7 ms·

Russia: Citizens must turn off home surveillance because Ukrainians are coming

70 points by rntn 2y ago

JKCalhoun 2y ago
Weird. It's as though home security and dating apps are notoriously a privacy nightmare.
- okr 2y ago
  It is more social engineering.
  - koolala 2y ago
    Turn off the 1 thing protecting you from war crimes.
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    Yes. So nobody sees how Russians are looting their neighbours house.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  Or run tracking apps. Russians lost at least one officer to an assassin finding his profile on an running app and lying in wait.
wongarsu 2y ago
Similarly I wonder how much of Russia's traffic camera network Ukraine has access to. And conversely what Ukraine does to avoid revealing targets and troop movements to Russian traffic cams
neltnerb 2y ago
Figures that the only push-back against pervasive surveillance that would have any chance of success is when the military points out that it is a threat to national security. The main thing surveillance cameras create is distrust between neighbors, and to enable businesses to better ignore the community they are in.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago
  >[1] The main thing surveillance cameras create is distrust between neighbors, and [2] to enable businesses to better ignore the community they are in. I see your first point, but don't get the second. What do you intend?
  - neltnerb 2y ago
    Basically the same, honestly. Putting one up inside your store, okay, sure whatever. I mean when they put them outside pointing at sidewalks and pedestrians. Monitoring the sidewalk says that you care more about your security than your neighbor's privacy, and intrinsically that you think your neighbors may be a security threat, which is objectively offensive if you're the neighbor. You don't do that if you see yourself as a part of the neighborhood. We can talk about theft and security being important concerns, sure, but when I see security cameras going up pointed at neighbors and pedestrians it's yet to be *because of an actual breakin*. It's just bonkers how they get installed without anyone asking "why here, specifically?" It seems like a response based on paranoia when the less antisocial thing to do is recognize that your business is, by the nature of physical space, part of the community. If every employee, including the founders and C-suite, commute from elsewhere and never talk to anyone living near their office, of course they're going to be paranoid of neighbors.
    - DigitallyFidget 2y ago
      My goal of the cameras, which my neighbours know about, is not protecting me. It's protecting us. I point cameras at their houses, at their doors & driveways from my property. Why? Because they can't install a camera on my house, but I can. Nobody has a problem. There's no distrust. There's cameras pointed right back at my home, too. We watch each other, because having more than one camera point of view creates a better security for all of us. I also have them watching at my door, specifically so I can see who is at the door, when mail gets delivered, or when packages get dropped off. None of us have the delusion that we're all spying on each other. We're watching out for each other.
      - deleted 2y ago
supriyo-biswas 2y ago
The technicalities of such an order greatly interest me — Roskomnadzor already has statutory rules in place that make ISPs block egress traffic to proxies, Tor entry nodes, and similar. Since the censorship infrastructure is already there, couldn’t they similarly not put up stateful firewall rules to prevent any inbound connections from outside Russia?
- wood_spirit 2y ago
  The Ukrainians probably had covert access into the Russian internet, but now they actually have Russian territory. Perhaps they are on the inside?
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Lots of Ukrainians live and study in Russia even after the war (I knew a Ukrainian citizen who was studying at PhysTech despite the 2022 war), and lots of families in Russia have relatives in Ukraine (and vice versa). It makes this war even more tragic, because Ukraine and Russia are so intertwined socially and culturally, and there was no reason for Russia to escalate the war. That said, Roskomnadzor can't fully lock down ingress and egress without drastically impacting the Russian economy and pissing off your average Russian who watches YouTube, games on Steam, and messages using Telegram.
    - wood_spirit 2y ago
      Back in 2021 Russia did several tests that disconnected from the international internet. They were prepared to do that and they didn’t suffer much financially and nobody really noticed tbh https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-disconnected-global-internet-tests-rbc-daily-2021-07-22/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-disconnected-globa... Just today I heard they had big outages. Haven’t seen much news about it but perhaps, as this article mentions speculation, it was an internal shutdown rather than external actors? https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/08/21/russia-blames-telegram-whatsapp-outage-on-cyberattack-as-experts-point-to-censorship-a86098 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/08/21/russia-blames-tele...
nikolay 2y ago
Of course, a clickbait title.
lenerdenator 2y ago
> Citizens were additionally asked to avoid posting to social media any footage taken from dashcams or similar equipment Well, there goes half of Russia's national cultural exports.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
api 2y ago
The Ukraine invasion is going to go down as one of the biggest own-goals in recent history. Even if Russia took all of Ukraine tomorrow it looks like it'd still be a pyrrhic non-victory given how much it cost them in money, lives, and international standing. It's basically reduced them to a Chinese vassal state. It's like Putin watched the US experience in Iraq and said "I can do something much dumber than that..."
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Understand that Kim Jong Un doesn't want to be Putin when he grows up. Instead, it is Putin who envies Kim. He wants to live a life of lucre and luxury while the rest of the world is more-or-less forced to prop up his failed state for humanitarian and political reasons. As stupid as this sounds, no other explanation for Putin's behavior makes any more sense. Come up with a better one? I'm all ears... but there's a lot you'll need to explain.
  - layer8 2y ago
    Putin wants Russia to be great again (the image of Russia he grew up with), and to undo the historic “injustice” of the fall of the USSR and Lenin’s “mistake” of ceding territory to Ukraine.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      People want a lot of things they can't have. Putin knows what's possible and what isn't, and that isn't.
      - layer8 2y ago
        I’m not sure that Putin knows what is and isn’t possible.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      That’s the public line, of course, but likely not his actual reasoning. Putin wants to stay in charge, because once he’s not in charge, his life expectancy is measured in hours.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ForOldHack 2y ago
Oh the SHAME!
shermozle 2y ago
The inevitable "find out" phase that always follows the "fuck around" phase.

70 points by rntn 2y ago

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Weird. It's as though home security and dating apps are notoriously a privacy nightmare.

okr 2y ago
It is more social engineering.
- koolala 2y ago
  Turn off the 1 thing protecting you from war crimes.
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  Yes. So nobody sees how Russians are looting their neighbours house.
lenerdenator 2y ago
Or run tracking apps. Russians lost at least one officer to an assassin finding his profile on an running app and lying in wait.

wongarsu 2y ago

Similarly I wonder how much of Russia's traffic camera network Ukraine has access to. And conversely what Ukraine does to avoid revealing targets and troop movements to Russian traffic cams

neltnerb 2y ago

Figures that the only push-back against pervasive surveillance that would have any chance of success is when the military points out that it is a threat to national security. The main thing surveillance cameras create is distrust between neighbors, and to enable businesses to better ignore the community they are in.

Ylpertnodi 2y ago
>[1] The main thing surveillance cameras create is distrust between neighbors, and [2] to enable businesses to better ignore the community they are in. I see your first point, but don't get the second. What do you intend?
- neltnerb 2y ago
  Basically the same, honestly. Putting one up inside your store, okay, sure whatever. I mean when they put them outside pointing at sidewalks and pedestrians. Monitoring the sidewalk says that you care more about your security than your neighbor's privacy, and intrinsically that you think your neighbors may be a security threat, which is objectively offensive if you're the neighbor. You don't do that if you see yourself as a part of the neighborhood. We can talk about theft and security being important concerns, sure, but when I see security cameras going up pointed at neighbors and pedestrians it's yet to be *because of an actual breakin*. It's just bonkers how they get installed without anyone asking "why here, specifically?" It seems like a response based on paranoia when the less antisocial thing to do is recognize that your business is, by the nature of physical space, part of the community. If every employee, including the founders and C-suite, commute from elsewhere and never talk to anyone living near their office, of course they're going to be paranoid of neighbors.
  - DigitallyFidget 2y ago
    My goal of the cameras, which my neighbours know about, is not protecting me. It's protecting us. I point cameras at their houses, at their doors & driveways from my property. Why? Because they can't install a camera on my house, but I can. Nobody has a problem. There's no distrust. There's cameras pointed right back at my home, too. We watch each other, because having more than one camera point of view creates a better security for all of us. I also have them watching at my door, specifically so I can see who is at the door, when mail gets delivered, or when packages get dropped off. None of us have the delusion that we're all spying on each other. We're watching out for each other.
    - deleted 2y ago

supriyo-biswas 2y ago

The technicalities of such an order greatly interest me — Roskomnadzor already has statutory rules in place that make ISPs block egress traffic to proxies, Tor entry nodes, and similar. Since the censorship infrastructure is already there, couldn’t they similarly not put up stateful firewall rules to prevent any inbound connections from outside Russia?

wood_spirit 2y ago
The Ukrainians probably had covert access into the Russian internet, but now they actually have Russian territory. Perhaps they are on the inside?
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Lots of Ukrainians live and study in Russia even after the war (I knew a Ukrainian citizen who was studying at PhysTech despite the 2022 war), and lots of families in Russia have relatives in Ukraine (and vice versa). It makes this war even more tragic, because Ukraine and Russia are so intertwined socially and culturally, and there was no reason for Russia to escalate the war. That said, Roskomnadzor can't fully lock down ingress and egress without drastically impacting the Russian economy and pissing off your average Russian who watches YouTube, games on Steam, and messages using Telegram.
  - wood_spirit 2y ago
    Back in 2021 Russia did several tests that disconnected from the international internet. They were prepared to do that and they didn’t suffer much financially and nobody really noticed tbh https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-disconnected-global-internet-tests-rbc-daily-2021-07-22/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-disconnected-globa... Just today I heard they had big outages. Haven’t seen much news about it but perhaps, as this article mentions speculation, it was an internal shutdown rather than external actors? https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/08/21/russia-blames-telegram-whatsapp-outage-on-cyberattack-as-experts-point-to-censorship-a86098 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/08/21/russia-blames-tele...

nikolay 2y ago

Of course, a clickbait title.

lenerdenator 2y ago

> Citizens were additionally asked to avoid posting to social media any footage taken from dashcams or similar equipment Well, there goes half of Russia's national cultural exports.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

api 2y ago

The Ukraine invasion is going to go down as one of the biggest own-goals in recent history. Even if Russia took all of Ukraine tomorrow it looks like it'd still be a pyrrhic non-victory given how much it cost them in money, lives, and international standing. It's basically reduced them to a Chinese vassal state. It's like Putin watched the US experience in Iraq and said "I can do something much dumber than that..."

CamperBob2 2y ago
Understand that Kim Jong Un doesn't want to be Putin when he grows up. Instead, it is Putin who envies Kim. He wants to live a life of lucre and luxury while the rest of the world is more-or-less forced to prop up his failed state for humanitarian and political reasons. As stupid as this sounds, no other explanation for Putin's behavior makes any more sense. Come up with a better one? I'm all ears... but there's a lot you'll need to explain.
- layer8 2y ago
  Putin wants Russia to be great again (the image of Russia he grew up with), and to undo the historic “injustice” of the fall of the USSR and Lenin’s “mistake” of ceding territory to Ukraine.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    People want a lot of things they can't have. Putin knows what's possible and what isn't, and that isn't.
    - layer8 2y ago
      I’m not sure that Putin knows what is and isn’t possible.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    That’s the public line, of course, but likely not his actual reasoning. Putin wants to stay in charge, because once he’s not in charge, his life expectancy is measured in hours.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ForOldHack 2y ago

Oh the SHAME!

shermozle 2y ago

The inevitable "find out" phase that always follows the "fuck around" phase.