Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The erosion in this case is more harmful to many people than trolls showing up to reddit. So I think it's natural that people recede slightly from the idea a globalised common communal identity created by the Internet and look toward their national structures to protect them. As Snowden said in some QA "Our founding fathers did not say that all [US persons] were created equal". Until the irony of that statement is not cleared up internationally and human rights are absolutely universal balkanisation of the Internet will come. Russia, despite being an odd democracy, is only jumping onto a boat that already sailed in Brazil and other locations.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
2. http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/apr/04/clarke-defends-se...
Not even close. This is another regime looking to suppress dissent, just like China has been doing all along. They don't trust their own citizens, not "corporations and other stewards of this medium." You're buying a flimsy excuse for cracking down on free speech.
Their problem has never been that some company cooperates with the US. It has always been that multinationals couldn't be easily strong-armed into cooperating with the local authorities. And no, it wouldn't matter if the US had the same problems.
The NSA revelations are just a pretext. Every European country knew exactly what was going on; they were complicit in it and they had varying levels of sharing agreements with the NSA.
Now, if we're talking about the west investing x billion in "democratic institutions"(Ukraine, anyone?), it makes some sense for Russia to isolate itself. Obviously, it's easy to paint Russia as evil, but the cold war is over, buddy.
Would you prefer Yeltsin? Putin is what Russia needs.
Don't really care about your opinion, but other HN readers should know about the situation with Russian propaganda on social media: http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhimler/2014/05/06/russias-m...
Since you're more concerned with attacking me ad hominem, I guess I'll just join in. You are paid by the NSA[0]. Mind-blown!Since, after all, character assassination is the way lead a discussion.
Additionally, your name sounds ukrainian. You must be a right wing ULTRA then! How is that for being a putinbot. See how ridiculous you look throwing accusations at people just because they disagree with you.
[0]https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/04/04/cuban-twitter-...
Yeah we never heard of Michael Moore ever again.
plus, considering what our President(s) do/done where do we have room to brag/gloat? I cannot find those news articles where Putin is using drones to kill his citizens abroad.
You know those racist, alcoholic rednecks in Alabama who fly confederate flags, praise Jesus and love America? Russia has a lot of those. Except the government actively encourages their insanity, because redirecting their furor at outside forces (Ukraine/Crimea, US, the EU, etc) distracts from the kleptocracy that runs the country and has quietly been consolidating wealth and business ownership into the hands of a very small group of oligarchs. Putin is a hero to these guys; he projects a nationalist ideology onto the global stage, where Russia is the bully that gets its way.
Not saying the US doesn't do its share of geopolitically shady crap (NSA spying, etc) but it never reached these levels of crazy. What Russia and Putin are doing is very reminiscent of Nazi Germany, and not in a "they're acting line Nazis" kind of way. By promoting the dangerous idea that "ethnic Russians" in other countries need protection, it elevates that nationalism to the point where it can be used as a context for an invasion of a country. Never mind that the idea of "ethnic Russian" could apply to any person living in a country that was formerly part of the USSR.
Except for Ukraine, which is a controversial subject, when was the last time Russia directly threatened a sovereign nation and overthrew their governments?
Now, how about the US in the last 14 years - Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Haiti, Gaza Strip, Somalia, Iran, Lybia and Syria. Does that not come off as "crazy" to you?
EDIT: oops, sorry. Forgot Yemen and Pakistan, against whom there is no official declaration of war either.
Check http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny_ballistic_missile_atta...
Or other information about Russian atrocities in that war. (The whole point with drones is that they are pinpoint attacks, with relatively low civilian casualities.)
And USA is a tempering influence, re Gaza. Consider what would happens if Finland or a Baltic country used rocket artillery against St Petersburg? No, better to not consider that... (shudder.)
The same goes for most of your other examples.
2) If we're talking about atrocities, let's talk about 100,000 casualties in Iraq.(most conservative estimate). Additionally, 2,400 dead from drone strokes. Most, if not all, without due process in Pakistan and Yemen.
3) Tempering influence? Are you serious? Is it tempering to overthrow governments and install new ones while denationalizing oil contracts? I heard Lybia's a democracy now and not a shithole.
U.S. is just as bad as Russia. Your time of being the beacon of light and democracy is gone.
"Tempering influence" was specifically about Gaza.
But you know that.
>>100,000 casualties in Iraq
First, let me note I am not defending the Iraq invasion. Not because I cares about the rights of evil juntas, but because it was so badly managed it even increased the suffering.
Second, those in Iraq were mainly killed in a civil war by people also trying to kill Americans. It is not trivial to blame Americans for that...
I think you know that, too.
About drone strikes -- both the Pakistani and Yemeni governments accepted them. In Pakistan unofficially, because the extremists targets polticians/media/etc with the "wrong" opinions.
I think you know that, third...
Etc.
Edit: I might add that I'm not American. Please keep personal attacks relevant at least, propagandist.
> how about the US in the last 14 years [...] Iran
Maybe I'm missing something, but when did the US overthrow Iran's government in the last 14 years? Or Syria for that matter?
In my lifetime I believe that we have tried to overthrow 30+ governments around the world when in the interests of America's financial elite.
Do you know what I consider patriotism to be? It includes admitting things that we did wrong and try very hard to do better in the future.
It was also a different time period with different considerations. Now I'm not being an apologist for this stuff, but I would say that similar actions in the more recent past have much less justification, even if you are someone that buys into the "Domino Effect" defense from the Cold War-era.
What did Russia in Georgia with Abhazia and South Ossetia? How about Republic of Moldova where Russia still holds a standing army with no legal status? (It's the former 14th USSR army, which just happen to remain on the Moldova's territory after the fall of USSR, but to submit to Moscow nevertheless, and which was/is being used to support the so-called Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, BTW.)
P.S.: Please, don't use USA's action to justify Russia. If crimes are being committed by someone somewhere doesn't mean that a crime are no longer a crime.
Maybe that's because of lack of free Russian media...
And stop using strawman arguments. No government is perfect but there are degrees of corruption in the government. Russian government is extremely corrupt, Iceland government is a little bit corrupt. One is better than another. God, do I really have to post trivia on HN?
Putin brought quality of life in Russia to a pretty nice level, and he keeps doing it, and a lot of people like that. And I see no point in becoming involved in protest movement and revolution rage. We all saw what happened to our neighbour, we need evolution, not revolution.
Most people conform to a majority opinion. Its dangerous to be publicly against Putin and new russian militarism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence
And right, you all "saw" what happened to Ukraine, it's not that Russia annexed Crimea and supports separatists in the east, nope.
Russia barely supports anyone in the east. Even NY times(the newspaper that was fully pro Iraq war) went in, talked to the separatists and found out they're just pro federalization.
Your blind hate for Putin is apparent. You'll start blaming earthquakes in Oklahoma on him soon.
If you check the larger democracy indexes, they have started to show Russia as "authoritarian" now, i.e. not democratic at all.
Is that a Western conspiracy?
[I guess it is time for you to use another account to lower the HN quality? :-( A quick browsing through your comment hostory is mostly USA criticism and pro-dictators, mainly Russia. Very little to none of programming or development. ]
How is the weather in Moscow, by the way? (St Petersburg? Some military base somewhere?)
I have a good friend who is an Israeli citizen and he has been complaining for the 20 years I have known him that his country's politics are so warped by the people he calls 'the rich American assholes' (like AIPAC) who fund the right wing in Israel that sometimes his country does not seem to be such a good democracy. Imagine a whole lot of external money being injected into the politics of your country - you would probably not like it either.
As for my country, the USA: we are certainly a democracy but there is so much cheating via gerrymandering, etc. that I feel like we have lost something very precious since the end of the second world war when our financial elites started to step up their game.
Look up democracy index and freedom index on wikipedia, which I referenced.
Russia has fallen a lot further on the central ones of those, as I wrote. I asked if that ALSO was a Western conspiracy, which the Russian media are full of.
The POINT was -- the paid Russian propagandists aren't allowed to write that. They mostly go away.
It seems the whole internet quality suffers, not only HN, from those Russian astroturf trolls in most languages.
(Israel is not only beside the point -- as I've heard it described, if you put three Israelis in a room you'll find at least four hard opinions on most any subject. :-) The same goes for the media. In general, democracies put under pressure from terrorism aren't pretty: By definition, terrorism scares the voters. That results in that the governments throw out the law books, because they want to get reelected. See Germany, USA, Italy, Israel, Britain, etc.)
That's BS. They support him because he is not a bloody puppet like Yeltsin and co, and the alternatives are worst.
He might support cronyism, but that's nothing compared to selling your country wholesale to the highest western bidder, like a sorry excuse of a lackey.
And, there could even be a third element. Economic protectionism and "keep the money here". Or even a forth element. The lawmakers cousin owns a data center in Moscow:)
But they have to get the money from somewhere don't they?
That somewhere is generally "fixed" Russian markets.
It is absolutely surreal how much funds were embezzled through the Olympics, for one example.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-sochi-is-by-far-the-most-...
Next, the west has a shit ton of money invested in the Russian stock markets. Their stock markets rebounded back to previous levels a few weeks after the sanctions.
Furthermore, military equipment. See France.
Uh, freedom. what? Have you been to Russia?
Or you know, it's beneficial for all the people that want to enjoy freedom there, since freedom is not "the freedom to have your data on a server on Mountain View" but to live in a free, sovereign country.
No government can act without the acceptance of a majority of the citizens. China's firewall can only exist because the Chinese people are accepting it in the name of protecting children or other such bullshit - brits should watch out, as their personal liberties have been eroded in the name of safety for too long. And if you live in the US, I suppose you're familiar with the Patriot Act ;-)
No, governments don't do this unless a majority approves - that they approve for the wrong reasons, that's another story entirely. But as I kept saying ever since Snowden's leaks happened - the US government fucked things up, they won't even admit to how badly they fucked up and this will have deep repercussions internationally regarding the future of the Internet. A lot of international (mostly US) companies will get hurt by this, because (1) they didn't have a saying in the matter, yet the public views them as being guilty nonetheless and (2) because of balkanization.
And the US can't point fingers and say "look who's talking", as that won't achieve anything. Say that to the Russian public who approves this. The US, as the stewart of the Internet, should have been careful to not fuck things up so badly in the first place. And after Snowden's leaks I would have liked to see some apologies, some heads falling - but ALAS, no, nothing of the sort - only a direct confirmation that they don't care about the rights of foreign individuals and as a non-US citizen, how do you think that makes me feel?
Germany is reportedly interested in moving closer to the inner circle: an internal GCHQ document from 2009 said that the “Germans were a little grumpy at not being invited to join the 9-Eyes group." Germany may even wish to join Five Eyes.[43] Referring to Five Eyes, French President François Hollande has said that his country is "not within that framework and we don't intend to join."[44] According to a former top U.S. official, "Germany joining would be a possibility, but not France – France itself spies on the US far too aggressively for that."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Eyes#Future_enlargemen...
But you see - it's one thing for my country to do it, because if I suffer from it, I have legal ways to fight it. It's another thing entirely for a foreign government with so much power to do it, let alone a government that directly controls and that can subdue the biggest companies that operate on the Internet. Depending on the country, the NSA doesn't have enough jurisdiction or power to subdue a foreign company, regardless of any treaties, therefore depending on the country, I can trust a more local company more than I can trust a US company - since a US company can be quietly subdued to whatever the NSA wants without recourse or without me finding out about it.
And I do realize that if I'm targeted directly, then short of keeping myself offline, there's no way to protect my data. But my biggest fear is that my personal data will end up being processed in bulk by incompetents. My personal ID ended up in a local newspaper by mistake because of incompetents running our governmental institutions (even though that's illegal). I've got important data that I care about - while at the same time I've got nothing to hide - but do I want my personal data, like pictures, love or angry letters, source code of personal projects and so on and so forth to end up being processed by incompetents? Hell no. And if it does happen, I want to be able to strike back.
With the US government doing it, I have no recourse, no path I could take - since I'm not a US citizen and I don't have money for the fees practiced by US lawyers anyway, while at the same time, my voice is not heard because I'm a foreigner. Heck, I don't even have a right to vote, if that counted for something. Can you see my problem here?
That's why I'm of the opinion that the US government should try really hard to fix what they broke, since we all have enjoyed the freedoms provided by the global Internet and it would be a pity if balkanization happens because some idiots thought it would be cool to process the emails of individuals without warrants and in bulk.
Your country is giving the data to the US, without disclosure. Good luck fighting it.
That governments are inevitably an extension of their citizens' will is a thing that sounds nice to believe, but isn't necessarily true. It's easy to imagine situations where a small minority gains forceful control of a majority. Whether that is the case for any one nation is a much trickier question, but it certainly can happen.
I do know a thing or two about the difference - and one has to understand the mentality of people living under a certain political system - the system only survives when there's enough acceptance, from a majority no less and acceptance happens because that's what people grow up with. That's why under stalinism at least there was so much emphasis on propaganda.
This is not a contradiction to the original statement. Even if the majority wants to suppress minority dissent (or do worse things to minorities), it's not the right thing to do.
Let me follow your definition, say, in the case of Ancient Rome. There is a minority of masters and a majority of slaves. Minority of masters has a dissent (from the slave's point of view, of course) that slaves should stay slaves. So, according to you, it is wrong for them to fight for their freedom, right?
For instance, in almost all modern states there are ideas, which are shared by some majorities and considered unethical in Christian ethic system.
But bad_user seems to imply ethic system which is based on the aggregate citizens vision. With such ethic system opinions of majorities are ethical by tautology.
Russia, as a sovereign state has the right to make its own mind, including for what it considers dissidents. It's not the place of some foreigners to judge that. Especially since it's a democracy, and people voted for their government, however some foreigners might or might not like it.
Even if you disagree with their current regime, it's the regime the Russian people voted for, and they can also change it in the future. And regardless if it is a good or a bad government, there is really no excuse for a sovereign country to give access to its citizens data to an external power, especially one which treats foreign information like intelligence data and doesn't care at all about their privacy.
Better to be abused by your own government, the one you voted for, even if it's bad and abusive, than by some regime outside your borders.
If Americans had their Facebook/Google/etc data in a third country and those countries services treated them as US services do, they would be screaming bloody murder.
>Their problem has never been that some company cooperates with the US. It has always been that multinationals couldn't be easily strong-armed into cooperating with the local authorities.
And why shouldn't they be strong-armed into cooperating with the local authorities? It's their country, their rules, not something for multinationals to piss all over.
The only action US companies can do now to avoid more countries doing this (short of US gov creating serious and radical reforms of its spying, along with radically stronger and more transparent oversight - which let's face it, is not going to happen anytime soon), will be to turn more and more of their services in "trustless" services, where you don't have to trust the company for keeping your data protected, because you know solid encryption system is keeping it protecting, along with open sourcing as much as possible of their software (especially if they are hardware manufacturers).
Communal identities are built along lines manned by people with guns. All that's happening now is that the internet has become an important resource, and countries are seeking to control it, like they do with any strategic resource.
No, we don't. I don't agree with your statement and I don't think you should be speaking for other people. None of those places were bastions of any of those things. They were places where like-minded people gathered to talk about common interests. Don't make the mistake of thinking because they represented your interests that these places were bastions of all that is good.
That is such a dim and cynical and solipsistic view to take. I don't agree that the people who came to those networks are trolls just because they showed up after me. This is a natural consequence of networks getting popular, not a bunch of trolls coming to ruin the things I love because I love them. It's like saying that the people who came to America after the initial European colonists were trolls because they had different interests from original colonists.
This is such a common tactic on internet 'debates.' To call someone who disagrees with you a troll, thereby absolving you from the mental work of understanding their viewpoint (I don't need to engage this troll, they're just fucking with me) and dealing with the possibility that someone has different opinions than you.
Foreign governments owe you nothing, you can't reasonably complain about them abusing your rights if you put them in a position where they can.
Russia restricts free speech and universal suffrage through relatively "efficient" means, compared with China. Putin ensures his power with a lot less effort than the CCP. Also "honesty" in Russian authorities is something of a bad joke...
And Russia restricts free speech better than China? Although I wouldn't argue Russia is a bastion of free speech, I do talk with my Russian friends over Facebook, Skype, email, etc, make jokes about and criticize their (and our) governments just fine without any problems so far. I cannot say the same of my Chinese colleagues, which I rarely interact and which have been so conditioned to suppress their opinions that even while visiting a foreign country where they were free to say whatever they wanted in private, even then refrained from doing so.
So yeah, both countries are quite bad when compared to the freedom heaven that the US is (wait.. what? NSA?) but I wouldn't go that far to put Russia and China in the same basket (unless we're willing to put all sufficiently advanced countries together, since it's pretty clear a great majority are already spying on their own citizens)
http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Sub%20Catego...
The opposition is ridiculous. If any oppositionals develop an effective platform or support, they usually go to jail, are murdered or disappear.
In Moscow, you can't hold up fake signs without getting arrested. Protests and demonstrations are only ever "allowed" if they are pro-Putin.
And let's not get started on the extremely corrupt bureaucracy. Putin couldn't hold a fair election or mandate a fair rule of law even if he wanted to.
Same with terrorism. When we attacked Afghanistan and Iraq with the War Of Terror. That opportunity didn't escape the Russians, they quickly issues a letters of support of American people blah blah and then proceeded to switch to running their own War of Terror in Chechnya. This was very nice as they just let the US Dept Of State do all the PR for them.
> of their democratic government.
Well presumably our democratic government is terrific. We have great income inequality, we torture people in some hidden loophole prison on a island, we invaded multiple countries with some WMD fake pretest. We are blasting away even our own citizens with drones in countries we are not even at war with. So one can argue democracy is not really that nice, it obviously doesn't work very well or out people are just mean and evil. Which, then, maybe they don't deserve democracy.
1) Protecting Citizen's data from snooping attempts of foreign intelligence agencies. Which is state's responsibility imo, which in this case it's carrying out. In this regard, this is good news,
2) Protecting Citizen's data from the state itself. This is a particularly tricky one, since there's no government agency which acts as counterweight to the intelligence agencies. In this regard, I am not so sure if its good news. What if this law was only passed to enable Russian intelligence agencies to gain easy access to all the citizen's data? Which seems plausible and predatory (nobody spies on our Citizens but us).
It will probably take a combination of Technological and Legal changes to really ensure privacy of the people. I can see how it could possibly come about. There's a small set of people (read Big Government) who want to maintain control over Citizens by compromising their privacy. There's a big set of people who stand to get harmed by privacy violations. But there is a third set of people who has influence on first set (read wealthy class in all its forms), but who also stands to lose from privacy violations, and who also has means to fight it legally and legislatively. The third class would probably be the drivers of privacy reforms we'll see in coming years/decades.
I find it amusing that they are doing this in "the name of combating piracy" when right now a certain russian site is hosting 1.2 million (mostly western) pirated ebooks and 28 million pirated scientific articles
Combating piracy is just something west is supposed to react more positively at.
They are making steps to legalize content, such as vkontakte legalizing 70% of their media material.
(This also leads to statistics under-predicting birth rate)
1) Are there any cloud file storage systems along the Drive/DB lines in Russia that apps providers can integrate with?
2) Not that anyone here knows the answer, but will the cloud storage providers implement data routing that complies with these rules (I guess yes, if the money is worth it)?
If anyone here is interested in country specific SaaS integrations (Germany, Brazil and Russia, for example), my email in profile.
>Data storage ~0.088$ for 1GB per month or ~0.131$ for 1 TB per hour
>Network (outgoing traffic) ~0.023$ per 1GB
>Network (incoming traffic) free-of-charge
They also recently announced CDN option with Akamai partnership at no additional cost
Great, so now I have a deadline to get out of here. Anyone hiring?
Just talk through them and then ask yourself if they are in fact "not present" outside of Russia given all the NSA and GCHQ shenanigans that have surfaced.
If you want to know the real motivations for this then it helps to remember Putin's origins and articles like this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russia-telecoms-watchdog...
The rest of Europe does not (for now) share any of those motivations with the Russian rulers.
Besides if the censorship were the goal, then it's perfectly doable as of now and regardless of the physical location of the servers. Just ask Saudi's. To understand the motivation you have to stop reading Washington Times and looking at Putin's origins and instead consider what he has accomplished in recent years - he essentially resurrected the national pride. In this context, it's only logical that they now view their dependency on (mostly) US companies as unbecoming, especially in the light of Snowden revelations, hence the move in question. You may also recall the hocus-pocus Visa did not long ago by showing a middle finger to some Russian bank as per directive of the US department. Now, swap the US and Russia and consider what the US reaction would've been.
If you are thinking it's all about censorship, you are missing a much larger picture.
What the US's reaction would be if the situation was reversed is moot because that's not the world we currently live in. The fact is that Putin and his band of boyscouts are rapidly reverting to type and getting the communications between Russian citizens under their control is just another step in that play.
If you think Putin has restored national pride then you are falling hook, line and sinker for the propaganda, that's just cheap talk for the consumption by the gullible. Pride you achieve by having something to be proud of, this is just warmed over nationalism.
They are only moving ahead to level the playing field as much as they can.
Pelevin (the best modern Russian writer) came up with another more appropriate name - "Patsaneriya".
This "protection" of personal data is the same as "protection" of Russian-speaking in Crymea - just an excuse for a grab.
Edit: since I am getting down voted let me explain.
> The EU Data Protection Directive requires that personal data a company collects can not be moved somewhere where the consumer will have weaker protections than in the EU.
Practically it means that data can not be moved outside of EU, since they would be under different jurisdiction. For example court in EU must approve all data disclosures. If data are in US the disclosure could bypass courts in EU, there could be even gag order.
Simply put, the EU can not enforce its law in foreign countries. Safe Harbor and similar are nice in theory, but it still does not put them under EU jurisdiction.
BTW: Irish Google got sued already for sharing data with american mother-ship.
This has required some workarounds, such as "safe harbour" provisions that US companies need to accept in order to receive personal data from EU companies that have collected them from users, which basically boils down to that the US company need to agree to comply with the same basic rules as if the data had stayed in the EU.
End users can pass their data to whomever, whether or not they comply with these rules.
That said, one of the objections that caused the Data Retention Directive to fall in the EU courts was privacy considerations, so who knows. To find out we'll need a lawsuit.
Big companies already have content distribution networks and server farms all over the world. And since Russia is hardly the first country to pass such a law, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and many others have already had algorithms in place to ensure user data stays local for certain countries.
Now they'll just add Russia to the list.