Russia To Block LinkedIn After Court Ruling on User Data (go.com) 44
Social network for professionals LinkedIn faces being blocked in Russia after a court ruled it broke a law on data storage. From a report on AP:Moscow city court spokeswoman Ulyana Solopova tells The Associated Press that the court rejected an appeal Thursday by LinkedIn against a district court's decision that the company had broken a law that requires personal data on Russian citizens to be stored on servers within Russia. Solopova says LinkedIn can appeal Thursday's ruling. The case was brought by Roskomnadzor, the Russian state telecommunications and media regulator.
haha - Russian government is so ignorant (Score:2)
You can't block any Russian that wants to use Linkedin, short of severing all comm out of Russia. Proxies, vpn, etc. What morons.
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The people in Russia should decide whether they want to use LinkedIn. Their government shouldn't make that decision on their behalf.
I can't imagine how you can make the case that LinkedIn is a threat to society while ISIS is going around blowing up all kinds of stuff.
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You don't seem to understand how when the government punishes companies other people end up paying for it. The people in Russia should decide whether they want to use LinkedIn. Their government shouldn't make that decision on their behalf. I can't imagine how you can make the case that LinkedIn is a threat to society while ISIS is going around blowing up all kinds of stuff.
Russia can, and has, decided linkedin is a threat to society by not following Russia's laws regarding where their citizens' personal data is stored. The whole thing sounds very reasonable to me.
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The whole thing sounds like Russia has a stupid and control freak filled government to me.
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What's not okay with me is you then forcing everyone in your country to adopt your opinion as well.
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I'm italian. Italian government (and so do other European countries, but I know the details just for my country) are routinely blocking servers (mostly http(s) servers...So websites) for very disparate reasons in court rulings (child abuse, sexual content, defamation, infringing on copyright and registered trademarks etc.).
Those server are almost never in the country (When they happen to be in the country they just send the police to the physical location). The block is usually a simple DNS block, they forc
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They are nowhere near stupid.
They don't want to reliably deny Russian citizens access to some specific sites (why would a sane government ever want that?).
They want to be able to quickly suppress any protest rally on the internet when the hour comes (if it comes at all). To achieve that, they don't need to patch all the holes; it's enough to know where holes are. Should the hour come, all sites used for hosting protestant communication will be shut down "due to technical reasons" (if not completely legally
Will just balkanize the web (Score:2)
Requirements of domestic storage of information related to a particular country's citizens will just balkanize the web into a silo per country. Otherwise, when citizens of one country that requires domestic storage (such as Russia) interact with citizens of another country that requires domestic storage, on whose soil shall the record of their interaction be stored?
Re:Will just balkanize the web (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the regime knows exactly what they are doing. By passing a law that is virtually impossible for most internet entities to comply with, they are creating the legal framework to strictly control information dissemination in Russia. Even better, it's couched in terms that the masses approve of in principle, such as protecting privacy from foreigners who would exploit you.
Sure there are ways to route around the damage, but those are summarily grouped under anti-terror laws.
It's a brilliant scheme, one that is becoming increasingly common across the world. And it's very pernicious and subtle. Governments can now do things that were only dreamed of years ago by dictatorships and the tin-pot kingdoms of history.
Thank goodness trump will make America great again.Oh wait, what's that? He's been in talks with the soviets since before the election? Oops.
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How is this law impossible to comply with? Put some servers in Russia. That's it.
Perhaps a more concrete example might be easier to understand: If information about Russian users is stored on servers in Russia, and information about German users is stored on servers in Germany, then on whose soil shall information about interaction between Russian and German users be stored?
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Consider as someone outside Russia, your local server couldn't have a near copy of the data about a Russian which cause a delay and lacks redundancy. Any search would need to be orchestrated globally via servers in every country. And due to storage requirements none of it can be cached.
That said, this is only an issue for services like Facebook & LinkedIn whose sole purpose is to disseminate the information they hold about you. Its an entirely appropriate restriction for medical information, financial,
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"Name of Russian guy is..." and "Name of German guy is..." are user data though. If displaying a single page requires the server to ping servers in a dozen different countries to retrieve the name and photo of a dozen different users appearing on a particular user's timeline, that could become impractical.
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poland
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on whose soil shall information about interaction between Russian and German users be stored?
that would be the NSA's soil
And thus, the heart of the issue was reached.
No no no (Score:2)
>Perhaps a more concrete example might be easier to understand: If information about Russian users is stored on servers in Russia, and information about German users is stored on servers in Germany,
Here how it was designed to work:
1. KGB knocks on Google's Moscow's office and says: you are not keeping data on dissident A, B. and C in Russia because their spooks can't find them in the data they intercept
2. Google responds that A, B, and C registered their accounts outside of Russia
3. KGB claims that they
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How do you figure? It's definitely not practical for every web site out there that might require "user information" of some kind to put a server in Russia. Even a popular site like slashdot is not going to put a server in Russia. If I run a forum that requires registration of some kind, and therefore user data storage on my server, if I can't afford to place my server in Russia, then the government can, under this sort of law, block access to my site. Now it may not matter to me, since I don't care abou
"Just" put "some" servers in Russia (Score:2)
How is this law impossible to comply with? Put some servers in Russia. That's it.
It's not that easy in practice. For instance, one can run a fairly big site on MySQL, but if there's requirement to put part of the storage in a specific place, the choice is limited:
1. Rewrite the software to handle distributed database;
2. Run a totally separate entity in Russia (same logo, same software and nothing much else in common);
3. Move ALL data storage to Russia.
In theory, a common database with master-master replication is possible, but that's not actually compliant with the law because Russian c
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Uhh, yeah, that is exactly the point. For the country to have complete control of all web traffic within its borders.
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Sort of like this? [fiatusa.com]
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Not a big deal (Score:2)
There are hh.ru and moikrug.ru (which effectively mirrors linkedin's functionality) for those looking for a job in Russia. I bet there's a party at both offices! (Well, given the time difference, they should be already drunk).
However, the trend is disturbing. Roskomnazgul is taking on larger and larger targets. If they get an uproar, they fall back immediately (like with github and wikipedia). If there's no uproar, they move on. One bit at a time.