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Russia has banned VPNs capable of circumventing website blocking, and will require users of chat apps to have a phone number associated with their accounts:
Vladimir Putin has banned virtual private networks (VPNs) and Tor in a crackdown on apps that allow access to websites prohibited in Russia. The law, signed by Mr Putin, was passed by Russia's parliament last week and will now come into force on 1 November. A second law to ban anonymous use of online messaging services will take effect on 1 January next year.
It would make it easier for the state to snoop on citizens' browsing habits, one internet security expert suggested.
The laws signed by Mr Putin are meant only to block access to "unlawful content" and not target law-abiding web users, the head of the lower house of parliament said, according to the RIA news agency.
One feature of the second law is the provision to require internet operators to restrict users' access if they are found to be distributing illegal content.
Also at Engadget, ZDNet, RT, TechCrunch, and CNET.
Related: Apple Capitulates, Removes Unlicensed VPN Apps From China App Store
(Score: -1, Troll) by jmorris on Monday July 31 2017, @09:51PM (17 children)
We were told by the crypto weenies that an absolutist position was possible because of the magic powers of strong crypto. Governments were powerless in the face of it so go ahead and push for absolute privacy and dens of inequity like Silk Road. Raise a middle finger when they demand lawful access via a court order. Warrants are for meat space, our iPhones are sacred and must never be violated. There is nothing they can do, the crypto anarchists have all the cards now, yea technology!
Well it turns out there is quite a bit "they" can do. And of course now that it is dystopian societies like China and Russia pointing the way to taming the Internet, very bad things will become standardized. Because you fucks LET THEM LEAD by your refusal to even consider any more reasonable measures. Your all or nothing stance is now going to get you nothing.
You should have seen the handwriting on the wall years ago. How can you hope to have any freedom or privacy online when we accepted the vendors locking our hardware with they very crypto you thought would "liberate you"? You trusted Apple and Google to stand strong? Ha! Ha!
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Fnord666 on Monday July 31 2017, @09:58PM (5 children)
Real world cryptography via oblig. XKCD [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @10:21PM (4 children)
With Clipper, anti-RSA/PGP stuff, Palladium, etc.
What changed is all these countries got authoritarians in power because the easily swayed plebs got access to the internet and as a result it became easier to manipulate them with single source media sufficiently to influence the passing of unpleasant and potentially illegal legislation without the discontent of the 'consenting'.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:28AM (1 child)
Plebs are easily swayed mainly because of deficient minds. It's not like no internet and instead broadcast media + newspapers were solving it.
Besides there is a Russian tradition of samizdat and they might just revive it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 02 2017, @04:38AM
>Plebs are easily swayed mainly because of deficient minds.
You say this, and you give your life an example:
You, a white man, oppose men taking cute sweet pretty female children as brides.
Instead you wish for men to be ruled over by women.
You oppose your own interests. A young girl is prettier, nicer, and easier to control for you, but you reject this.
You are a white man. A golem of the white woman.
A beast of burden for her.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday August 01 2017, @06:05AM
I'd have thought it would be easier to control television and newsprint sources (which largely have to be produced in the country or physically imported) than N worldwide websites.
Sure, many people choose to get all their news from one web source (e.g. Facebook) these days, but that's no worse than getting all your information from a single tabloid newspaper.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:08PM
I guess some youngsters are forgetting about the Tee Vee technology - push only and centralized. Far easier to control than the internet.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday July 31 2017, @10:28PM (3 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Monday July 31 2017, @10:33PM (2 children)
If you are in prison for sending the packets encrypted so they can't see what's in them, does it really matter they can't decrypt them and arrest you for the contents? Either way you are in prison.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday July 31 2017, @11:46PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Tuesday August 01 2017, @08:21AM
How long before UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and the Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar) start doing the same thing ??
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @10:54PM (3 children)
That's not what happened and I suspect you know that. The government should not be allowed to make companies into indentured servants and put backdoors into their own products or defeat their own security. That case would have set terrible precedent, too. Proper security via strong encryption often makes it impossible to comply with such requests. Also, not all warrants or court orders are constitutional, so mindlessly complying is not reasonable.
The government can, however, try to defeat the security on their own, which they did.
Because these countries were known for respecting human rights before those dirty crypto nerds doomed everyone? Right.
And even these countries don't have the power to truly ban all VPNs and Tor; they can only play cat-and-mouse games.
No one should be trusting Apple or Google or even using their services. Your hasty generalizations will get you nowhere.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @11:38PM
It's jmoris... generalizations have gotten him through life just fine thus far!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday August 01 2017, @02:06AM (1 child)
This is a perfect example of the defective mindset I'm talking about. I can promise you everyone important watched that Apple vs US Gov vs Terrorist case and drew the correct conclusions. They all know Apple was lying its ass off for PR purposes. And Putin and Xi don't give a damn about Apple's PR problems, and besides they will agree to keep it on the downlow and THEY DON'T LEAK LIKE SIEVES.
Apple wants to play both sides. On the one hand they are the stalwart defender of their customer's privacy. On the other they have total cryptographically secure control of every device they put in the field. The government was willing to accept that a master key was overreach and only demanded they supply a firmware image that would only run on that device's unique identifier and unlock that one phone. To say a company must comply with a search warrant makes them an indentured servant is the sort of rhetoric that loses your side a seat at the big kids table. Apple can't retain sole possession of a device and then object when they, as the owner, gets served. And besides, have you seen the regulatory compliance department at any non-trivial corporation?
So what will happen now? No leader in the West wants to take up the issue, the tech industry still has its head up it butt thinking governments are a passing thing, no need to worry about legacy issues on the rush to the Brave New World. But of course they are whores so they have been rolling over and happy to comply with every tinpot dictator who wants them to censor because they can't afford to lose the sales and eyeballs. Well once dozens of countries are routinely getting Big Tech to censor or rat out users on command the EU will want in on the oppression. Remember, no 1st Amendment there and they love putting nice old pensioners in prison for Crime Think. So that will just leave the U.S. being chumps. Next Democrat administration will put an end to that, remember they LOVE holding up Europe as the example of the Sunny Uplands of History; where we should be going if we weren't still too full of racist gun clinging white people who love Jesus.
What is the compromise we could have worked out between tech and law enforcement? I don't have the answers, I just know by refusing to even allow the question to be debated we ceded the decision to some really bad people. We could have perhaps started by quietly trying to prevent end to end encrypted chat from getting into mass deployment. It should have been obvious that wouldn't end well. Because something CAN be done doesn't mean it SHOULD be. Perhaps the mad rush to encrypt absolutely everything, often in multiple layers, wasn't the winning move? Especially since it does not appear to have improved security all that much.
And if Apple, Google and Microsoft are going to own all our hardware they could admit it and accept the responsibility that goes with it. Maybe if everyone were clear on that point we would demanded a different reality, one where we had the option of owning our own stuff or it could go horribly wrong and Clipper 2.0 could have be birthed. But we didn't have the discussion and we apparently still do not want to. As Rush (the Canadian band) explained it, "If you choose not to decide You still have made a choice" We choose poorly.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:24PM
Also, the federal demand was ridiculous. It created not only a security flaw in the iPhone, but it also created a lot of unpaid work for Apple. It's not too much to ask law enforcement to do their job rather than break important communication tools.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday August 01 2017, @01:14AM
No, you were told by people smarter and more informed that an absolutist position was merely an egotistical framing of simple mathematical truths. It's not that it is possible, it is that it is the only way. These "magic powers" you refer to are better known as mathematical principles. There are "wizards" that understand them and work them to a degree that is admittedly out of the reach of small minds. Hence, your conflation of encryption algorithms with magic.
So when the scientists, mathematicians, and crypto "weenies" get together and tell you that backdoors are not possible, it's not because they don't like you and simply don't want to, it's because it's logically and mathematically precluded. No egotistical posturing, or silverbacks running around grunting and pummeling their chests declaring that crypto must and always be free.
Just people much smarter than you trying to explain how it works, and how it can't work. No emotions involved, just the immutable mathematical truths like 2 + 2 = 4.
Riiiiigggght. It was all the crypto weenies and those intractable, anti-American, immutable bastards that are mathematical laws. If only infinity wasn't so fucking unreasonable and could be locked down to a finite numbers, and why the fuck do we have to keep writing out Pi for so many damn numbers? Can't we shorten it?
I've often been mad to at math too and how unreasonable it is.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 01 2017, @11:55AM
What "reasonable measures"? As it stands, I don't see the point of your post in the first place. There isn't a need (by us) for governments to meddle in the internet, much less control what we think and say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 02 2017, @04:33AM
Fuck you jmorris.
You, like all white men, are opposed to men taking female children as brides.
Fucking faggot