Skype Apparently Threatens Russian National Security 144
Mr.Bananas writes "Reuters reports that 'Russia's most powerful business lobby moved to clamp down on Skype and its peers this week, telling lawmakers that the Internet phone services are a threat to Russian businesses and to national security.' The lobby, closely associated with Putin's political party, cites concerns of 'a likely and uncontrolled fall in profits for the core telecom operators,' as well as a fear that law enforcement agencies have thus far been unable to listen in on Skype conversations due to its 256-bit encryption."
I have to wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
Will there be any double standards? Will the US politicians start citing all sorts of things about human rights violations and the like while still supporting warrantless wiretapping and other illegal surveillance on citizens and legal residents? The U.S. stopped wearing the white hat long ago... sad.
Skype is open to taps (Score:4, Interesting)
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Skype_and_SSL_Interception_letters_-_Bavaria_-_Digitask [wikileaks.org]
http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/01/bavarian-government-caught-looking-for-skype-backdoor.ars [arstechnica.com]
The rest of Russia's problem is what? A revenue drop from its diaspora?
But they do have a point, the way the "Skype" codec is moving into many free and closed applications.
The Russians miss the good old days when they could track a sat phone and send a guided bomb down (Dzokhar Dudayev)?
But then the NSA did help with that one
well, at least they're honest (Score:5, Interesting)
Some blathering about security is to be expected, but it's interesting that, unlike when this sort of stuff happens in the US or Europe, they actually came out and said the real reason: "concerns of 'a likely and uncontrolled fall in profits for the core telecom operators' ". I.e., ban it because it would hurt our profits.
I have to wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Kremlin fears even unarmed middle-aged women. (Score:5, Interesting)
According to a shocking report [economist.com] just published by "The Economist", "it was the kind of scene she had described many times. On July 15th at 8.30am, as she left her flat in Grozny, Natalia Estemirova was forced into a white Lada. She shouted that she was being kidnapped, but those who heard were too scared to report it. By the time her colleagues had found out, she was dead, murdered by three bullets in her chest and a control shot in the head.
There was a mark from a man's hand on her shoulder, where she was grabbed, and a bruise on her face, where she had been hit. Her wrists bore the marks of bindings. Ramzan Kadyrov, the authoritarian Chechen president, considered her an enemy. And she died as one. She documented hundreds of similar cases in Chechnya, supplying witness statements and photographs, forcing prosecutors to investigate and the media to write about kidnappings, torture and killings, often conducted by people in official uniforms. Much of what the world knew about Chechnya came from her and her colleagues at Memorial, a heroic group which started by documenting Stalinist crimes but continued to trace their modern-day consequences, especially in the Caucasus."
Natalia Estemirova was born to a Chechen father and a Russian mother. She was a history teacher. One day, upon seeing the dying bodies of Chechen victims killed by Kremlin-backed militia, she swore to help the victims of gross human-rights violations in Chechnya.
She did indeed help the victims by documenting their tragic lives and condemning the Kremlin and the Kremlin-backed government in Chechnya. Allied with Anna Politkovskaya, Estemirova obtained the only conviction of a Russian thug for brutalizing and killing a Chechen.
When the Kremlin-backed government of Chechnya killed Estmirova, it killed the soul of Russia. The evil in the Kremlin rivals the worst evils of Chinese society.
Buddha may forgive Vladimir Putin, but I cannot. God damn him.
Re:I have to wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
skype is already compromised thru fring. fring controls skype users login/passwords on their servers in israel. israel shares skype data with the USA. problem solved.
except the russians dont get cut in on this sweet deal.
Skype is not free speech (Score:3, Interesting)
Since when relying on a third party, closed, encrypted platform owned by an American company for communications is free speech?
As Skype etc. are common "household" names on the internet, we forget the security implications of using such solutions for business. As long as Skype is a closed, proprietary platform, I can agree with any governments (including USA) concerns about Skype.
Of course, if they claim a problem, they should provide a solution. For example, a trust of SIP providers, sponsoring open source SIP solutions, help open source applications to have Russian support. When they sound like "lets go back to copper", the entire point is gone.
Don't forget the telecom industry since the beginning is documented, open, standards based. For example, even in the cold war, Russian telecoms used SSN-7 standards documented by AT&T etc.
Re:Security? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I've no idea if Skype has a license or not. They probably do, but I imagine that FSS guys aren't very happy about present state of affairs regardless...
Skype may have a termination agreement with some of the telephony/VoIP operators (which are obliged to provide hooks for wiretapping, indeed). But as the government let strong encryption out of the bag in the early 2000s - sorry, Putin, you can't roll back the history - they have absolutely no control over Skype p2p communications. Don't get distracted with this "national security" talk, the initiative is pure lobbying of our horse cart & buggy whip operators.
Re:Kremlin fears even unarmed middle-aged women. (Score:4, Interesting)
So the first guy was drunk and waved a gun around and then pay'd the corrupt cops ... the second an organized crime shoot out again with corrupt cop protection? The fact that money overrides racism in Russia is interesting, but in the end it's just plain old corruption ... it doesn't really say anything about the leanings of the government quite like a political assassination.
Re:(internet tech here) threatens (nation here)... (Score:2, Interesting)
SURPRISE, yet another national govenrment considers unhindered, truly private free speech to be a national security risk,[...]
unhindered, truly private free speech as in: provided to you by a corporation through some closed and obsfurcated code with strange secretive routing schemes.
Re:Kremlin fears even unarmed middle-aged women. (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who opposes a dictator harms him simply by breathing. A dictator stays in power through fear; if someone defies him and stays alive, she shows that it's possible to oppose him and stay alive, thus encouraging others to do the same. A dictator can't afford opposition to form. It's an either-or position: you either wield absolute uncontested power or you don't.
That's why dictatorships always descend into seemingly insane levels of savagery and evil. A dictator simply can't stay in power if he loses the grip of terror on his subjects. All who dare oppose him must die, not because they alone could do anyone, but because they are someone others might look up to and take an example from. And that death must happen in a manner that makes it clear that it was a murder, yet gives the people a chance to lie to themselves about who did it.
"The statecraft of the Seven Empires is a mazy, monstrous thing," said Brule. "There the true men know that among them glide the spies of the Serpent, and the men who are the Serpent's allies - such as Kaanuub, baron of Blaal - yet no man dares seek to unmask a suspect lest vengeance befall him. No man trusts his fellow and the true statesmen dare not speak to each other what is in the minds of all. Could they be sure, could a snake-man or plot be unmasked before them all, then would the power of the Serpent be more than half broken; for all would then ally and make common cause, sifting out the traitors." - Robert E. Howard, The Kingdom of Shadow. Isn't it fun when life imitates art?
Re:I have to wonder (Score:3, Interesting)