Putin passes law that will ban VPNs in Russia
Last edited Mon Jul 31, 2017, 06:42 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: Tech Crunch
Russia has banned VPNs and other technology that allows users to gain anonymous access to websites.
The new law (link via Google Translate), signed today by President Vladimir Putin, goes into effect on Nov. 1 and represents another major blow to an open Internet. This weekend, news broke that Apple has removed most major VPN apps from the App Store in China to comply with regulations passed earlier this year that require VPN apps to be explicitly licensed by the Chinese government.
According to state-run news agency RIA (link via Google Translate), Leonid Levin, chairman of the Dumas committee on information policy and technology, has said that the law is not targeted at introducing new bans for law-abiding citizens. Instead, he claims it is to prohibit access to illegal content. The scope of what is considered illegal content in Russia, however, has widened considerably during Putins third term as president, with the government exerting more control over what people access or post online. As Freedom House notes, anti-extremism laws are widely used as a pretext to block political content, often without judicial oversight.
Russias attempts to limit access to online information are concurrent with legislation that may put the privacy of users at risk. In 2015, the government passed legislation that requires all user data from Russian citizens to be stored in Russian-based servers, and last year it passed another law that requires telecoms and Internet service providers to retain traffic data for up to a year, a move that prompted VPN provider Private Internet Access to discontinue its Russian gateways.
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/30/putin-passes-law-that-will-ban-vpns-in-russia/
Pachamama
(16,849 posts)Worried about his Re-selection next year...
Igel
(35,173 posts)Levada's usually pretty good. If people didn't trust their polling I'd have heard about it, it would have been Really Big News (in one of the other rather small universes I sometimes frequent).
Medvedev, perhaps not so much. But he's the internal guy who gets all the blame for mountains of trash.
Botany
(70,219 posts)bucolic_frolic
(42,478 posts)effect on free speech
you know it's coming
lunasun
(21,646 posts)EL34x4
(2,003 posts)"It's for the children, you know!"
groundloop
(11,482 posts)Constitution smonstitution.... he'll make us work our asses off and expend millions of dollars fighting it in the courts while he moves on to his next power grab.
flibbitygiblets
(7,220 posts)lark
(22,941 posts)providing the user and company a lot of options such as taking a payment, recording a promise to pay and lots of other things. It's been 17 years since I worked for AT&T so I know I'm not remembering all the ways in which we utilized VPN's, but they were powerful productivity tools. I'm guessing they aren't limiting these applications because that would really hurt their tech industry, but Putin is such a mad-Hatter, they may be involved with cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Sounds like something Drumpf would do if he ever knew about these, but unless Faux talks about it, you can rest assured he doesn't even know these exist.
flibbitygiblets
(7,220 posts)for one thing
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,266 posts)Now, I use VPNs to access secure personal data. I think I'm ok from home, but if I'm on the road, using unsecured wifi at restaurants or motels, I connect to a VPN server before doing anything else.
hlthe2b
(101,534 posts)'Guess they are being restrained as well?
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Last edited Wed Aug 2, 2017, 09:32 PM - Edit history (1)
47of74
(18,470 posts)olddad56
(5,732 posts)Skittles
(152,918 posts)no wonder Donald Fucking Trump worships him
Marksman_91
(2,035 posts)Think Greenwald will say something? Or that Snowden will still remain in Russia? Seems like that country's way worse in terms of invasion of privacy and restriction of freedoms than the US.