- After signing controversial anti-terrorist legislation earlier today, President Putin ordered the Federal Security Service (the FSB, the post-Soviet successor to the KGB) to produce encryption keys to decrypt all data on the Internet. According to the executive order, the FSB has two weeks to do it. Responsibility for carrying out Putin's instructions falls on Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB.
The new “anti-terrorist” laws require all “organizers of information distribution” that add “additional coding” to transmitted electronic messages to provide the FSB with any information necessary to decrypt those messages. It's still unclear what information exactly online resources are expected to turn over, given that all data on the Internet is encoded, one way or another, and in many instances encryption keys for encrypted information simply don't exist.
Source @ meduza.io
ADDENDUM
And that's just one of the things happening in Russia that nobody's talking about. Unlike the US, Russia has a very different culture as far as freedom of speech is concerned: Russians are unwilling to speak up and talk freely about anything anywhere beyond the familiar company because it may cause as much as unlawful arrest and a sentence with fabricated data. It makes me wonder, though, why does the same website's English version contain so much info while the Russian version barely has anything on some things and vice versa for others.
Turkish students are getting forcibly expelled from Russian universities (article in Russian; no English version) after the debacle with the shot-down Russian Su-24:
- On the 25th of May [2016 — meduza.io] people from FMS [Federal Migration Service — TFG] or FSB [Federal Security Service, though most known by its Russian abbreviation — TFG] — I didn't understand — came to my dorm room. They gave me a paper which I was, as they said, supposed to sign. My Russian wasn't good, so I had no choice but to sign without figuring it out. They then told me that, according to this paper I must leave Russia in three days without stating any reason.
Putin and the Gosduma play cat-and-mouse with the new gun law (article in Russian):
- «Rossiyskaya Gazeta» [literally "Russian Newspaper" — TFG] published two variants of the same gun law. In the document on the website of the print it's stated, that possessing of a civilian firearm is limited to five years [per registration and each renewal — TFG]. The paperprint's variant of the law makes it ten years, instead. <...> The newspaper has declined commenting on the reason for printing the ten-year version.
"Rossiyskaya Gazeta" is the official government newspaper. Laws are to come online after they've been published in the "Gazeta". Many of the Gosduma's senators state that they've been voting for the ten-year law. The one signed by Putin is one with the five-year limit.
RuNet - the Russian portion of the Internet - is to get a "backup" (article in Russian):
- Such a system, say the project members, "will help with optimizing the routing" or fight DDoS attacks more effectively.
The RBC article on the matter also says:
- The Foundation [of Network Technologies Development, who work on creating the local backup/autonomous system —TFG] also plans to develop the system of traffic movement visualization to reveal the problems of routing, as well as to create a range of web-tools that would allow the Russian specialists to the get real-time information on the status of the Internet and their [the system and the Internet? — TFG] interaction.
In other words, it will allow the "Russian specialists" to spy on its citizens and, potentially, control the traffic much more effectively, let alone allow the Byte Curtain to separate RuNet from the rest of the world's.
Holy shit, Russia... Is it time yet to start a "Get ThatFanficGuy out of Russia" GoFundMe? Also, there's no way they'll be able to decrypt the entire internet in two weeks, it's hilarious that they're even trying to do that.
I just spoke to my sister about all of that. She's 32, and she's as Russian as it gets, because her reaction to the Turkish students being expelled was "Well, there are bad politicians everywhere"... That is, she's let down by the idea but apathetic enough not to consider it wrong. Most Russians do that. Guess I'm not Russian.
Honestly I think that's most people. Same thing happens in the U.S. all the time.That is, she's let down by the idea but apathetic enough not to consider it wrong. Most Russians do that
I think we may both be suffering from cultural myopia. If I know something, it's that mentally, Russia and the US are rather similar. I'd like people from other countries to chip in on that. elizabeth, raisin, is it like this is Canada? Cedar, is it like this in the UK? goobster, was it like that in Hungary?
We've had something called the "snoopers charter" in the works since 2002/2003, I'm not entirely sure how it has changed but it's still going strong in 2016 and last time I looked into it, they were making similar "decrypt all the things" demands -- fundamentally breaking how our modern society functions. The Home Secretary, Theresa May. is one of the biggest driving factors for this bill -- and she is very likely our next Prime Minister with 2/3rds of the vote (within their party, we can only hope it goes to general election before that). She has also tried to remove us from the European Court of Human Rights. Oh, and the woman who is running against her? She has in the past said that workers of small companies deserve no rights.
Hungary has gone full-Nazi since I left. The glorious party of the people (led by the charismatic young handsome college student) has found that it really likes power and really doesn't like conversation and debate, and has turned the state into an ultra-conservative, right-wing hate machine. So the Hungary I once knew is no more, sadly. I'm not even sure I would travel there again, if I could.
Maybe it's less cultural myopia per se than it is just the fact that people are people, and culture doesn't change as much as we might think.
Doesn't sound like it. Sounds more like there are apathetic cultures and proactive cultures, or something akin to that. Look at the quality of life in Scandinavia: they're in the coldest region of the planet, and yet, always at the top of the ratings for a lot of things. You don't see a lot of quality-of-life improvement in the dictatorships, do you? That's because culturally, there's little choice, little control for people of their lives. It's a vicious circle some cultures don't enter or escape, for one reason or another.
Oh TFG, I just received this email from my VPN provider. --- To Our Beloved Users, The Russian Government has passed a new law that mandates that every provider must log all Russian internet traffic for up to a year. We believe that due to the enforcement regime surrounding this new law, some of our Russian Servers (RU) were recently seized by Russian Authorities, without notice or any type of due process. We think it’s because we are the most outspoken and only verified no-log VPN provider. Luckily, since we do not log any traffic or session data, period, no data has been compromised. Our users are, and will always be, private and secure. Upon learning of the above, we immediately discontinued our Russian gateways and will no longer be doing business in the region. To make it clear, the privacy and security of our users is our number one priority. For preventative reasons, we are rotating all of our certificates. Furthermore, we’re updating our client applications with improved security measures to mitigate circumstances like this in the future, on top of what is already in place. In addition, our manual configurations now support the strongest new encryption algorithms including AES-256, SHA-256, and RSA-4096. All Private Internet Access users must update their desktop clients at https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/ and our Android App at Google Play. Manual openvpn configurations users must also download the new config files from the client download page. We have decided not to do business within the Russian territory. We’re going to be further evaluating other countries and their policies. In any event, we are aware that there may be times that notice and due process are forgone. However, we do not log and are default secure against seizure. If you have any questions, please contact us at helpdesk@privateinternetaccess.com. Thank you for your continued support and helping us fight the good fight. Sincerely, Private Internet Access Team
I'm jaded enough about it not to be surprised. It's outrageous that the government would want to cut users' access to anonymous web serfing. Russia has become the abusive wife: "I'll make sure you have no one else to love but me"...We believe that due to the enforcement regime surrounding this new law, some of our Russian Servers (RU) were recently seized by Russian Authorities, without notice or any type of due process.