Russia might be reeling from an “armed mutiny” at home and a botched invasion of Ukraine, but that hasn’t stopped it from pushing a plan for centralized United Nations oversight of the internet. An unfortunate new wrinkle is that Moscow’s approach appears to be getting some support from U.N. Secretary General António Guterres.
“We’re concerned about the Russians … pushing their authoritarian digital agenda in every forum around the world”, explained a senior Biden administration official in an email. “It’s global and relentless, and when we step back even a little bit, they fill that void”. He said the State Department has conveyed its “legitimate concern” about a U.N.… Seguir leyendo »
Even as fighting rages on the ground in Ukraine, Russia continues to wage a long-term battle for control of what Kremlin officials call the “information space” of internet communications.
Moscow’s campaign to throttle information is shameless. It launched its latest denunciation of the West’s supposed “coercive measures” in internet technology this month, as it was jailing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on a bogus espionage charge, and sentencing democracy activist and Post contributing columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison on treason charges.
Russia knows that information is power. In addition to muzzling debate at home, it has attempted to seize the digital high ground internationally through the United Nations and its agencies.… Seguir leyendo »
In early December, Russian censors scored an unexpected success: Internet users all over the country reported that Tor, an encryption software that allows users to bypass online government controls, was going offline.
The Russian security services have been trying to neutralize Tor for years. They view it as the West’s censorship circumvention tool of choice. Its creation was sponsored by the International Broadcasting Bureau, a U.S. agency that provides technical support to Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The irony, though, is that Russian state scored this victory over freedom of information with the help of Western companies.
Russia calls its system for controlling online discourse the “sovereign Internet.”… Seguir leyendo »
On Sept. 16, one day before Russia’s parliamentary election got underway, members of the upper house of the Russian parliament summoned representatives of Google and Apple to rebuke them for allegedly “interfering” in the vote. The tech companies’ ostensible offense: allowing users to access a voting assistance app created by supporters of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In the end, both companies buckled and removed the app from their online stores.
Much of the resulting coverage depicted Moscow’s crackdown on the two Silicon Valley platforms as just another part of the government’s broader assault on freedom of expression. But focusing on that aspect, as accurate as it is, risks missing a bigger story.… Seguir leyendo »
At the very moment that Russia and China are facing more pressure from Western governments to stop malicious cyberattacks, they’ve announced a pact to work together for new rules to control cyberspace.
In the annals of diplomatic hypocrisy, this new accord is a stunner, even by Russian and Chinese standards. It promotes a new Russian plan for international governance of the global Internet, even as it stresses the right of Russia, China and other authoritarian states “to regulate the national segment of the Internet” to edit and censor what their people can see.
The June 28 Russia-China accord was revealed in a little-noticed posting the next day by the Chinese embassy in Moscow, which was sent to me by a European Internet activist.… Seguir leyendo »
Russia’s campaign to control the Internet isn’t just a secret intelligence gambit any longer. It’s an explicit goal, proclaimed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a key element of the Kremlin’s foreign policy.
Putin complained during his annual address to the Russian federal assembly on April 21 that the United States and other western countries are “stubbornly rejecting Russia’s numerous proposals to establish an international dialogue on information and cybersecurity. We have come up with these proposals many times. They avoid even discussing this matter.”
Asking for “international dialogue” takes some nerve, coming from the world’s biggest cyberbully — a country that notoriously meddled in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 U.S.… Seguir leyendo »
On the 8th of May Telegram, an app which has been banned in Russia since early April, turned to the Supreme Court of Russia with an appeal.
“Not sure why the messenger needs it. It benefits from the ban”, commented Pavel Salin, Director of the Center for Political Studies at the Financial University.
Indeed, Telegram has become the forbidden fruit: following the ban, the app’s audience in Russia has not dwindled, but in fact expanded. Pavel Durov, the app’s creator, estimates that 15 mln Russians are its active users and thanks Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft for refusing to maintain the censorship.… Seguir leyendo »
In late November, the number of websites being blocked in Russia reached 1 million, according to Roskomsvoboda, the country’s independent Internet censorship watchdog. This did not surprise the Russian online community, which is used to bad news. The Kremlin’s offensive against Internet freedom has intensified dramatically over the past three years, including the creation of website blacklists, the updating of an advanced national system of online surveillance and increased pressure on international Internet companies to share data with Russian security services.
The failure of the 2011-13 Moscow protests, Russia’s version of a “Twitter Revolution”, to ease Vladimir Putin’s grip on the country, along with all the depressing news from the Middle East, has led many to question the idea that online technology can be used to facilitate political change.… Seguir leyendo »
According to a report in The New York Times this week, the presence of Russian spy ships near important trans-Atlantic data cables is causing consternation among American military and intelligence officials. What, if anything, are the Russians planning to do? Are they trying to see how easily they could cut the cables if war broke out?
All anybody knows for sure is that the game theory that we used to plot out provocations and responses during the Cold War is obsolete in a digital age.
On the one hand, concerns about acts of digital sabotage in wartime are silly. If war broke out between the United States and Russia, we'd have much bigger problems on our hands than spotty connectivity over the Internet.… Seguir leyendo »
El 20 de diciembre, el gobierno ruso solicitó que Facebook bloqueara una página usada para reunir a los opositores al presidente Vladimir Putin. Facebook inicialmente aceptó, pero permitió que al día siguiente se abriera otra nueva. Al demostrar que al menos algunas empresas occidentales se preocupan por valores que no se pueden expresar en términos de ganancias, Facebook debilitó una afirmación clave de la propaganda rusa y generó así dudas sobre otras falsas afirmaciones que están ayudando a sostener el régimen de Putin.
No se trató de una decisión fácil para Facebook. Al rehusarse a cumplir la solicitud del Kremlin, Facebook desafió abiertamente una ley rusa que permite la censura en Internet.… Seguir leyendo »
On Tuesday, a court in Moscow convicted Russia’s top opposition blogger, Aleksei A. Navalny, of criminal fraud. Mr. Navalny, who has been under house arrest for nearly a year, was given a suspended sentence and spared jail time. His younger brother Oleg, however, was sentenced to serve three and a half years. Aleksei Navalny is an anti-corruption activist and outspoken critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, and the verdicts were seen as a cynical strategy to punish him without turning him into an imprisoned martyr.
Mr. Navalny responded furiously, rallying protests in Moscow’s Manezh Square. He even defied his house arrest to attend the demonstrations himself, which led swiftly to his detention and a return to his home.… Seguir leyendo »
Russia’s opposition activists are a dejected and fractured lot these days.
In February, Vladimir V. Putin passed a law making it possible to shut down any website at will — snuffing out the online presence of Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s biggest foe, overnight. Last week, Mr. Putin approved legislation that takes aim at all future Navalnys. The “Bloggers Law” forces the owners of any website receiving more than 3,000 visitors per day to register with the government, forfeit anonymity, and become legally responsible for the factual accuracy of their content.
It looks as if the Internet — one of the country’s last remaining enclaves for free speech — isn’t going to be available for much longer.… Seguir leyendo »
La victoire de Vladimir Poutine est nette, mais elle ne s'est pas faite sans bavures. Le principe d'alternance reste toujours étranger à une culture politique marquée par la fusion des pouvoirs exécutif, législatif, judiciaire et médiatique. En apparence, avec plus de 63% des suffrages au premier tour, Vladimir Poutine est toujours le mâle dominant, tenant ses rivaux à bonne distance. En réalité, son système est aujourd'hui fissuré. La séquence électorale vient en effet de révéler les brusques évolutions du rapport entre l'appareil d'Etat et des segments de la société, à tel point qu'on se demande si la "verticale du pouvoir", longtemps incarnée par Vladimir Poutine, résistera à la fulgurance des réseaux sociaux.… Seguir leyendo »
Hours before the judge in the latest Mikhail Khodorkovsky trial announced yet another guilty verdict last week, Russia’s most prominent political prisoner was already being attacked in cyberspace.
No, Khodorkovsky’s Web site, the main source of news about the trial for many Russians, was not being censored. Rather, it had been targeted by so-called denial-of-service attacks, with most of the site’s visitors receiving a “page cannot be found” message in their browsers.
Such attacks are an increasingly popular tool for punishing one’s opponents, as evidenced by the recent online campaign against American corporations like Amazon and PayPal for mistreating WikiLeaks. It’s nearly impossible to trace the perpetrators; many denial-of-service attacks go underreported, as it’s often hard to distinguish them from cases where a Web site has been overwhelmed by a huge number of hits.… Seguir leyendo »
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