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The Russian parliament has approved a law creating a separate, domestic network, separate from the Internet. This Russian network of networks will be fully isolatable and will mean that the country's communications will become autonomous and able to continue functioning even when the plug is pulled on Russia's connections to the Internet at large. Concerns increase that this move will be used more for control of content and even just plain censorship, and make any attempts at circumventing restrictions much more difficult. The law is expected to take effect November 1st. Russia has already banned certain programs, such as Telegram.
One of the law's goals is to keep as much of the data exchanged between Russian internet users within the country's borders as possible. This aim may sound like a move to protect Russian users from external threats, but rights groups have warned that the new measures could ultimately be directed at Kremlin critics rather than international adversaries.
The idea of increasing the government's control over the internet is part of a more long-term national policy trend. In 2017, officials said they wanted 95% of internet traffic to be routed locally by 2020. Since 2016, a law has required social networks to store data about Russian users on servers within the country. The law was officially presented as an anti-terrorism measure — but many criticized it as an attempt to control online platforms that can be used to organize anti-government demonstrations.
Also at Silicon: Russian Parliament Passes Bill To Isolate Internet.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday April 17 2019, @03:21PM (19 children)
Not really, more surprised it isn't happening first here in the U.S. or Europe. We seem to be more obsessed with censorship and deplatforming right now. Only the twist here in the U.S. is the tech companies are doing it themselves.
But make no mistake, as oiur tech companies turn the screw and only succeed in pushing people into VPNs (i.e. routing around their censorship by crossing broders, same as Putin is railing against) and Alt-Tech the cries will come to regulate it all. As that fails in the face of easy VPN access, exactly like Putin and for exactly the same reasons, we will see calls for a Wall. We won't be permitted a real wall to stop hordes of invaders of course, but we will get a Great Firewall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @04:17PM (6 children)
I think I'll bookmark your comment for future review -- how many years do you think it will take to turn on a Great Firewall of the USA?
Personally, I think you are out to lunch, as bad as things might look now, the chance of something like this is minuscule, given our USA history of generally free and open press and communication.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @04:33PM
Make America's Firewall Great Again
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
It will never happen. Just more blatant false-equivalency from our resident Russia apologist.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:00AM
could you please cite why it will never happen in the USA?
Consider that we already have a US Senator [arstechnica.com] calling for the banning of "dangerous" books from the Internet and attempts by the US Government and actions by various US Corporations to silence "Fake News" and conspiracy theorists.
So, please explain by what magic is the USA immune to such things?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)
We have only had the illusion of a free and open society, until the Internet accidentally delivered it. Before we had almost all information and political discourse filtered through a handful of media empires with interlocking control. And it didn't take long for the cries of "too much freedom!" to begin, almost from the moment the Internet started having an impact; call it from the point Matt Drudge took the story Time was sitting on and blew it open. Now we have Jack and Zuck openly calling for their industry to come under government control. When different people face the same problem, they often find the same solution. The SJW Tech Oligarchs and the rest of the Democrats face exactly the same problem as Putin and the rulers in China, it is reasonable to assume they are all going to end up at the same solution. Their problem is that without massive disinformation, lies and brutal suppression of alternate points of view, no sane People would freely choose to be ruled by the likes of any of them. So they all conclude: Shut. It. Down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:49PM
Dorsey, Spez, and Zuck are anything BUT social justice advocates. You know you have a seriously ideological problem when your primary insult is "social justice warrior." Oh noes get those eeeevulll justice people awaaaaay from meeeeeeee!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:59PM
Only in comparison to other countries, and especially countries like Russia. But, we have FCC censorship, draconian copyright laws, NSLs, free speech zones, crackdowns on whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, obscenity laws, etc. People often make the mistake of thinking that because X is better than Y, that X is overall good, when often that is far from the case.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ilsa on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:06PM (10 children)
While I am completely unsurprised that jmorris would pen such a pile of emotionally charged horseshit, I am dissappointed that others have modded him insightful.
While social media companies have started controversial steps which are definitely a topic worthy of discussion, it is completely separate and different from an entire country walling in their own private internet. Yes, not being able to stream-of-consciousness about those sneaky taking our jobs is totally equivalent to having BGP have a litter of kittens because suddenly countless routes are either no longer available or are misrouted in the inevitable mess that this decision will cause.
Yes, I'm going to start using a VPN as retribution against those evil social media companies! Because... because... well... because! It helps! I don't know how it helps but it does! (spoiler alert: it doesn't)
It's like you just took a bunch of Trump sound bites, added a few tech terms (WTF is alt-tech?) and threw them in a blender.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by jmorris on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:21PM (1 child)
It is already happening, you just refuse to see it. Europeans are already reduced to using VPNs and pseudonyms on gab to discuss European politics, because they will be jailed if identified and no European hosted service can allow them to even speak anonymously. Same thing is happening here, Americans will be using obscure foreign hosted (and soon Dark Net) channels to communicate anonymously. But of course it can't stop there, as the crypto-weenies always think it will.
Government is force, when it makes a law it actually intends to enforce, it doesn't allow such flagrant disobedience for long. To risk only making the debate less civil (so don't do that, take the analogy as what it is intended as, K?) imagine Dims regain total control in 2020, filibuster proof, and go for gun control. They ban "assault weapons" but nobody turns them in. They put on black hoods and go to the range and keep right on shooting them, posting video to YouTube, etc. Think the government puts up with that long? No. Well as they pass hate speech laws they equally won't put up with dissidents continuing to dissent anonymously. They will pass some "common sense" laws to crack down on these demon VPN things and this "Dark Net" nest of racism, bigotry and hate. Because of course they would. And when none of the half measures work they will build a Great Firewall because that is the only thing that has been shown to work, and as Thomas Friedman's continued presence as a NYT columnist proves, leftists love importing "good ideas" from other Communist countries.
Exactly like China has already done, Putin's Russia is now doing, Europe will be doing within the next year or so, America will do it as well unless something at long last changes the century long slide to darkness engulfing the world. Because if you accept the defective premise behind all this, it is the only solution. The Final Solution if you will.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ilsa on Wednesday April 17 2019, @08:33PM
I refuse to see nothing. I actually agree with some of what you said, in fact. The problem here is you were conflating and confusing multiple different things that are only tangentially related, and making it sound like they're all one big conspiracy to screw you over.
Using a VPN won't help you when material is being blocked at the source. Social media companies are responding to a situation that, while not specifically _caused_ by them, they have greatly amplified because the hostility made them money. Now the hostility is starting to cost them money, so now they're trying to do something about it. For them, it's purely about money. That's why that mother zucker is pushing for regulations now... to keep any new kids on the block from rising up and threatening his monopoly. It's all money.
All of this is completely separate from countries like Russia who want to turn their networks into islands. At best, social media is just an excuse. Putin has used far worse excuses, like saying that the US will somehow "take away" their internet if Russia doesn't respond swiftly. If the US really wants to create it's own great firewall, all they need to do is fabricate enough bullshit to successfully scare people into giving the gov't the power to do so, just like they've done time and time again in the past (the Iraq war being a great example). I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, as long as you guys keep voting in incompetent cheese-flavoured muppets.
And oh look, somehow blaming "leftists" for the mess, based on... heck if I can figure it out. And you wonder why people aren't receptive to your arguments?
Step 1: Make a coherent argument
Step 2: Stop trying to blame everything on "the left".
There are serious issues at play here. But instead of addressing them, you're just making noise and wasting everyone elses time and energy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:18PM (7 children)
Ilsa, I don't think he's wrong. As much as I hate basically everything about his (utter lack of) morals and personality, he is largely correct about the motives of the elite, and I think he's especially prescient about why there's so much cracking down on the internet itself, as well as why corporations are being allowed to turn it into TV 2.0.
Never, but never, trust a career politician. They all just want power, and to the deepest depths of Hell with everyone and everything else, especially if any of it stands in their way. A free and open internet scares seven shades of shit out of the RWA types (whom he is of course one of, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day...)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday April 17 2019, @08:04PM
While he may be correct about individual details, the way he mashes them together into an incoherent mess destroys one's ability to have a sensible discussion about it. He's also contradictory. First he complains about social media clamping down on free speech, then he's worried gov'ts will crack down as well, ignoring the fact that if they do so then social media companies will be required to obey anyway.
VPNs cannot solve the "censorship issue" when it's the platforms themselves that are doing the censoring. Especially when that censorship is mandated by gov't.
Putin only give a rats ass about social media insomuch as he can use it to manipulate western countries as he has been doing. He is creating the great firewall of Russia because he wants to, and because he can.
Putting the blame on social media as the instigators of this global crackdown is just a convenient excuse that masks much larger problems that arn't even tech related. Having social media deplatform people is their attempt to stop the nutjobs from ruining it for everyone else and gives gov't less ammunition to justify a real crackdown (IMO too little too late... soylent is as close as I get to social media now). But as Putin is demonstrating, gov't will do what they want anyway. They'll just find the easiest excuse to justify it. And if they can't find one, they'll make one up, like Bush did to justify the Iraq war.
We need to look less at the smoke and mirrors that is social media and evaluate the real causes of all this rising hostility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:18PM (2 children)
Why was this necessary to add? I'm not trying to start anything here(*) but I am thinking this is some unconcious variation on virtue signalling, and as such, ought to be avoided in order to maintain intellectual honesty. Maybe there is a word for it.
(*) Not pointing fingers, it was an accident that user 5086 did this when I felt like unlurking. It happens quite often, like e.g. in the Assange reporting where pundits saying that this is bad for journalism but he's a pig . Why is it necessary to add that? Is there a minimal level of belligerence that needs to be maintained? I can't put my words to why it is, but it feels underhanded, and makes me sad.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 17 2019, @10:09PM (1 child)
Go look up J-Mo's post history and you'll see why I don't want to be associated with that son of a bitch at all. THAT is why I typed that.
There are people on this site who will actually look for cases of me agreeing with someone else and use it to say "Aha! See? SEE?! She AGREED with $THAT_GUY_SHE_ARGUES_WITH, what a hypocrite!" That's the level of discourse this place has sunken to.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:29PM
I am vaguely aware of what he writes. I have made substantial (but polite) mental reservations about both of you. (metameta: now I am guilty too! what!) It seems to me that you both hold "classical" opinions in the sense that there is an establishment that includes both of you, and that is a safe place to be.
With regards to the hypocrisy, I would expect the opposite, actually. Disagreeing with the person for the sake of disagreeing is the hypocrisy, (or phrased differently, inconsistently displayed opinion, whatever), so if someone made that charge, it would be stupid beyond comprehension. Aside from that formal disagreement, I see what you are trying to say.
But the thing is, the three of us appear to have things in common that should not be dismissed (actually, dismiss it; I don't want to be blackbagged, I just like to vent truth); namely, we have opinions that have been shaped by our environments, that goes hand in hand with the inculcation of a very special kind of lie, namely that of the existence of a free press. (That lie also should make us interrogate ourselves about all beliefs that are reinforced by MSM.) I suspect, all three of us feel deeply betrayed. There was no rite of passage, and ... little free press to validate this knowledge, with remaining publication outlets now being suppressed in a tyrannical but non-violent manner. What I am getting at, is that the people who are actually in charge would see value of a people in disarray.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 17 2019, @10:20PM (2 children)
Just to chime in with my $0.02 worth.
The bit I took out of jmorris' comment was
which shows to me that despite everything, his fears are still that weird combination of "small government" right-wing nonsense, and wanting to make that "small government" even bigger.
In one breath he goes on about government control, and in the next he wants to build the wall, despite all the evidence being that people arrive in the US by airplane (what with it being 2019 and all).
I wonder what he would argue if someone advocated for reducing the military budget by $200 billion or so and spending that money on healthcare or education?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:15PM (1 child)
Well, yeah, anyone expecting the alt-right not to contradict itself at every turn is going to be disappointed. They think with the lizard brain, their giant overactivated amygdala, and that pesky cerebral cortex is only there for the use it has in making supporting arguments...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:42PM
Ha! "supporting arguments..." good one Azuma.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Wednesday April 17 2019, @08:10PM
Trump says, "Hold my beer."
You are still welcome on my lawn.