New Russian 'Sovereign Internet' Law Gives Government Sweeping Power Over Internet (npr.org) 77
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A Russian law has taken effect that, in theory, would allow the Russian government to cut off the country's Internet from the rest of the world. The "sovereign Internet law," as the government calls it, greatly enhances the Kremlin's control over the Web. It was passed earlier this year and allows Russia's government to cut off the Internet completely or from traffic outside Russia "in an emergency," as the BBC reported. But some of the applications could be more subtle, like the ability to block a single post.
It requires Internet service providers to install software that can "track, filter, and reroute internet traffic," as Human Rights Watch stated. Such technology allows the state telecommunications watchdog "to independently and extrajudicially block access to content that the government deems a threat." The equipment would conduct what's known as "deep packet inspection," an advanced way to filter network traffic. Such widespread control is alarming to human rights groups, which fear it could be used to silence dissent. The Russian government has justified the law by saying it is needed to prevent U.S. cyberattacks. And, as the BBC reported, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected the idea the law could be used to cut off Russia from the rest of the world: "No-one is suggesting cutting the Internet."
It requires Internet service providers to install software that can "track, filter, and reroute internet traffic," as Human Rights Watch stated. Such technology allows the state telecommunications watchdog "to independently and extrajudicially block access to content that the government deems a threat." The equipment would conduct what's known as "deep packet inspection," an advanced way to filter network traffic. Such widespread control is alarming to human rights groups, which fear it could be used to silence dissent. The Russian government has justified the law by saying it is needed to prevent U.S. cyberattacks. And, as the BBC reported, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected the idea the law could be used to cut off Russia from the rest of the world: "No-one is suggesting cutting the Internet."
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Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Want to be a telco? Got to do what the nations gov says...
Just like all the once trusted big US brands did for PRISM..
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What litany of existing laws regulating international commerce, movement of goods, etc, do you think wouldn't be interpreted as giving the the government the authority to do this right now? Let's not forget dusty old laws regulating older telecommunications, too.
What litany of laws allowing the government to do all kinds of shit in a national emergency do you think wouldn't be applied?
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Say for riots in one large US city?
The thinking is that so many US telcos exist and that no direct gov command will be accepted by every US "telco"/ISP/provider/sat system in a very short time.
That a lot of the ISP, telco brands will go full legal and race to the courts to defend their ability to keep billing users in their state/east/west cost near monopoly networks.
That the US gov would have to pay them all to shut down. No loss of profits US wid
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's 2019. Legality no longer matters. We are in a post-legal era. If you don't believe me, just turn on the news.
No mention of projection, eh? (Score:2)
It's 2019. Legality no longer matters. We are in a post-legal era. If you don't believe me, just turn on the news.
Witty and true, but rather brief for the insightful mod.
What I was looking for in the discussion was talk of "projection", as in "What is Putin so afraid of?" The obvious reason for such draconian legislation is not so much fear of what hackers might do to Russia as fear of getting tit for tat in return for what Russia has already done, especially to America. As is so often the case these years, I didn't find much of interest (but I most miss the humor of yore). [Why does "yore humor" sound so strange? My h
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How many characters are required for insight, in your opinion?
Could it happen here? (Score:2)
Not a matter of characters, but depth. Yes, it is possible to dig deep with a sharp enough wit, and you (or your possibly unrelated namesake?) often get there, but I would have (if I ever got a mod point) have favored funny over insightful for that one. Pointing in an interesting direction, but not really getting there.
Right now I'm reading After the Fact by Nathan Bomey, which is a book length treatment of the topic. Too soon to say if he achieves insight, though I hope so. He certainly has plenty of cha
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All systems of laws are a bit flimsy and wobbly. What makes the difference is the society under which the laws exist. Of society respects the rules of the law then it becomes much more difficult for a government to try to bypass the laws. If society merely fears the laws and obeys out of worry of heavy handed consequences, then the government finds it much easier to control the population. In this sense, Russia or China could absolutely cut off the internet and the population would for the most part reac
Sovereign Trump will just decide it. (Score:3)
Things don't need to be made legal before you can do them, you know? They have to be made illegal first, before you cannot do them anymore. You might have heard of it. It's called: freedom!
Especially if you are the government. Corporate or by the people or whatever.
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Re: So what? (Score:2)
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The US government could also cut off their internet from the rest of the world, yet you hear nobody whining about that.
And what law do you think they passed to make that legal?
You have a serious misunderstanding of the US legal system.
Everything is by default legal. A law is required to make something not be legal.
You would need to point to a law that makes it not legal, and as you are the one asserting it isn't legal, the onus is on you to point the law out that supports the very claim you are implying.
Or to answer you specifically: *points to the nothingness* that nothingness makes it legal.
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"Cut their Internet" (Score:3)
The US government could also cut off their internet from the rest of the world, yet you hear nobody whining about that.
Even if the US government wanted to do so, Russia will do it first. The time is coming... probably sooner rather than later... when countries and entire regions cut their peoples off from the global Internet. The Chinese will do it too. Probably lots of Arab and African nations as well.
The Internet as we know it... one big global unrestricted communications medium... is coming to an end, I think. The world will end up with regional Internets. Some of them more free than others. None of them TRULY free as th
Sovereign Internet (Score:2)
outsource (Score:3)
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Lots of collateral issues... (Score:2)
Also makes it much easier for the government agencies to mask their actions...
At the same time as all the alarm bells go off though, I’m afraid the world over is going to need to have similar capability to address advanced persistent threats, far deeper into the network than sovereign borders.
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The internet has become an essential element of modern infrastructure and yes the government should be able to cut off the national internet infrastructure from the rest of the internet upon threat of attack. It has now become a vital form of communications between the government and it's citizens, all levels of government and as such should be protected.
Due to it's nature it can be attacked remotely from off shore resources and than means it must be able to reliably protected itself from those attacks. So
Human rights groups say what now? (Score:2, Interesting)
The law will make sure the infrastructure used will keep working in Russia.
Russian just wants to ensure its own national infrastructure has the capacity to keep working not matter what happens to networking globally.
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Part of this regulation makes sense, if you believe that a country needs stability, yet another part of this regulation could be used or abused by authoritarians. The important point here though is, you're on an Internet message board, so nuanced opinions are downvoted and buried in favor of emotional yelp's in one direction or the other because reading those comments are more dopaminergic.
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The problem is that Russia at the moment is effectively a dictatorship. Logic says that they will abuse this to keep their power, rather than use it to help the people. They want to block "foreign" ideas, they've tried to block this before, and now this will give them more tools to do so. It may work because the opposition in Russia is small and the government has succeeded in sidelining it.
Re:Human rights groups say what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the EU did this, it would be the 2nd coming of Hitler.
If Australia did this, it would be evil censorship.
If the US did this it IS outrageous.
But with Russia it's totally understandable and super cool that they're doing this to protect themselves somehow.
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They have all the nation level censorship they need and the full backing of the EU to remove any content for any reason.
Re "it would be evil censorship." Want to be a telco? Try keeping that ability by saying no to any gov regulation... that was part of been approved as a telco...
Re 'But with Russia it's totally understandable"
Russia has faced generations of invasion attempts. They make sure every decade of tech
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"Russia has faced generations of invasion attempts", huh.
Last time Russia was invaded was in 1941, when the people Russia was about to invade did unto them, but did it first.
Before that? WWI started with Russia invading Austria, and the various Japanese wars that Russia lost never ended with Japan occupying Russia.
So, where are all these invasion attempts? What do they teach you in your Soviet school there?
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The Soviet Union had already invaded Poland, and was in the process of occupying several other eastern European and central Asian territories in 1941. So your claim is trivially false.
Furthermore, the Soviet Union was continuing to mobilize and move troops to the border with Germany. Suvorov claims this is proof of the Soviet Unions adoption of Zhukov's plans, which specific had the Soviets invading Nazi Germany. Other scholars disagree.
You claim the idea is "a conspiracy theory", but the fact is that th
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The police action after WW1 into Russia ie the the Archangel campaign?
What Germany, Poland, Sweden, France, Japan did to Russia over the years?
Russia now wants to make sure its telco tech works as well as it can without needing any other nations peering support, no ability to stop communications in Russia.
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"It's just a little earth and water."
"It's just to make sure the infrastructure keeps working"
"It's just a little censorship to keep the bad people silent."
Some things never change.
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Yeah, yeah, that's the official story.
The ability to construct the Great Firewall of Russia is just a convenient side effect, that has nothing to do with it. Of course.
Are you really that naive, or are you a shill?
Deep packet inspection? Really? (Score:2)
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I thought DPI was non-existent in HTTPS world. Without DPI "blocking a single post" is impossible. And if browser is compromised with rogue truststore certificates it is a much worse problem because nothing is secure then. This is clearly a propaganda piece.
If I may point out, the summary reads (in part):
"It was passed earlier this year and allows Russia's government to cut off the Internet completely or from traffic outside Russia "in an emergency," as the BBC reported. But some of the applications could be more subtle, like the ability to block a single post".
Please note the phrase "as the BBC reported".
That means that what follows or closely precedes may bear little or no relationship to reality. The more so if it involves science or mathematics. Apparently
TLS CAs were always broken by design. (Score:2)
10 You get a website,
20 via a browser,
30 that checks a certificate,
40 against a built-in certificate.
50 You get the browser,
60 (Unless you got it with the computer you physically got from somebody else,) GOTO 20.
Just count the third parties involved in this, that you are required to trust blindly.
Especially the browser maker, who picks the root certificates, that you trust 100% blindly.
And the website you got the browser from too.
Plus the CAs that issue certificates, of course.
While having personally met an
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Re: TLS CAs were always broken by design. (Score:2)
The "breakage" he's alluding to is the ability of a government with coercive powers to compromise an intermediate step of the process.
It's not in any (sane) government's interest to randomly fuck with the banking system, and most functional governments are run by people who are sane (even IF they're ALSO evil). Thus, they might officially use their coercive power to interfere with social media, but do it in a way that leaves the security of online banking unaffected.
The catch is... the same potential exploi
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Of course it is possible. But that's a possibility while the article says as if it were real right now which is blatant lie.
N00bs. (Score:4)
Real pros don't need to *enforce* what people can see and think.
They manipulate people so they *want* to think and see what they want!
Just tell them there is a scapegoat responsible for all their problems (Jews, black people, Americans, Non-believers Muslims, Men, Russians, Chinese, meat eaters, ...), your evil deeds are a necessary solution, and nicely grow your stereotypes, until it is a binary "You're with us, or your're Literally Hitler(TM), destroying this country."
Works in any system of government.
The Russian state is just plain incompetent at being sneaky manipulative cunts. They always go the clumsy brute-force way.
That is why we are much better!(TM)
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It helps if the idea you're selling has some remote relationship to either what people intrinsically want or observable reality.
Russia's problem has always been ideas that nobody really wants or ideas so in conflict with reality that no matter how often you repeat them the cognitive dissonance makes them unsalable.
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Freedom (Score:5, Informative)
In terms of various freedoms, Russia has been drifting towards the North Korea model for the past couple of years and I don't think this law it's the culmination yet. The Putin's mafia government controls all the TV channels in Russia, almost all printed media, and most radio stations but the control over the Internet eluded them which is why they enacted this law to contain the voice of the opposition and to retain impunity despite the fact that the country has been losing its economic power for the past twenty years straight and the quality of life has steadily been decreasing as well. Corruption runs unabated due to the fact that Putin totally controls all the government branches, including the police forces and the army and he even created yet another branch for policing the state which is called the National Guard Forces Command which so far has been used to physically contain all the rallies.
A large number of IT professionals in Russia has been using VPN to browse the web for quite some time already but Putin can cut everyone off when he pleases. The satellite Internet could be an option but it's prohibitively expensive for most Russians.
Re:Freedom (Score:4, Informative)
And you can back it up with what exactly? With your words?
State corruption:
1. https://www.theguardian.com/ne... [theguardian.com]
2. https://www.transparency.org/c... [transparency.org]
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
4. https://www.newsweek.com/russi... [newsweek.com]
Quality of living:
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/k... [forbes.com]
2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/wor... [bbc.co.uk]
3. https://www.numbeo.com/quality... [numbeo.com]
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Economy:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
3. https://www.themoscowtimes.com... [themoscowtimes.com]
And hundreds of more facts.
Now just fuck off. I didn't expect to meet a Kremlin bot here on /.
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Indeed, increased political competition and more diverse and free media are the tools typically used by a civil society to curb the corruption. Now, the real question is, why do Russian people by and large do not want all those goodies and prefer to stick with Putin's Government.
Western media seem to believe that that's because Russia is a totalitarian state which controls all the media so the people are essentially told what to believe. However, that's totally missing the point.
The real answer is the t
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WTF? (Score:1)
Could it be... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's never been a facet of conservatism. In fact, âoeConservatism consists of exactly one proposition â¦There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.â -- Frank Wilhoit.
None of which is about freedom except for those who deny it for others.
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I'm not sure the out of context quoting of a blog comment by a random mid-20th century political science professor of no particular distinction is the same as defining several centuries of political movements.
It does make you feel good about yourself, though, and I'm sure that's important. Go You!
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"Apparently you are redefining words. Conservatism (right)"
Have you seen the news about Russia lately? This isn't conservatism they are in to, it's all out fascism of the Nazi flavor.
Cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg are extremely dangerous for anybody with the slightest brown in their skin to walk around because the chances of being jumped and beaten to death by a gang of baseball bat welding Neo-Nazi thugs is very high. It's gotten to the point where foreign students there are virtuall
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Because Russia is further devolving into an ultra far-right wing shithole, possibly soon to go all out Nazi? (Russia has the highest number of neo-Nazis in the world). And this is to keep all of the bad ideas away from those who will oppose the rising Russian Reich?
This must be newspeak, because somehow you've concluded that 'ultra far-right wing' means the same as 'left wing'.
Well, let's examine what the Nazi's did, when they had the power to do whatever they wanted (before WW2 turned bad for them).
They created organizations such as National Socialist People's Welfare (German: Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, NSV) and the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) to protect worker rights, to raise the wages of workers, to improve work conditions for workers,
Fascists and Tyrants hate the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
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