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.

Comments

21st century fascism

[Hal_Porter]

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.

Re:21st century fascism

[hyades1]

It wasn't "the left" that said China would democratize, you jackass. If you claim to remember that, you're either lying or a fool.

It was corporations like Apple and Google and a bunch of others that couldn't wait to get their hot corporate hands on all that lovely Chinese money. The whole "we'll make them free" argument was just a sop to willfully-credulous Congressmen and Senators on both sides of the aisle who needed an excuse to turn a blind eye while their corporate masters helped build "The Great Firewall of China".

Those corporations ran their PR-as-news stories in every publication they could beg or bribe to publish it. It works like this: a corporation provides a nice, long article or video, complete with pretty pictures, accurate descriptions of technology and all the bells and whistles, and they do it for free. Oh...and it contains an interview with some techy-looking pseudo-geek who explains how China will have no choice but to let information run free in the Brave New Infoworld they're building. News media owners are delighted to get this crap, because it's free and it looks good. Publish enough of it and you get to lay off a real reporter who might dig down enough to figure out what's really going to happen when you turn all that lovely technology and software over to a brutal totalitarian government.

No sane person on either the left or the right believed China would do anything but enlist those corporations in their efforts to utterly control their subjects' access to information, and threaten them with expulsion if they even made a whimper about "free information".

Smarten up

Re:This is a good thing

[Kierthos]

You really haven't been paying attention to the Trump administration, have you?

The end of the internet

[DNS-and-BIND]

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.

Re:If VPN is blocked, what else do we have?

[hcs_$reboot]

VPN servers will be blocked intra-Russia. So Russian might still be able to use other VPNs from Europe and the US.