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Archive.org has become the latest site to be blocked in Russia:
Archive.org, home to the popular Wayback Machine, is again blocked in Russia, according to a site that monitors IP addresses banned in that country. The Internet Archive's address, 207.241.224.2, turns up in the latest dump by Antizapret on GitHub.
The anti-censorship Antizapret maintains a list (currently beyond 12,000 addresses) of blocked IPs, and also provides information about anti-censorship tools like VPNs. The blog Meduza.io, which reported Antizapret's original announcement, says the Kremlin's media watchdog agency, Roskomnadzor, took exception to Wayback archiving links to Syrian Islamist videos. Because Archive.org uses HTTPS, the individual pages can't be blocked, so the whole site's been blacklisted.
It's not the first time the non-profit archive's robots have stored content that Roskomnadzor doesn't like. Wayback raised Russia's ire in June when it scooped up a page referring to the "theory and practice of partisan resistance."
Previously, Reddit was blocked in Russia for hosting a single page about growing psychedelic mushrooms, and Wikipedia was briefly blacklisted for its entry on Charas, a hashish form of cannabis. A day after Wikipedia's block was lifted, Moscow's head of communication and culture, Yevgeny Gerasimov, discussed plans for an alternate Russian version of the site.
The effects of erratic site blocking may pale in comparison to the data localization requirement that amended the Russian Federal Law on Personal Data, which came into effect on Sept. 1. Bloomberg reports:
A law now forces tech firms with Russian customers to operate local servers to handle Russian personal data. It's the latest in a string of about 20 laws tightening government control of the Internet, all put into place since President Vladimir Putin's re-election in 2012. Taken at face value the new program is aimed at protecting the privacy of Russian citizens. It's not a uniquely Russian idea, and is something Brazil and Germany are also exploring in the post-Snowden era. Yet human rights activists fear the regulation will be misused, allowing officials to spy on citizens and suppress political activists. It comes into force days after Wikipedia was briefly blacklisted because of an article about cannabis.
"The regime is already ramping up censorship and surveillance and using it to target opposition activists, so the requiring of companies to host data on servers in the country makes it easier for the government to access that data," says Laura Reed, a research analyst from Freedom House.
In theory Russia's intelligence services need a court order to access any data, but observers say they are rarely turned down. All eyes are now on Facebook, Google and Twitter, which have been meeting with the Kremlin in private to make sense of the law. At this stage it's not clear whether they will agree to comply. Google declined to comment. Facebook simply says it won't comment on speculation, and that "we regularly meet with government officials and have nothing more to share at this time."
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:10AM
there's a huge number of people in other countries that enjoy a relatively free experience on the internet.
That is true only while those freedoms do not present even a slightest concern for the governments of those countries. If they do, even the most democratic governments are quick to intervene. In Germany, for example, people are imprisoned for denial of Holocaust. One would think why would anyone cares what one lunatic tells another in a public square... but here you are. In the USA one would be well advised to obey laws of political correctness, otherwise he will be accused of racism, sexism, and whatever -ism is popular today. In South Korea proposals about mending ties with NK come with a prison term. Democracy is inherently unstable, as it is supposed to facilitate its own destruction. As it is not desirable for a number of reasons, governments all over the world make sure that, for example, ISIS recruiting centers are not permitted. Otherwise they'd be legitimate places where one group of people talks to another. No weapons present, no threats - fully conforming to the standard of political discussion. It is outlawed because the subject of the speech is not welcome. It may be not welcome by many, or not welcome by just a few - the exact number doesn't matter. A true democracy cannot have forbidden subjects, be it the Holocaust or the duty of true believers to exterminate everyone else. All countries forbid certain knowledge - just ask Snowden or Assange, people who did nothing more than revealed the information that the people should have known all along anyway.