How free is Russia’s Internet?

Casper

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Sep 6, 2010
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Internet is a free space in Russia. It is a place where people resolve a host of issues related to their world-view as well as intellectual and psychological problems. Of course, the Internet space is nonetheless under the control of the authorities, especially when online discussions concern issues that could endanger the powers that be.

Alexander Prokhanov, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Zavtra shares his view on the issue.

I believe that the Internet is a free space in Russia. It is a place where people resolve a host of issues related to their world-view as well as intellectual and psychological problems. Of course, the Internet space is nonetheless under the control of the authorities, especially when online discussions concern issues that could endanger the powers that be. In such cases, suppression or support groups are established to contribute an element of white noise, taking the discussions, especially political ones, to the irrational extremes. These groups are used to suppress political initiatives.

The new law on the police, which came into force on March 1, 2011, includes a clause allowing them to close down any online resource without a court order. I don’t think this measure really aimed at fighting copyright violations. It is sheer banditry, because a blog or a website, especially one that is registered as a media outlet, is no different from a newspaper or TV show. Such attacks “at the dead of night,” without any warning or even a court ruling, are crude and abhorrent acts of force.

I think that such attacks, or even the introduction of limitations on individual sites or, worse still, the whole of the national Internet space can only be justified and are only permissible in a state of emergency announced by the authorities to combat a terrorist threat, anti-government revolt, or massive attacks on the Constitution.


Full version of his interview was originally published on valdaiclub.com
 
Despite various outlets reporting laws being slowly pushed through the Russian Duma towards the end of the past decade which allowed for various Internet shutdowns due to radical, terrorist, or anti-govermental rhetoric, there have been very few incidents of Russian censorship or shutdowns of various Internet related sources since their inception. One such instance of of government intervention occured when a district court in the town of Komsomolsk-on-Amur requested the ISP Rosnet to block all content on Youtube due to video posts of an ultra-nationalist in 2010.

It is disturbing whenever a government intercedes on the right of freedom of speech, however, this has not been seen to be a documented issue with Russia at this point. When compared to the extreme censorship in China, the laws in place seem mundane. This is not to be said that the current laws could not be expanded on and enforced in exceedingly broad definitions. Given Russia's history of highly centralized government, it is not outside of rational thought to see these laws as a base to expand upon in the future.

On the other hand it is quite simply possible that Russia will use these laws for simple protection from domestic and foreign threats. It is not only a given right for the government to protect its people, but it is its responsibility. Recently on January 26, 2011, President Medvedev released a statement supporting the freedom of the Internet and denouncing restrictions as they would "bring the world to stagnation."

Although it cannot be certain on how much intervention the Russian government carries through on a normal basis, it seems at this point as if it is staying within its expected boundaries. This could change dramatically in short time whether it becomes public or not and is an interesting trend to watch which could indicate the future course the Russian government is headed down.
 
Russia's internet under hacker attack...
:eusa_eh:
Russians Battle Over Internet Freedom
April 08, 2011 - A massive hacker attack knocked Russia’s most popular opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, off the internet Friday. Earlier this week, three days of hacker attacks repeatedly knocked out LiveJournal, the nation’s main platform for blogs.
As Russia’s roughly 40 million internet users digested these attacks, the nation’s top communications security official proposed Friday to ban Skype, Hotmail, and Gmail as uncontrolled threats to Russian security. It is unclear if the official from Russia’s FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB, will get his way. With Russia’s internet users expanding by 10,000 people a day, security officials fret about the internet - a vast, uncontrolled cyberspace.

After the youth revolts spread through the Arab world, the FSB proposed that every Russian user of Facebook and other social networks be required to sign user contracts that included passport information and home addresses. Andrei Soldatov, an author of a book on the FSB, explains how he views these moves toward internet controls: "A direct consequence of the events in the Middle East and North Africa, in Tunisia, in Egypt," he said. "Because for many experts and for many politicians, it seems that social networks played a crucial role."

Russia is now in an election year. Parliamentary elections are in December. Presidential elections are in March. The ruling United Russia party won regional elections last month, but with generally reduced showings. Soldatov sees this week’s hacker attacks as a practice for serious shutdowns later this year, when the campaigning and the vote counting gets hot. "For me it seems like a test of the technology - how to shut down such an important service," he said.

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Massive Russian hacker attack threatens freewheeling Ru.net
April 8, 2011 - Security experts are confused about who is behind the far-reaching cyber attacks, as both Kremlin foes and officials are among those targeted.
Russia's biggest social network and its top opposition newspaper have been knocked out by massive hacker attacks over the past week, leading some nervous bloggers to suggest that security services may be testing techniques for shutting down the country's freewheeling Internet in the event of a crisis. The list of victims crying foul after the wave of direct denial of service (DDoS) attacks started hitting Russia's LiveJournal site, which has 4.7 million users, include President Dmitry Medvedev. Mr. Medvedev demanded a police inquiry Thursday after his blog on the site was shut down in the online strike.

The increasingly familiar menace of DDoS attacks involve using thousands of linked computers, which have often been "captured" by viruses or malware, to bombard a website with billions of requests for data, paralyzing the servers and preventing regular users from accessing the site. Experts say the sheer scale of the cyberblitz presently underway points to a large organization, or perhaps secret service, as the culprit. However, they also seem baffled by the apparently indiscriminate targeting that shut down the blogs of Kremlin foes, friends, and top leaders alike.

"It's difficult to see where this might be coming from, because everybody across the political spectrum uses LiveJournal and depends on it," says Rustem Agadamov, a popular Russian blogger. "But it's obviously not simple net hooliganism, because this kind of sustained attack is very expensive and difficult to mount. Nobody's going to waste big resources to no purpose." Once his blog was restored, a furious Mr. Medvedev took to it to condemn the "outrageous and illegal" actions of the hackers. "What happened must be investigated by the administration of LiveJournal administration and law enforcement agencies," he wrote.

The attacks began two weeks ago with a little noticed DDoS assault on the popular blog of Alexei Navalny, a social campaigner who has been dubbed "Russia's Julian Assange" for using his LiveJournal page to post sensational exposes of corruption in high places, including the alleged theft of $4 billion in the state-owned Transneft oil pipeline company. But they quickly snowballed, leaving the entire Russian-language service paralyzed for many hours on Monday and Wednesday. By Friday the focus had switched to the website of the opposition weekly Novaya Gazeta, which remains shut down amid what its editors allege is an "intense attack of unprecedented scope."

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