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Russia Blocks Encrypted Email Provider ProtonMail (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Russia has told internet providers to enforce a block against encrypted email provider ProtonMail, the company's chief has confirmed. The block was ordered by the state Federal Security Service, formerly the KGB, according to a Russian-language blog, which obtained and published the order after the agency accused the company and several other email providers of facilitating bomb threats. Several anonymous bomb threats were sent by email to police in late January, forcing several schools and government buildings to evacuate.
In all, 26 internet addresses were blocked by the order, including several servers used to scramble the final connection for users of Tor, an anonymity network popular for circumventing censorship. Internet providers were told to implement the block "immediately," using a technique known as BGP blackholing, a way that tells internet routers to simply throw away internet traffic rather than routing it to its destination. But the company says while the site still loads, users cannot send or receive email. The way the KGB blocked ProtonMail is "particularly sneaky," ProtonMail chief executive Andy Yen said. "ProtonMail is not blocked in the normal way, it's actually a bit more subtle. They are blocking access to ProtonMail mail servers. So Mail.ru -- and most other Russian mail servers -- for example, is no longer able to deliver email to ProtonMail, but a Russian user has no problem getting to their inbox."
"That's because the two ProtonMail servers listed by the order are its back-end mail delivery servers, rather than the front-end website that runs on a different system," adds TechCrunch.
In all, 26 internet addresses were blocked by the order, including several servers used to scramble the final connection for users of Tor, an anonymity network popular for circumventing censorship. Internet providers were told to implement the block "immediately," using a technique known as BGP blackholing, a way that tells internet routers to simply throw away internet traffic rather than routing it to its destination. But the company says while the site still loads, users cannot send or receive email. The way the KGB blocked ProtonMail is "particularly sneaky," ProtonMail chief executive Andy Yen said. "ProtonMail is not blocked in the normal way, it's actually a bit more subtle. They are blocking access to ProtonMail mail servers. So Mail.ru -- and most other Russian mail servers -- for example, is no longer able to deliver email to ProtonMail, but a Russian user has no problem getting to their inbox."
"That's because the two ProtonMail servers listed by the order are its back-end mail delivery servers, rather than the front-end website that runs on a different system," adds TechCrunch.
All the open protocols (web, email, news) are relics from the internet's academic roots. ...Secure open protocols ...Widely adopted
We're going to need new protocols hardened against increasingly illiberal western states.
Yeah, the internet is fucking toast. It was nice while it lasted.
Doesn't the traitor Snowden use protonmail?
Does this mean he has been cut off from the rest of the world by his overlord?
If true, that is just funny.
Russian parliament passed new laws to punish people for 'spreading fake news' and for insulting government officials, national symbols, history, etc.
Basically it is now illegal to do any investigative journalism based on this law because the moment you say anything about anything you can be immediately, based on a complaint from anybody actually, without any court order (no court order will be required even though in Russia courts are completely useless, bought and paid for, under complete 100% control of the government and of putin) be blocked, fined, thrown to prison.
No court order is required and the information can (and must be) immediately blocked (by all local Russian ISPs), no court order is required and a person can be fined (there is a progressive scale of fines, repeat offenders also get higher and higher fines), no court order is required but a person can be thrown into prison.
The only way to fight this in Russia is to completely disregard this law, however I believe many people will self censor instead.
You can't handle the truth.
Not everything is about you.
A lot of Russias "external" politics is just the internal politics leaking.
If Putin retires he will be murdered and his assets taken by someone else.
He has also bled the country dry so he needs to constantly deflect and project.
The war in Ukraine wasn't caused by some international conflict, it was just that Putin needed an external enemy to unite against.
His opposition being able to communicate freely is a problem for him. That is why he is working to make Russian internet more like the Chinese one.
He wants to limit outside communication so that Russians don't get too much news and ideas from the west and he wants to make sure that people who are in Russia can't communicate without him listening in.
If you want to send encrypted e-mails to your buddies then fine.
Heck, you can even scheme about murdering Putin if you want to, he doesn't care. You aren't a threat to him.
A crackdown on the open Internet in Russia continues unabated. Soon, RosKomNadzor will introduce state issued mandatory SSL certificates for opening websites and forbid all the instant messengers which sport unbreakable encryption. Yes, they failed banning Telegram but it was only because there's no law to deal with fast moving targets - Durov revamped the entire servers network and logging in process to allow the Russians to communicate past the prohibition introduced last year.
It's the fourth such news piece in the last several months. Also most western media neglected the protests in regard to the Internet in Russia which happened just two days ago. It's still astonishing how few people participated. Looks like Putin has truly become the Tsar of The Grand Duchy of Moscow and the people are content with each atrocity he does. A dictator, a tyrant, Godfather of the Russian mafia state.