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Russia Orders Major VPN Providers To Block 'Banned' Sites (torrentfreak.com)
Russian authorities have ordered ten major VPN providers to begin blocking sites on the country's blacklist. "NordVPN, ExpressVPN, IPVanish and HideMyAss are among those affected," reports TorrentFreak. "TorGuard also received a notification and has pulled its services out of Russia with immediate effect." From the report: During the past few days, telecoms watch Roscomnadzor says it sent compliance notifications to 10 major VPN services with servers inside Russia -- NordVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, IPVanish, VPN Unlimited, VyprVPN, Kaspersky Secure Connection, HideMyAss!, Hola VPN, and OpenVPN. The government agency is demanding that the affected services begin interfacing with the FGIS database, blocking the sites listed within. Several other local companies -- search giant Yandex, Sputnik, Mail.ru, and Rambler -- are already connected to the database and filtering as required.
"In accordance with paragraph 5 of Article 15.8 of the Federal Law No. 149-FZ of 27.07.2006 'On Information, Information Technology and on Protection of Information' hereby we are informing you about the necessity to get connected to the Federal state informational system of the blocked information sources and networks [FGIS] within thirty working days from the receipt [of this notice]," the notice reads. A notice received by TorGuard reveals that the provider was indeed given just under a month to comply. The notice also details the consequences for not doing so, i.e being placed on the blacklist with the rest of the banned sites so it cannot operate in Russia. The demand from Roscomnadzor sent to TorGuard and the other companies also requires that they hand over information to the authorities, including details of their operators and places of business. The notice itself states that for foreign entities, Russian authorities require the full entity name, country of residence, tax number and/or trade register number, postal and email address details, plus other information.
"In accordance with paragraph 5 of Article 15.8 of the Federal Law No. 149-FZ of 27.07.2006 'On Information, Information Technology and on Protection of Information' hereby we are informing you about the necessity to get connected to the Federal state informational system of the blocked information sources and networks [FGIS] within thirty working days from the receipt [of this notice]," the notice reads. A notice received by TorGuard reveals that the provider was indeed given just under a month to comply. The notice also details the consequences for not doing so, i.e being placed on the blacklist with the rest of the banned sites so it cannot operate in Russia. The demand from Roscomnadzor sent to TorGuard and the other companies also requires that they hand over information to the authorities, including details of their operators and places of business. The notice itself states that for foreign entities, Russian authorities require the full entity name, country of residence, tax number and/or trade register number, postal and email address details, plus other information.
Their answer will be "lol no".
You need a score card to keep up with thier laws these days. I thought VPNs were outlawed in Russia and you had to use the state sponsored one
Meanwhile, NZ has already had a blacklist of sites blocked for a while.
Does a list of VPNs that support OTIP IPv6 exist?
Just great! They blocked my VPN provider. Now how am I going to, um, hmmm, ... ah, never mind.
On a serious note I hope that something happens that the people of Russia can start getting their freedoms back.
In most cases, I agree with you.
With regard to VPNs, however, I must disagree. VPNs are a valuable tool in subverting censorship and giving those who live in censored countries access to the information they need to make changes.
I spent 6 years behind the Great Firewall. I know what it's like to be in a country that controls the internet with a heavy hand. If all the VPNs pulled out it would just bolster the power of the oppressive governments.
We don't want "echo chambers". We want free and open discourse, the exchange of ideas, and mutual understanding between countries and cultures. The way to overthrow oppressive regimes is to give the citizens access to information, insight, and opinion and let them make their own decisions.
A crypto, P2P, onion routing network that's able to escape any gov lists and bans.
Still has to go through your ISP. They can block the protocols, ports, etc.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Governments will just do more and more "pirate domains" bans.
Now VPN services have to accept national gov ban lists?
NZ has its sites to ban.
The internet needs something better to get past nations bans.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The internet needs something better to get past nations bans.
Yes it does. Whaddawe gonna do?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Maybe you should ask if you can get your email-servers on that blacklist too? :)
ISP have blocked ports and protocol in order to stop piracy or other illegal communications between individuals since the 90s. It never worked. What makes you think they will be able to block someone from accessing a particular website? Look at a site like the Daily Stormer. Pretty much everyone is banning it. It doesn't change that anyone interested can still access it without any difficulty.
For now, blocking websites kind of work because very few people care to use solutions to bypass those blocks. However, the more governments will try to censor things, the more people will use those solutions.
Maybe you don't realize that The Guardian is a private institution from Britain. Their rights to free speech on their own platform overrides that of their user base. The same also applies in most Western nations including the US. Private institutions, while not acting very nice, can censor as much as they want.
You are free to create your own platforms, where your free speech overrides that of the users. If enough people like your opinions, the free market will run its course and your platform may become very popular, possibly rivalling platforms like The Guardian.
As a half Westerner you ought to know that it's different when governments start to censor however, or if they pressure private institution to censor.
Then the government starts to censor it will be difficult for you to create your own platforms where you can exercise your rights, since there's no competition to be had with the government. If you compete with them through speech they deemed illegal, they can brand you a criminal for speaking your opinions. They can shut you up by jailing and convicting you. Private institutions can't just do that.
This makes censorship pushed by the government highly abusable and a lot more concerning than voluntary censorship by private institutions.
We know you have to comply with a dictator in a dictatorship. That's the whole problem, and why things like VPN and TOR exist.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This underscores how it is a good thing that we have VPN providers to protect us from nations like this. Shut down in Russia, open in Malaysia, no problem!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Also, how long before people flock to the other unmentioned VPN services? Then by the time those get blocked there will be another set of new services yet.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The ISP can use whitelists to pass through authorized communications and block everything else. The public relations issues holding them back is but a speed bump. Bypassing the ISP entirely is our only hope for open secure communications. We have to make our own, a real P2P and multicast network, well distributed for robustness against all interference.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Eh, legislation works, when you have guns. We need to support the engineers to develop robust technology to accompany that legislation. Then maybe we can drop the guns.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They can, but then the circumvention systems switch to modes which disguise their traffic as something legitimate. Eventually the only way to stop the people circumventing filtering is to make that filtering so strict that over-blocking becomes commonplace, at which point even those who do not care to view subversive material will start to complain that their perfectly legal activities are frequently being blocked.
We tried that. We got Brexit and Trump. Why do you think deplatforming and censorship is so popular today?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
There's a Jew-hating Democrat
Criticism of Israel and Israel's lobbying practices is not antisemitism.
I agreed until the utopic free market, free to start your own services, bit. Sure you "can", until everyone colludes to ruin you.
This is the downside of free speech. Sure, you have "free speech." But "freedom of association" also means people can make judgments about you from your speech and decide you're the sort of person they want to have no interaction with.
Well, if you're going to use the utilities, you're going to have to go through an ISP.
Unless you think you're going to do this over wireless, in which case any robust network will be easily traceable, and you'll find yourself on the wrong side of the FCC really quickly.
Yeah, we'll need decoys and mobility. Extreme circumstances will call for extreme countermeasures.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The walls are still closing in!
Any day now.