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Communications Government The Internet Technology

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."

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New Russian 'Sovereign Internet' Law Gives Government Sweeping Power Over Internet

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  • And the sovereign is Putin, of course.
  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Saturday November 02, 2019 @09:23AM (#59372382) Journal
    They should just outsource the censorship to Facebook and Twitter.
  • 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.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      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

  • Read the tech of the law...
    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.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      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.

      • 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.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02, 2019 @10:45AM (#59372570)
      I wonder why you are so lenient here.
      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.
      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Re 'If the EU did this" see the laws of the UK, Germany, France as nations in the EU...
        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
        • "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?

          • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            Did you forget the German invasions of Russia?
            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.
    • "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.

    • 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?

  • 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.
    • 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

    • 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

      • by zlenko ( 1543805 )
        If it's all broken by design why isn't there massive online banking sites hacking? If it were possible at all it would have been done already. And it is so important that all slightest vulnerabilities immediately get a lot of attention.
        • 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

          • by zlenko ( 1543805 )
            > All a country like the US or Russia needs to do is pass a court-defensible law
            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.
  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Saturday November 02, 2019 @10:09AM (#59372462)

    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)

    • 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.

    • by nnet ( 20306 )
      What is it You Think You're Better At(R)?
  • Freedom (Score:5, Informative)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Saturday November 02, 2019 @10:13AM (#59372470) Homepage

    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.

  • Russia has laws?
  • Could it be... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Malays Boweman ( 5369355 ) on Saturday November 02, 2019 @11:04AM (#59372622)
    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? Nah, couldn't be! "Think of the children" because little Peter might see a boob on the computer screen, and trrsts and 8 chan and stuff.
    • Not 'nazi'. Think 'USSR 2.0'. Putin is the right age and right background and the history of his actions support the idea. 21st Century Soviet Union, born anew.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      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,

  • by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Saturday November 02, 2019 @11:52AM (#59372700)
    The Internet is the greatest threat to indefensible hard-right regimes the world has ever known. They've been working tirelessly to control and divide it ever since they came to terms with all the ways it casts a light of truth over their conspiracies to enslave, shackle, gaslight, and oppress the free peoples of the world.
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by triffid_98 ( 899609 )
      The hypocrisy of hard-left people shouting "intolerance" at the tiniest imagined slight is more than a little insulting at this point. Once upon a time people had thicker skins but now it's all about outrage and "likes" and I am not onboard with any of that. I don't give a damn what religion/race/sexual orientation you have unless you're my tinder date. This is as absurd as people demanding reparations for something that happened to their great grandparents.

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