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Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

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Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#21
post #10
post #5

Europe has similar law (personal data should not leave Europe), but it is not as widely enforced. 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 differen…

Not quite. 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. 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 comp…

But US companies are target to NSA survailence and data disclosure, so they can not comply with EU regulations by definition.

Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#23
post #3

It sounds evil but balkanisation of the Internet is a natural result of the erosion of trust in corporations and other stewards of this medium. The NSA/GCHQ scandal only pushed it a little further. We all know that any great medium starts out as a bastion of understanding, sharing and common good until a bunch of trolls show up to ruin it all (ahem, reddit, ycombinator, digg, etc). Until that moment we enjoy all the…

balkanisation of the Internet is a natural result of the erosion of trust in corporations and other stewards of this medium 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 th…

It's certainly not that Putin needs to suppress dissent from his own people. It's a very small minority in Russia that would like Putin removed.

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.

Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#24
post #3

It sounds evil but balkanisation of the Internet is a natural result of the erosion of trust in corporations and other stewards of this medium. The NSA/GCHQ scandal only pushed it a little further. We all know that any great medium starts out as a bastion of understanding, sharing and common good until a bunch of trolls show up to ruin it all (ahem, reddit, ycombinator, digg, etc). Until that moment we enjoy all the…

Exactly - this is only the "natural" response countries should take to both punish US for its shameless foreign spying, but also for national security reasons (which US touts an excuse so much, for everything), to protect their data from being stolen.

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).

Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#25

It's sad that it's spiraling down to this but it is in practice no different than what the US is doing. There's no free speech without privacy so this looks like a "choose your dictator" kind of thing.

The difference here is that America does not care whether you store your data on services in Europe or Russia, but Russia does. Clearly in practice this is very different to what the US is doing.

Of course it doesn't because most, if not all, international internet services are actually based in the US, and there are laws/courts saying that US companies should give over data even if it's stored abroad. No other country has this kind of power, so it's reasonable that they try other ways of protecting their access to information.

Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#26
I think the problem with privacy violation is twofold.

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.

Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#27

While at 143 million people Russia has the largest population, this is rapidly shrinking, Russian internet (runet as they call it) was already mostly balkanised mainly due to language. 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

Except birth rate in Russia has been rapidly increasing in the last 14 years.

They are making steps to legalize content, such as vkontakte legalizing 70% of their media material.

Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#28
post #21
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. 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. 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 comp…

But US companies are target to NSA survailence and data disclosure, so they can not comply with EU regulations by definition.

So are EU Companies as we have seen...

Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#29
post #3

It sounds evil but balkanisation of the Internet is a natural result of the erosion of trust in corporations and other stewards of this medium. The NSA/GCHQ scandal only pushed it a little further. We all know that any great medium starts out as a bastion of understanding, sharing and common good until a bunch of trolls show up to ruin it all (ahem, reddit, ycombinator, digg, etc). Until that moment we enjoy all the…

balkanisation of the Internet is a natural result of the erosion of trust in corporations and other stewards of this medium 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 th…

Both mistrust of foreign companies and desire to suppress dissent could be reasons this law is being enacted. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

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:)

Re: Russia Moves To Ban Online Services That Don’t Store Personal Data In Russia

#30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

balkanisation of the Internet is a natural result of the erosion of trust in corporations and other stewards of this medium 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 th…

It's certainly not that Putin needs to suppress dissent from his own people. It's a very small minority in Russia that would like Putin removed. 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.

That's hilarious. People in Russia support Putin exactly because there are virtually no free mass media. This is one of the latest steps to block access to all media channels that may oppose Russian cleptocratic government.
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