Russia Blocks Internet Sites of Putin Critics 309
An anonymous reader writes in with news about Russias censorship of internet sites critical of President Vladimir Putin. "Russia blocked access to the internet sites of prominent Kremlin foes Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov on Thursday under a new law critics say is designed to silence dissent in President Vladimir Putin's third term. The prosecutor general's office ordered Russian internet providers to block Navalny's blog, chess champion and Putin critic Kasparov's internet newspaper and two other sites, grani.ru and ej.ru, state regulator Roskomnadzor said. The move was the latest evidence of what government opponents see as a crackdown on independent media and particularly the internet, a platform for dissenting views in a nation where state channels dominate the airwaves. Ej.ru editor Alexander Ryklin called it 'monstrous' and a 'direct violation of all the principles of freedom of speech,' More at EFF, and in earlier stories at the The Huffington Post, and Deutsche Welle, which notes, 'This year's report by Reporters Without Borders on World Day against Cyber Censorship condemns Russia as one of the "Enemies of the Internet." "Russia has adopted dangerous legislation governing the flow of news and information and freedom of expression online," it concludes.'"
Re:Until the NSA stops spying on America... (Score:5, Informative)
Until we stop living in a mass surviellence state, this all rings hollow.
The US (and the West in general) differs from Russia not in our inclination towards surveillance -- pretty much all governments do that -- but in the fact that it's controversial here.
You do know that it's possible to criticize bad things done by the US government, and criticize bad things done by other governments, right? Because your statement seems to indicate that you're unaware of this option.
Unlike Russia, we don't need to ban critics. We can just stalk and harrass them, until then ruin their lifes.
Tell that to Alexander Litvinenko [wikipedia.org], Viktor Yuschenko [wikipedia.org], Anna Politkovskaya [wikipedia.org], Yuri Shchekochikhin [wikipedia.org], Yuri Shchekochikhin [wikipedia.org], and many others.
Re:Reassembling the Soviet Union (Score:2, Informative)
communist and socialist dictatorships
I don't know what you understand under socialist and dictatorship, but these 2 terms are mutually exclusive. USSR was fascist.