Law Repressing Social Media, Bloggers Now In Effect In Russia 167
An anonymous reader writes On Friday, Russia implemented a new law that significantly limits its citizens' online free speech. Under this new law, social media sites must "retain user data for at least six months...within the country's boundaries so it can be available for government inspection." Also, "bloggers with at least 3,000 daily readers must register with Roskomnadzor, the regulator that also oversees Russia's main media outlets." This, of course, means that popular bloggers will no longer be able to remain anonymous.
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The Republicans are too stupid to comprehend what that was. They have no memory which is why they worship the Russians now. They want the same style of oppressive government here in the US. That is why their kind is working so hard to destroy the US. We are already far past the point of no return. The only thing we can do is hide from their death squads while they try to kill all of our children. That is the way of their kind. They attack and murder us constantly. My roommate was recently mugged by
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Uh what? No, the left wants to increase the size of state. The neocons want to use that state to enforce laws that benefit their corporate benefactors. Of course, there is cross over, too, as democrats have many corporate backers and repubs certainly have ideological tenets they want pushed on the population.
Too bad neither of them remember what individual liberty is.
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Whoa, wait a sec. Do you both actually believe that the damage can be blamed on any ONE party?
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There is only one party. Bickering factions are what we see on the TV. It plays well to a wide audience.
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W.T.F.?!?
No he isn't - he's just another figurehead for a IMHO degenerated state. Degenerated in that it doesn't follow the ideals it was founded upon, degenerated in that there are only two political parties with anything to say, degenerated in that those parties are essentially the same ideologically and the most frightening: degenerated in that much politics and policies are directly linked to the military industrial complex which means the economy is strongly linked to the idea of using military force.
(
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You mean the Iron Curtain
And yes.
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Realistically, no. Russia is a capitalist country dependent on global capital and trade. It cannot afford to cut itself off like it thought it could when it was USSR and had a lot of satellite countries to buy its crappy goods.
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Russia's economy is dominated by its energy exports. It can and is largely subsisting on that income.
If you want to break Russia's economy then you need to give europe an alternative energy source.
Controversial as it may be, we should probably be advocating hydrologic fracturing in Eastern Europe. If Ukraine and Poland can ween themselves off Russian energy imports and possibly become net exporters to Germany then Russia's economic position will collapse indifferent to whether or not they censor bloggers.
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Controversial as it may be, we should probably be advocating hydrologic fracturing in Eastern Europe. If Ukraine and Poland can ween themselves off Russian energy imports and possibly become net exporters to Germany then Russia's economic position will collapse indifferent to whether or not they censor bloggers.
Or, Russia will retaliate in a way that will kick off WWII...
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The Russians won't go to nuclear war unless directly invaded by a nuclear power.
We should be able to slowly choke them to death just like we did to the soviets.
What you're effectively saying is that Putin is more dangerous then Stalin. I don't find that credible.
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Khrushchev was the dangerous one. It's hard to tell just how dangerous Stalin may have been. There were signs he was warming towards open relations with the west out of necessity and was looking towards consolidating Soviet rule rather than expanding. Khrushchev on the other hand was the one that stepped the world most closely to nuclear war. I think there's a legitimate argument that Putin is more dangerous than Stalin was during his last years.
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Stalin was not warming to anything. The man did everything in his power to spit in our faces. The cold war only happened in the first place because of stalin. And that asshole was throwing how many poor people into labor camps?
Fuck you for even trying to rehabilitate that piece of shit.
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You won't find those pictures because you're looking at the wrong war. You need to be looking for pictures of Stalin featuring Putin in the background.
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I suppose if you stuck a shotgun in your mouth and blew your brains out the top of your skull that argument would be compelling.
As I still have my brain intact, the reasons for renewed hostilities with Russia are quiet obvious.
The US has legacy commitments to the security and freedom of eastern Europe. Russia is attempting to effectively rebuild the USSR by forcing old satellites into their regime again... either overtly or subtly.
What is more they are subverting NATO, undermining European security, and tha
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You live in the world of WTO illusion. Primary resources rich country can pretty much chug along on their own as long as they are patient with catching up. This attitude always leads to outside intervention either through disrupting and fomenting revolution or through direct invasion. The idea being to drive them to borrow illusory capital to buy in mass consumerism products and drive debt in order to strip mine the countries primary resources. Russia is quite simply to powerful to do this hence some const
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For your info, USSR did not cut it self. It was the western countries imposed the embargoes and what not. Actually, USSR was supplying the gas to Europe for the past 40 years. Is CIA report good enough for you? Maybe you should learn to read before spreading the lies, you prick.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000500594.pdf
"Western Europe views the USSR as a more reliable supplier than many alternative sources [...] Moscow is less likely than Algiers to use gas le
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Russia is not threatening to cut itself off the entire world, though, but only the West (in lieu of China, and other BRICS countries in general).
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This no true scottsman argument is getting tiresome. It seems that whenever someone points to the flaws in communist regimes, someone has to point out how it isn't really communism.
Well here is the problem with that. Whenever is implimented, it fails to follow pure theory and runs into some authoritarian nightmare because it has to be forced onto people who do not want to settle wigh the less that the theory allows or do extra with no extra reward to make it work.
Communism simply does not scale outside micro groups dedicated to making it work.it has nothing to do with leaders wrapling themselves up in pretty cloths or hero worship. It has to do with forcing people to accept it. Like it or not, all attempts have snd will continue to devolve into some brutal fascist reality that you can clsim is not communism snd suggest it be tried again.
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as does capitalism. just look at how the US degrade.
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How about the fact that not even USSR itself called what it had "communism"?
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Really? I suppose someone should tell all the history books and teachers of that so they can rewrite Russian history starting with the Bolsheviks which later became the communist party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and was the only political party allowed in Russia until somewhere in the 1990s.
Russia is a pure example of my comment. From Lenin to Gorbachev, Russia followed an attempt at Marxism but adjusting to keep the people in line. Even Stalin's great purge was in pursuit of this.
Like I s
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Really? I suppose someone should tell all the history books and teachers of that so they can rewrite Russian history starting with the Bolsheviks which later became the communist party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and was the only political party allowed in Russia until somewhere in the 1990s.
You missed the point. Yes, USSR had a communist party, so called because it was supposedly dedicated to building communism. But at no point did the party claim that it actually succeeded in doing so. The socioeconomic formation in the USSR was officially referred to as "socialism" by the regime, and it was deemed a temporary arrangement "until the complete transition to communism" - hence why it was called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, rather than Communist Republics. The latter was always something
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At least better than many western countries (Score:2, Insightful)
USA retains it forever, no matter what laws are in place.
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Re:At least better than many western countries (Score:4, Funny)
At least the Russians are being upfront (Score:1, Insightful)
Unlike the US/NSA.
Re:At least the Russians are being upfront (Score:5, Informative)
And.... this information collection is legal in Russia, while what the NSA is doing is illegal.
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...while what the NSA is doing is illegal.
Son of a bitch. All this time I though Lucas was a washed up, "has been" when I saw Ep. 1. It turns out he may have managed to channel the future presidents of the US [youtube.com]
For now, it may be illegal. But how many illegal things have been ignored or reversed-pardoned-executive ordered by the current president and his predecessor? When do we get a Bush-Obama Sith lightning death match?
Of course Lucas seems to have been pretty optimistic by the end of Ep. 3 thinking there were even two good guys left. I'm no
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Re:At least the Russians are being upfront (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike the US/NSA.
No, the NSA is monitoring social media and bloggers, in Russia they have progressed from just monitoring to repressing them. I'm in no way in favor of what the NSA is doing but there is a difference between watcing bloggers and telling bloggers they have to register if they get a hitcount over 3000 or suffer the consequences, whatever they may be.
Re:At least the Russians are being upfront (Score:4, Informative)
It's 3000 unique visitors.
And
Source: http://rt.com/politics/177248-... [rt.com]
I'm not saying that I agree with their line, but what was the last ruling on slander or defamation in the US? I think it was more than USD 855.
Also, after what happened with the US backed NGOs trying to influence public opinion around the former USSR resulting in color revolutions (and, arguably, what's happening in the Ukraine now,) I'd have probably done the same to protect my national interests.
Re:At least the Russians are being upfront (Score:5, Informative)
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I think you are forgetting Putting causing ebola and sending ebole infected people (surely KGB agents) to US. Only the KGB agent tramp did not get the memo yet but he surely will and US society will crumble under this siege. In other news Putin caused the harvest in Europe to fail. Previous reports that it was a harsh weather were incorrect as harsh weather was due to KGB doing nasty stuff with air currents etc.
In the US talk of Obama assassinating critical journalists [wikipedia.org] is rightly considered moronic.
In Russia talk of Putin assassinating critical journalists [wikipedia.org] is rightly considered quite plausible.
In the US talk of Bush orchestrating 9/11 is rightly considered moronic.
In Russia talk of Putin orchestrating the Moscow apartment bombings [wikipedia.org] is far fetched, though disturbingly plausible.
The idea of US government screwing with high profile critical bloggers is plausible, but a bit paranoid.
The idea of the Russian government t
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This is way more than just defamation. For example, among many laws passed in the last 6 years or so, one criminalizes "public incitement to perform actions that violate the territorial integrity of Russia". In a twist of irony, given the recent events, a person was convicted under that law back in 2010 for distributing leaflets in his community which asked people whether they would be interested in holding a referendum on the independence of Karelia from Russia, and on its incorporation into Finland. For t
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...if they get a hitcount over 3000...
Hey, what the hell, if you can get the government to provide your hitcounts for you, make the best of it. I would hope they could bump up their ad rates a bit.
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There has never been anonminity on the internet even without the NSA. There has only been hassles impeading the ability to find true identities leading to the appearance of it unless you hack a third party system and leave the blame with them.
This law and the NSA only remove some of the hassles for power hungry governments.
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Because all those bloggers critical of President Obama are being rounded up as we speak...
Russia has a reputation for jailing or even killing critics of Putin or his allies. The last president of the United States accused of that sort of activity against opponents ended up resigning before his inevitable impeachment and conviction. Even in the latest IRS scandal, which may or may not represent targeting of critics by someone in the executive branch, the end result has been quite the opposite to what one wou
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At least conservatives are upfront about censorship, too. PRAISE CONSERVATISM
Mr Obama; (Score:5, Insightful)
The 80's called and they want to know if you need a foreign policy.
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I suggest you get over that whole democrat good, republican bad mantra. That's the circus part of 'bread and circuses'. Reality is far more complicated.
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That was one of my favorite ST TOS episodes. :)
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Surely even someone such as yourself knows the difference between sexual intercourse and birth. They're roughly 9 months apart, in the case of humans. And while the celebration may be on a particular day, most of the Christians I've talked to are aware that that particular date doesn't correlate to the actual birthdate, as well as the history of prior celebrations (e.g. Saturnalia) taking place in December.
Incidentally, you seem to be trying to use the "x" in a derogatory fashion, while being unaware of the
the USSR is back (Score:3)
the USSR is back
Re:the USSR is back (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the USSR is back (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Soviet's constitution gave the people just one right, it gave more than the US constitution does. That is because the US constiitution does not give or grant rights. It bars government from taking away some of the rights peolle already posess.
This is a pretty important difference.
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I remember as a kid reading the Soviet Union’s constitution giving Soviet citizens more rights than the US. They had a very good constitution and Canada had none. I thought that in Canada, there was no protection similar to our first amendment but Canadians could say, type and publish their thoughts freely. The Soviet union required typewriters to be registered with a typing sample so unauthorized speech wouldn’t contaminate the citizens. Russia is going down the same hole as the Soviet Union and we are following close behind.
Russia wants to be the Soviet Union again. They were a world power, whereas post-Soviet Russia was weak.
Better than Americans giving up their rights out of a blown out of proportion fear of terrorism.
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It's actually worse than that. It's devolving to the state of affairs of USSR on politics in general, and economics will likely tank to similar levels and below due to sanctions, but at the same time the things that were actually helpful to the citizens (and there were some, esp. given the other limitations... e.g. right to a job) are not coming back.
Edward Snowden's Plan B? (Score:3)
Edward Snowden's professed mission in life is to enable secure, anonymous internet communications.
Edward Snowden's visa in Russia has expired.
Now this.
Snowden is on thin ice, I think. Where could he possibly go from Russia, except for a dark hole in GitMo?
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It's terribly naive to believe that Snowden ever cared about anonymous internet communications. His only goal was to damage the United States.
Note that internal spying that China, Russia and North Korea engage in are almost never brought to light by Snowden and if they are, it is always something very minor. The NSA would have lots of knowledge of these programs and probably even tapped into them, so why isn't Snowden doing all he can to bring those to light?
To be clear, the internal that the NSA engaged
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Of course we do.
It's President Obama's Torture Chamber.
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Wow, you really ARE new around here, aren't you? I'd be OK with you calling it Obama's Torture Chamber if I thought you were just as aware that it was also Bush's Torture Chamber.
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It was a joke, so as Sgt. Hulka said, Lighten up, Francis.
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Hell I kinda like this. I keep getting Obamabots to waste their mod points on one-liners like that. It means they have one less point to down-vote an actual criticism of his policies in serious discussions.
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It's a place to put enemy combatants to whom you don't want to allow the status of POWs (which they are not under international law) but at the same time you don't want to give them access to the US court system by charging them as common criminals (which realistically they also are not as they are waging war on the US). Not really a bad idea.
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Anytime a person is in the custody of the state, the state is responsible for their well being.
This is true if you are in a county detention center, federal prison, state prison, border detention center, or gitmo. There is no somehow about it. It is the same reasoning behind postponing the execution of convicted murderers in order to nurse them back to health before killing them when they become ill on death row.
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What is this trollfest lately with all the bashing on republicans about shit taken completely out of context. I know there is an election coming up in which they are expected to cream the democrats but It's getting pretty idiotic when it is obvious that the bash is completely contrived, contorted, and shoehorned into the topic under discussion in ways that make reality itself blush for being so stupid.
So lets ride your example and stretch reality a little more.. except this won't be a stretch.
Yes, when thos
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Only it's quite easy to charge snowden with a crime, while the ethics of what he did and what he exposed can be questioned, from a purely legal standpoint he did commit a crime.
Easy fix (Score:4, Interesting)
If all the Russian bloggers are just government controlled parrots, just switch to reading foreign blogs.
Also, you could have a setup where your Russian blogger has only a single reader, a foreigner who re-blogs everything they write (unless Russia doesn't take kindly to being clever like this).
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If all the Russian bloggers are just government controlled parrots, just switch to reading foreign blogs.
Also, you could have a setup where your Russian blogger has only a single reader, a foreigner who re-blogs everything they write (unless Russia doesn't take kindly to being clever like this).
As likely Russian bloggers who want to stay anonymous will VPN out of the country and post somewhere out of Russia's control.
Control of social media is a bigger problem. A lot of Russians already believe whatever Putin tells them and now they'll have even less visibility of what's actually happening than they already do.
freedom OF speech? well, of course. (Score:5, Interesting)
In new-Soviet Russia (Score:2)
blog is writing on wall for YOU!
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More details (Score:4, Informative)
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That "particular" law (I don't know others by now), indicates that if one person can influence a big quantity (> 3000) of the population writing something publicly in a blog, this person must be able to be monitored by the State. Also, that it is oriented to Russian speakers, and if the foreign Russian sites don't apply this law they will be blocked in Russian territory.
It seems, as somebody said in the discussion, that they are giving blog writers the same treatment as journalists. And
Ahhhh, so fuckin' what (Score:1)
Let all this crap be an incentive to develop better method of circumvention. The mightiest will always rule the universe.
Context (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that it makes this kind of policy, but Russia has had authoritarian governments for 500 years. What's the US's excuse?
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That should be:
Not that it makes this kind of policy okay, but Russia has had authoritarian governments for 500 years. What's the US's excuse?
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Russia has had authoritarian governments for 500 years. What's the US's excuse?
Well, we haven't existed for 500 years, but give us some time -- we'll match that record!
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Post anything remotely anti-US, nomatter how off topic or wrong and get +4 insightful by default. Bigotry at work.
Russia... (Score:2)
Russia has always been a very authoritarian state, even from well before Soviet times. But its a shame to see them going backwards like this. This ought to be the time for their freedoms to bloom, but alas.
Yay Putin (Score:2)
Russia; cultivate your masculinity and say bad things about America and you too can install yourself for life.
This is just propagandic spin for Dumb Westerners. (Score:1, Troll)
From RT:
http://rt.com/politics/177248-... [rt.com]
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I didn't know cold_fjord has kin in Russia. Small world, eh?
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I doubt GP is Russian. It's far more likely that he's far right or far left American. These guys have been fapping on foreign oppressive regimes for a long time now, though Russia is the first one where both are fapping on it at the same time (left, because it's anti-US; right, because it's strongly conservative).
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** I presume you are riffing here on the "slander" part of the RT snippet.
in the Soviet America (Score:2)
bloggers are journalists now (Score:3)
"bloggers with at least 3,000 daily readers must register with Roskomnadzor, the regulator that also oversees Russia's main media outlets."
Ironically, it also means that bloggers are now treated the same as journalists - isn't that what they've wanted for years? ;-)
NSA still wiretapping the whole world (Score:1)
"Must"... you keep using that word... (Score:2)
Anonymous bloggers "must" register if they get over 5,000 readers? Yeah, I'm sure all the bloggers hosted on foreign sites will get right on that... Russia has not yet set up anything like the Great Firewall of China, so this requirement is utterly impossible to enforce.
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Russia has not yet set up anything like the Great Firewall of China, so this requirement is utterly impossible to enforce.
Actually yes, it did just that. The law requires all Russian ISPs to block sites based on the centralized blacklist maintained by the government. It is already in heavy use, though the blacklist is not nearly as pervasive as the Chinese one.
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WTF are you talking about? The Democrats would have to cross over a lot of right wing territory, the great expanses of moderate, and a good bit of the socialist mountains before ending up anywhere near communism.
Just because they're not as right wing as you'd like in no way makes them communists of any stripe.
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As I understand it the law, your identity will be public information once you have 3000 hits in a day. In the USA, the NSA might know who all the bloggers, but keeps it private. I imagine that from now on, any blogger in Russia criticizing the government or deviating from the narrative presented by the state-owned media might face consequences.
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Not if you're careful about it.
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It has nothing to do with 1% or 99%.
Putan ran for office and was elected on the promise of protecting Russia from its enemies foreign or within. This was rigjt after those protests in Russia that was blamed on Hillary starting.
There has been a fear or mindset in Russia for a while now that outside influences are trying to undermine its economy and stability.