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Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

reuters.com

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Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#41

Post by PeterZhizhin »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #38
PeterZhizhin wrote: post #28

Russian here. I live in Moscow. I've just came back from the rally. Interned at an IT company in Switzerland and US. My Digital Ocean VPS IP address was blocked in Russia due to this crazy thing going on with the Internet here. Even though it was a private service that is not exposed to the global network. AMA.

What kind of internet regulation would you tolerate? What are your thoughts about current situation in Russia where literally millions of our citizens wholeheartedly agree with any crazy internet policy? And in general believe in what is told though TV Yeah, i live here too.

I think that the Internet as a decentralised system doesn't require any regulation. This a self-regulatory system.

On the second question though... I don't see any future for me in Russia. Thankfully, it will be relatively easy for me to emigrate.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#42

Post by DocG »

Intresting fallout from our bigger client. They have been slowly migrating to aws over the last year but because russia started bloking whole blocks of aws IPs, they now stopped migration and are going to keep their own infrastructure up. I havent heard yet but I am sure they are considering moving away from cloud providers, we'll see what they decide, because Russia is huge market.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#43

Post by kurthr »

PeterZhizhin wrote: post #39
comboy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly are they doing? Just cutting off random IPs? The actual IP was blocked or is it only DNS based? How about tor traffic?

Right now, we have a legislation (this one existed since 2012) that requires to ban certain IP addresses. All ISP's are being monitored by the authority called Roscomnadzor and allowing access to a banned IP will lead to fines. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work because people here learned how to use VPN's, proxies and Tor. Moreover, with cloud providers you can easily switch IP addresses. Telegram messenger was…

Yes... "don't create weapons you don't want your opponents to use", is an excellent maxim. Unfortunately, governments do it all the time.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#44

Post by sam_lowry_ »

conistonwater wrote: post #36
gdy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I most certainly do. 13. Recalls that the restrictive measures taken by the EU are directly linked to the Russian Federation’s violation of international law with the illegal annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Ukraine, while the trade measures taken by the Russian Federation, including those against Ukraine and other Eastern Partnership countries which have recently concluded Association Agreements with…

Was this seriously considered, or is it just the European Parliament saying things? When I google this stuff, I can't find anything to support it like an actual plan or something.

Around the time when politicians were discussing the ban, a Russian banker joined SWIFT board. This was not a political move but a purely technical one, board members are selected based on the number of messages sent over the last year.

Still funny that media did not report it at the time although this was made public.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#45

Post by sam_lowry_ »

sasasassy wrote: post #32
conistonwater wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russia has been threatened to be cut off from SWIFT Do you have a link for this claim? All I get when googling "russia cut off from swift" is a bunch of rt/zerohedge/tass stuff (wtf is TruNews?), followed by some clear denials in ft/bloomberg. Is there more to this than just the Russian government saying stuff?

A quick google search reveals they apparently have their own SWIFT now.¹ It is ran side by side with SWIFT, not as a competitor, so the claim that it is from fear of sanctions or other actions from the US seems accurate. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/23/russias-central-bank-governo...

Every country with an independent financial system has a so called RTGS,a real-time gross settlement system. It happens that Russian RTGS is similar to SWIFT as far as data structures are concerned. This makes it easier to extend RTGS to other kinds of uses.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#46

Post by comboy »

PeterZhizhin wrote: post #39
comboy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly are they doing? Just cutting off random IPs? The actual IP was blocked or is it only DNS based? How about tor traffic?

Right now, we have a legislation (this one existed since 2012) that requires to ban certain IP addresses. All ISP's are being monitored by the authority called Roscomnadzor and allowing access to a banned IP will lead to fines. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work because people here learned how to use VPN's, proxies and Tor. Moreover, with cloud providers you can easily switch IP addresses. Telegram messenger was…

Thanks for a detailed explanation.

That seems pretty radical. I mean, because of technology progress (mainly crypto improvements, but also cheaper hardware development) I only see two outcomes in the future: (it's a global issue, not just related to Russia)

1. We have a complete freedom of information exchange. It's a powerful thing. It's not only free speech, but also easily available all illegal digital content and ability to transfer money anonymously. In such scenario, it's inevitable that governments role will diminish. Well, they are huge and powerful, they can still retain a huge influence (and already do * ) by manipulating people, the software they use etc.

2. The Internet as we know it today ceases to exist. Basically what you wrote above and much more. Pretty dark scenario. I always hoped that enough big players (who are able to influence gov) depend enough on the way the Internet currently works, that it would be very hard push this. Maybe not as hard as I thought. Because note that most people, majority of users, simply don't care. Leave top 100 websites working (power law traffic distribution) and most people won't notice the difference.

*. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE&feature=youtu.be...

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#47

Post by simion314 »

telaport wrote: post #22

The proper US response to the 2016 meddling would have been a NATSEC law that said no US based social media company could allow for 5 years any Russian IP address to connect to their services, or they would suffer massive fines. Facebook and Twitter for their role in the attack would be fined $5 Billion Dollars each and forced to provide policies within 1 year to prevent this from happening again, or face the threat…

Is this possible technically? The story is about trying to block Telegram and finding out that is impossible because of VPNs, IP changes(tech details) why do you think you can prevent Russian trolls to post on social media with a law? You block eh innocent people that are not technically sophisticated at best

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#48

Post by rjf72 »

walrus01 wrote: post #16

I just took a 30 second look at the English language websites of TASS, RT and Sputnik. Unsurprisingly, there is no mention whatsoever of these protests.

It's often unwise to draw assumptions based on what is likely an extremely biased view. You might find this information [1] surprising (Google translate will work fine). The organizers themselves chose to ban a number of media organizations from covering or attending the rally. Among these were RT/Ruptly.

[1] - https://russian.rt.com/russia/news/609659-rt-miting-moskva

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#50

Post by rjf72 »

PeterZhizhin wrote: post #31
walrus01 wrote: post #16

I just took a 30 second look at the English language websites of TASS, RT and Sputnik. Unsurprisingly, there is no mention whatsoever of these protests.

These websites are controlled (directly or indirectly) by the Russian government. They usually don't mention opposition meetings. I think that they don't want anyone to know even about their existence.

Can you reference any significant 'opposition' meeting (such as this) that was not covered by RT for less than justifiable reason? E.g. - in this event the organizers prohibited RT from covering the event, which is a pretty decent reason for the lack of coverage!
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