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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;
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.
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.
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...
People don't know how to effect change. The system doesn't give them any legitimate avenues to do it, and the alternatives like armed revolution or leaving the country have pretty high costs.
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.
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.