Putin passes law that will ban VPNs in Russia

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

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 Duma’s 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 Putin’s 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.

Russia’s 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]

1. Putin is getting nervous...

Worried about his Re-selection next year...

[Igel]

13. Wishful thinking.

https://www.levada.ru/en/ratings/

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]

2. Now did Putin/Russia use VPNs in the 2016 election?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Virtual_Private_Network_overview.svg

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Chilling

effect on free speech

you know it's coming

[lunasun]

5. To our neighborhood soon

[wcmagumba]

6. Yep...nt

[EL34x4]

4. American lawmakers are jealous. They'd give anything to ban VPNs.

"It's for the children, you know!"

[groundloop]

7. 45* will ban VPNs via executive order.... coming next month

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]

10. via Twitter no doubt

[lark]

8. VPN's are used by a lot of tech companies to route calls through intelligence,

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]

11. Teleworkers (like me) use VPNs to access secure corporate data

for one thing

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

12. I did the same, when I was working.

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]

9. Hmm. a major (newer) feature from Kaspersky is access to a worldwide VPN

'Guess they are being restrained as well?

[Blue_Tires]

14. Snowden, Greenwald and Assange were unavailable for comment

Last edited Wed Aug 2, 2017, 09:32 PM - Edit history (1)

[47of74]

17. Neither was Stein

[olddad56]

15. VPN Vladimir Putin Nyet.

[Skittles]

16. what a fucking snowflake

no wonder Donald Fucking Trump worships him

[Marksman_91]

18. Wonder what all those pro-Putin regressives will say

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.