[x-pubpol] The Kremlin’s New Internet Surveillance Plan Goes Live Today

[Joly MacFie]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/russia-surveillance/all/


   - By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
   - November 1, 2012


Signed into law by Vladimir Putin on July
28<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_of_Russian_Federation_no._139-FZ_of_2012-07-28>,
the internet-filtering measure contains a single, innocuous-sounding
paragraph that allows those compiling the Register to draw on court
decisions relating to the banning of websites. The problem is, the courts
have ruled to block more than child pornographers’ sites. The judges have
also agreed to online bans on political extremists and opponents of the
Putin regime.

The new system allows ISPs not only to filter traffic, but to monitor it on
a nationwide scale.

The principle of internet censorship is not a new one to the Russian
authorities. For five years, regional prosecutors have been busy
implementing regional court decisions requiring providers to block access
to banned sites. To date this has not been done systematically: Sites
blocked in one region remained accessible in others. The Register removes
this problem.

The new system is modeled on the one that is used to block extremist and
terrorist bank accounts. The Roskomnadzor (the Agency for the Supervision
of Information Technology, Communications and Mass Media) gathers not only
court decisions to outlaw sites or pages, but also data submitted by three
government agencies: the Interior Ministry, the Federal Antidrug Agency and
the Federal Service for the Supervision of Consumer Rights and Public
Welfare. The Agency is in charge of compiling and updating the Register,
and also of instructing the host providers to remove the URLs. If no action
by the provider follows, the internet service providers (ISPs) should block
access to the site in 24 hours. The host providers must also ensure they
are not in breach of current law by checking their content against the
database of outlawed sites and URLs published in a special
password-protected online version of the Register open only to webhosters
and ISPs.

Most importantly, however, the new Roskomnadzor system introduces DPI (deep
packet inspection) on a nationwide scale. Although DPI is not mentioned in
the law, the Ministry of Communications — along with the biggest internet
corporations active in Russia — concluded in August that the only way to
implement the law was through deep packet inspection.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
 http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
 VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
--------------------------------------------------------------
-
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.isoc-ny.org/pipermail/x-pubpol-isoc-ny.org/attachments/20121103/7b225bf4/attachment-0001.htm>