection rather than physical location. If you can guarantee the same protections in a non-EU country then you're generally ok, and there are accepted approaches for putting data in other countries (including the US, which is how LinkedIn et al get by).

There's also just consumer pressure though, which is one reason you're seeing Ireland becoming a data haven, and a lot of commercial pressure which is why Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and other cloud services vendors have (or are opening) multiple EU based data centres.

Not quite the same thing as mandating it must all be held in-country though.

Re:There is a good reason

[Cederic]

Nonsense. LinkedIn is used as a recruitment aid but it's a single website and not even the first one I'd go to for job hunting.

When it's not the first one anybody would go to (in Russia) then others will step in and provide the needed services.

Re:There is a good reason

[ArtemaOne]

We covered that earlier in the thread, where I said they want some of that internet business brought to Russia to cover the gap.

Obey the letter of the law.

[kaatochacha]

Run everything from wherever the hell you're currently doing it. Have a synched copy on a server in Russia that's encrypted up the wazoo. Never use it for live traffic.

Re:Obey the letter of the law.

[Archtech]

Yes, they'll never notice. Russians know absolutely nothing about computing.

Re:Obey the letter of the law.

[Negatho]

Yes, they'll never notice. Russians know absolutely nothing about computing.

This comment made my day, thank you sir :)

Re:Obey the letter of the law.

[dj245]

Run everything from wherever the hell you're currently doing it. Have a synched copy on a server in Russia that's encrypted up the wazoo. Never use it for live traffic.

Is that really necessary? With current CDN technologies/strategies, would it not be a simple affair to put all Russia-based user data on a Russian server and pull it from there? The copy (nonlive version) could still be in the US or wherever. It's not as if I'm going to care about an extra 3 seconds of page loading time for the just-about-never times that I look at Russian Linkedin user profiles.

The law is still stupid but it doesn't sound particularly difficult to comply either.

Sounds like the US Government is mad...

[TheCastro1689]

that it didn't think of it first.

Re:"A troubling precedent"

[Archtech]

The immediate parent is a fine example of the neocon philosophy in action. (IMHO).

Linked-in had their chance

[frovingslosh]

Russia simple said that if you store citizens social media information for that country then you have to do it in that country. Considering the abuses that data is subject to when it is stored in the United States, it is had to say that such a requirement isn't reasonable. Not that I trust Russia to not commit the same or similar abuses, but the Obama administration is completely hypotricital in saying that Russia is in the wrong here.

Re:Linked-in had their chance

[twistedcubic]

Worse, if Russia had signed a "free trade" agreement with the U.S., Russia's actions could be considered wrong.

Re:Linked-in had their chance

[roman_mir]

This line of argument is as wrongheaded as the line of argument used to justify government mandating minimum wage.

You see, minimum wage is the limit on minimum ability. It is not about a company being forced to pay some minimum to the lowest hires, it is about the overall plank for the lowest hires to be set at a certain ability that corresponds to the minimum wage. This means that the lowest runs of economic ladder are kicked from under the people who are at the bottom of it.

Minimum wage prevents people with no skills (and other useful traits) from finding jobs.

This law is similar in nature, it does not prevent Linked In from having a user base, it prevents the Russians living in Russia from having an account with Linked In.

Linked In, like many other online services has certain expenses and Russia just raised the level of this expenses to make Russian users unappealing.

Another argument I would make is that probably *none* of the Russians who actually use Linked In are concerned with their security on the site, the Russian government is not concerned with their security either. It is however concerned with its ability to police the users of the site and to be able to demand and get information about the users.

Now also realise that most businesses will not set up extra servers in Russia and will not modify their software and business model to that effect, so what Russians will end up with is a gigantic reduction in services and thus in quality of life because their prices will go up for various products and services given that they would have to accept some local analogues of the service that is no longer going to be provided. I would argue they would also accept lower level of security where it matters, because while having your money stolen is bad, having your life examined by the politicians and other bureaucrats in Russia might be worse.

So to reiterate now many Russians will no longer have access to their foreign bank accounts, foreign insurance companies, ways to buy tickets online for flights, train trips, events, etc.etc.etc. Do you actually think the Russians who are used to be able to enjoy such services voted for any of this???? Curious.

Re:Linkedin provides a service in Russia so it sho

[Archtech]

Russia has a $20 billion budget deficit its looking to plug. Facebook, LinkedIn,Google and Twitter can plug a nice big chunk of it.

Er, 'For FY 2016 the federal budget estimates that the [US] federal debt will increase by about $1 trillion. That's about $250 billion more than the official “deficit.”' http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us...

So the US government must be 50 times as hungry for extra revenues as the Russian government. Furthermore...

"On January 26, 2016, debt held by the public was $13.62 trillion or about 75% of the previous 12 months of GDP. Intragovernmental holdings stood at $5.34 trillion, giving a combined total gross national debt of $18.96 trillion or about 104% of the previous 12 months of GDP". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Meanwhile Russia's national debt is 9.7 trillion. Oh, what's that you say? That's in rubles? So what's it in dollars? Oh, I see: about $151 billion. Gee, that's awful - that's nearly one percent of the US national debt. Those Russians are in real hot water now! http://www.nationaldebtclocks....

Re:The real issue

[HBI]

It's no different than China's policy, really. Or North Korea's. The difference is that Russia has more economic power than the NKs but less than the Chinese.

This goodness is spreading around the globe, though, so expecting Russia to be the last place this happens would be foolish.

Re:The real issue

[Archtech]

I do however very much question the actions of Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.

Just to help you make yourself just a tad clearer: why do you "question the actions of Vladimir Putin and the Russian government"? What specific things have they done that make you so suspicious of them?

How is this different from...

[mongothesecond]

... UK laws requiring data and operations to be physically located there?

Re:How is this different from...

[Anonymous Coward]

... UK laws requiring data and operations to be physically located there?

When the NSA calls up MI6 and asks for data from UK servers they get what they want. Somehow I don't think they get the same response when they ask FSB for data from Russia servers.

And that's the difference.

Re:How is this different from...

[lxs]

I'm not sure that the UK is the best example to choose from.

Re:How is this different from...

[mongothesecond]

My point is, surveillance and politics are already a reality that many US companies are dealing with the in UK. I understand companies not wanting to put an office in every country that enacts this kind of law, but if this is a corporate problem, why is the US government reaching out to Russia?

Re:"A troubling precedent"

[unixisc]

Since when did neocons have any interest in Russia? That aside, how is it beneficial to the US regarding whether or not a datacenter is located in the US or in Russia?

The right idea.

[Narcocide]

We should block LinkedIn here in the US too.

Re:The right idea.

[Oswald McWeany]

And facebook, and whatsapp, and snapchat and instagram.

But most of all... and especially:

Slashdot

Re:The real issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Most ironic post ever.
The real issue here is censorship and control. The US, like many countries, wants the ability to censor and control the Internet, and like all such countries gets fucked off when another country refuses to allow it to spy on their citizens.

Remember that Russian media is State-controlled

Yes, totally unlike the corporate-controlled American media.
ANYONE who thinks for a second that the US media didn't collude to...
-stop Ron Paul from having a chance at becoming president
-stop Burnie Sanders from having a chance at becoming president
-stop Donald Trump from having a chance at becoming president ...had their fucking eyes closed. They collude to control the outcome of elections to try to make sure non-establishment politicians have no chance.
The US media is worthless. Absolutely worthless.
Is Russia's media any less worthless? Maybe not.

Re:The real issue

[nickmalthus]

I believe it has more to do with Five Eyes spying than with censorship. Intelligence agencies go to great lengths to map relationships between individuals using communication metadata. LinkedIn is a gold mine for this collected and categorized relationship data and the Five Eyes have complete access to it while Russia doesn't.

Re:The real issue

[anegg]

Or the U.S. policy on web-based gambling... see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_gambling and scroll down to the section on the United States.

Least of the worries

[nairnr]

Honestly, having LinkedIn blocked is the least of the worries that US should have about Russia.

They installed a sympathetic president. I would say they have good enough professional network.

Because USA

[Anonymous Coward]

... to block public access to networking site LinkedIn ...

Don't complain when Russia blocks sex-ed and homosexual web-sites, the USA's been there. Nor when foreign cooked foodstuffs are banned, the USA (and other countries) have been there.

Russia has also banned yoga for being a religion, street-side bible-bashing and George Soros in the name of national security, US bureaucrats, Microsoft software and foreign GMO foodstuffs (a mostly US export).

Despite the obvious anti-US sentiment, the US government complains only when the daily correspondence of Russian residents can't be copied to US servers. That nicely reveals US priorities.

Hidden agenda?

[manu0601]

Why is the US so concerned about LinkedIn being banned from Russia? Many US services are based from China, which is a much larger market than Russia, so why do they bother here?

Linkedin is not a professional networking site

[Casandro]

It's a filter to filter out the people you don't want to have as employees. For example it constantly bugs you to give them your e-mail accounts so it can get your contacts!