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This is truly disheartening. I hope that other providers follow suit and choose the privacy of their customers over profits. This move is unacceptable by the Ru

by jswny 10y ago

This is truly disheartening. I hope that other providers follow suit and choose the privacy of their customers over profits. This move is unacceptable by the Russian government. To save logs as required by this radical new Russian legislation is to compromise the entire concept of a VPN. I hope that the US government takes note of how direct of an impact this has on the tech industry in Russia, and how it can happen here in the US if the government keeps encroaching on privacy as they have been doing in the past few years. It's going to kill our tech industry if we don't stop.

csydas 10y ago
While I understand the sentiment and frustration, a few corrections and comments: 1. This is not radical new law, but has been in place for a year; it's only now that Roskomnadzor has elected to address this particular VPN service. This doesn't change the shock of server seizure, but it also has been clear that this was a long time coming, or should have been for the VPN provider. 2. In regards to the comment on the US, I'm sure they'll pay attention, but not in the way you're thinking. Remember, even though the US has no blanket policy for ISPs and other service providers, they do frequently issue warrants for the data already stored by ISPs and service providers. [1,2,3] Compliance for these usually isn't an option, nor do many businesses have the resources to fight the government successfully. 3. Even before government snoop acts and projects, ISPs and companies based in the US (and outside) have been willingly handing over customer data as a matter of business. Government snooping likely won't "kill tech", rather, it will kill very specific privacy oriented tech. This is indeed bad, and I am not sure how to ensure that my plainness of statement does not understate the severity, but provisions such as what Russia and the EU have will not be the deathknell for technology in the United States, or even across the globe, any more than what the US has already done with it's snooping and spying. In short, if tech can still pull money after the NSA revelations, it's likely able to survive more foreign regulations. [1] https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Privacy:_Stored_Communications_Act https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Privacy:_Stored_Communications... [2] http://digitaldueprocess.org/index.cfm?objectid=37940370-2551-11DF-8E02000C296BA163 http://digitaldueprocess.org/index.cfm?objectid=37940370-255... [3] http://www.cnet.com/news/house-panel-approves-broadened-isp-snooping-bill/ http://www.cnet.com/news/house-panel-approves-broadened-isp-...
- simbalion 10y ago
  I think we should also remember that Putin is believed to be a mass murderer, and there is no reason to think that Russia can get better with regards to ethical standards with Putin in charge.
  - csydas 10y ago
    I didn't suggest any such thing, nor am I excusing Russia's actions in the least bit. The original comment seemed to think that the US wasn't already involved in this type of snooping and aggressive actions towards people's privacy, and that such actions would be a poison to tech - if anything, tech and government have happily crawled into bed with one another in the US, with only a few important cases where there has been resistance. So I responded to point out that the US has very little to learn from Russia - if the lesson is supposed to be trampling privacy and freedom via technology is going to hamper tech-businesses, then I really don't think the US learned it during any of the times it did exactly that. I don't think it learned it when the EU did it, and I don't think they're going to learn it from a VPN provider's servers being seized in Russia. The US heard the lesson long ago, and just didn't care. Putin having skeletons in his closet doesn't really change any of that.
pasbesoin 10y ago
Authorities are currently engaged in playing off of one another, in a ratchet effect. Country by country, example by counter-example, it tightens -- step by step. It never loosens. Gradually, expectations are shifted and conformation is imposed. (Did you see anyone stopping all the Western (companies') investment and profit-taking in the early days of China's Great Firewall -- as just one, and far from the best, example?) All the big money and influence is going towards more "controls". To quote an old movie, "Follow the money..."
junto 10y ago
I mean this quite seriously. With the appointment of Theresa May as UK Prime Minister, the driver behind the new overreaching snooping bill, UK citizens should prepare themselves for similar actions from the UK government. May seems to have read 1984 and used it as her manual, with extreme additions of her own invention, as modernisations that Orwell himself had not even envisaged.

by jswny 10y ago

csydas 10y ago

While I understand the sentiment and frustration, a few corrections and comments: 1. This is not radical new law, but has been in place for a year; it's only now that Roskomnadzor has elected to address this particular VPN service. This doesn't change the shock of server seizure, but it also has been clear that this was a long time coming, or should have been for the VPN provider. 2. In regards to the comment on the US, I'm sure they'll pay attention, but not in the way you're thinking. Remember, even though the US has no blanket policy for ISPs and other service providers, they do frequently issue warrants for the data already stored by ISPs and service providers. [1,2,3] Compliance for these usually isn't an option, nor do many businesses have the resources to fight the government successfully. 3. Even before government snoop acts and projects, ISPs and companies based in the US (and outside) have been willingly handing over customer data as a matter of business. Government snooping likely won't "kill tech", rather, it will kill very specific privacy oriented tech. This is indeed bad, and I am not sure how to ensure that my plainness of statement does not understate the severity, but provisions such as what Russia and the EU have will not be the deathknell for technology in the United States, or even across the globe, any more than what the US has already done with it's snooping and spying. In short, if tech can still pull money after the NSA revelations, it's likely able to survive more foreign regulations. [1] https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Privacy:_Stored_Communications_Act https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Privacy:_Stored_Communications... [2] http://digitaldueprocess.org/index.cfm?objectid=37940370-2551-11DF-8E02000C296BA163 http://digitaldueprocess.org/index.cfm?objectid=37940370-255... [3] http://www.cnet.com/news/house-panel-approves-broadened-isp-snooping-bill/ http://www.cnet.com/news/house-panel-approves-broadened-isp-...

simbalion 10y ago
I think we should also remember that Putin is believed to be a mass murderer, and there is no reason to think that Russia can get better with regards to ethical standards with Putin in charge.
- csydas 10y ago
  I didn't suggest any such thing, nor am I excusing Russia's actions in the least bit. The original comment seemed to think that the US wasn't already involved in this type of snooping and aggressive actions towards people's privacy, and that such actions would be a poison to tech - if anything, tech and government have happily crawled into bed with one another in the US, with only a few important cases where there has been resistance. So I responded to point out that the US has very little to learn from Russia - if the lesson is supposed to be trampling privacy and freedom via technology is going to hamper tech-businesses, then I really don't think the US learned it during any of the times it did exactly that. I don't think it learned it when the EU did it, and I don't think they're going to learn it from a VPN provider's servers being seized in Russia. The US heard the lesson long ago, and just didn't care. Putin having skeletons in his closet doesn't really change any of that.

pasbesoin 10y ago

Authorities are currently engaged in playing off of one another, in a ratchet effect. Country by country, example by counter-example, it tightens -- step by step. It never loosens. Gradually, expectations are shifted and conformation is imposed. (Did you see anyone stopping all the Western (companies') investment and profit-taking in the early days of China's Great Firewall -- as just one, and far from the best, example?) All the big money and influence is going towards more "controls". To quote an old movie, "Follow the money..."

junto 10y ago

I mean this quite seriously. With the appointment of Theresa May as UK Prime Minister, the driver behind the new overreaching snooping bill, UK citizens should prepare themselves for similar actions from the UK government. May seems to have read 1984 and used it as her manual, with extreme additions of her own invention, as modernisations that Orwell himself had not even envisaged.