As Russian President Vladimir Putin starts his fourth Kremlin term, authorities are turning up the heat on popular Web sites and apps ostensibly to fight terrorism but analysts say the real motive is to muzzle critics.
A move last week to block the strongly encrypted messenger Telegram, less than a month after Putin’s crushing poll win, marks a new stage in the crackdown launched after his previous victory in 2012.
Telegram, which has 200 million users and is ironically the go-to messaging app for top Kremlin officials, was specifically designed by Russian developers to circumvent the Kremlin’s security forces.
Putin has gradually brought media, primarily television, under state control since the early 2000s.
Experts say the Kremlin recognizes the Internet as the principal threat to its domination and one of the last refuges of free speech — especially after it helped fuel unprecedented mass demonstrations when Putin returned to the presidency six years ago after four years as prime minister.
“The Kremlin got scared and responded with an attack on internet freedoms,” said Andrei Soldatov, editor-in-chief of Agentura.ru, a site monitoring the security services.
In the summer of 2012, Russia created a blacklist of sites showing child pornography or drug use and also those deemed to be “extremist” — a term vague enough to include opposition activism. The professed intention of the move was to protect children from harmful content online.
Two years later, the parliament unleashed a barrage of new anti-terrorist laws, including a ruling that blogs with more than 3,000 viewers per day must face the same strict regulations as news media.
Since then, Russian and foreign Internet providers have been legally obliged to store the data of their Russian users in Russia.
Subsequently, new legislation citing terror threats has forced all “distributors of information” — including boggers and even social media platform VK, its owner Mail.ru, and Internet giant Yandex — to retain all user data for six months and provide it to the authorities on request.
Under the latest measure imposed late last year, the authorities are able ban VPN services that allow users to bypass Russian site blocks by simulating a connection from another country.
This legislative onslaught has been widely used against the opposition, who are ignored by mainstream news media, but are active online. Rights groups have also been hit hard.
The blog and Web site of the main opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, have been blocked partially or completely several times over his calls for street protests or exposes of official corruption.
Sites used by the opposition organization of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, were also blocked after they were designated “undesirable” — a new term for foreign entities that has also been used against the foundation of the US financier George Soros.
“The purpose is to spread fear, [to] make people think that the state controls everything and that you can’t hide anywhere, that all data can be collected,” said Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer and director of a digital rights center in Moscow.
However, Russia cannot simply impose a local version of China’s “Great Firewall” cutting off all access to sites, he said.
“Unlike China, where the Internet was constrained since the beginning, Russian Internet started off as very free,” he said.
Ultimately global players who want to operate in Russia will have to comply with state restrictions or get blocked, he said, adding it’s only “a matter of time.”
Opposition figures “find new ways of working: They go over to cloud services, widely use social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and inform people how to get round blocks,” said Artyom Kozlyuk, director of Roskomsvoboda, and Internet rights non-governmental organization.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the