Now That The NSA Has Made It The Norm, Total Surveillance During The Sochi Olympic Games Is No Longer Noteworthy

from the welcome-to-the-(permanent)-olympics dept

In addition to being an opportunity to stretch copyright and trademark rules way beyond the law, over the years, the Olympics has also become an occasion when the feeble "because terrorism" excuse is deployed to justify all kinds of additional restrictions on personal freedoms. It will come as no surprise to learn that the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Vladimir Putin's pet project, will continue the tradition:

every phone call, every email, every social media message in Sochi will be accessible, traceable by Russia's Federal Security Service -- the FSB -- the organization in charge of securing the Olympics.

The CBC News report quoted above goes on:

it's the extent of all the surveillance the FSB is planning that has deepened much of the disquiet, at home and abroad, over the coming games.

For Russia, surveillance measures may be something of a force of habit.

If this piece had been written a year ago, those paragraphs could have been read unironically. But today, in the post-Snowden world, it is impossible not to replace "FSB" with "NSA" or "GCHQ". Since we now know that practically "every phone call, every email, every social media message" in the world -- not just in Sochi -- is accessible to the US authorities, it's as if we find ourselves in a global Olympics lockdown. But unlike the quadrennial Olympics, this particular circus shows no sign of moving on.

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Filed Under: olympics, russia, sochi, surveillance, vladimir putin

Microsoft Agrees To Hand Over Skype User Data To Russian Police

from the laying-down-for-its-users dept

Microsoft's defense of its very close relationship with national intelligence agencies has historically been that it "complies with applicable laws." However, its "compliance" in the past seemed to have exceeded the compliance of other companies, as it offered the NSA pre-encryption access to most of its popular services as well as "working closely" with the agency to allow it to grab both audio and video from Skype, which it acquired in 2011.

The company has taken a tougher stance in recent weeks, releasing statements that decry the agency's overreach and promise better protection of users' information and data. But given this recent development, it appears the tough talk was saber-rattling for the public's benefit. Microsoft is still very compliant when it comes to working with intelligence agencies.

Microsoft Corporation that owns the Internet call service Skype is ready to keep in store its Russian users’ negotiations, correspondence and data exchange during six months and share it with the Russian police, if necessary, Microsoft’s press office told Itar-Tass.
Microsoft thus confirmed its commitment to work in full compliance with the Russian law, the way it does in all countries of its operations. If any new law is adopted, the company will comply with it as well, the press office said.

Well, I suppose there are none of the usual constitutional concerns that might (theoretically) limit Microsoft's obliging attitude towards the Russian's counter-terrorism efforts. Every Russian Skype user will have their data stored for six months and handed over to the police whenever they ask for it. If the Russian agencies decide they need more data, or want to extend the length of time the data is stored, Microsoft has already agreed to honor any future law targeting its Skype users.

The pending legislation covers a whole lot of ground, data-wise.

According to the document, an individual or a legal entity that has organised users’ contacts on the Internet are to store information about the reception, transmission, delivery and processing of voice information, texts, images, sounds or any other actions in the process of information dissemination and/or data exchange, for six months following such actions and share the mentioned information with the state authorities, if requested.

Any service that has user accounts (which would be close to 100% of them) will be required to hold tons of user data and metadata for six months at the behest of Russian authorities. This isn't that much different than the NSA's data hauls, except that some of its programs don't specifically ask for permission before grabbing data and the collections are stored onsite by the agency.

Details are presumably still being hashed out, but Microsoft has already sworn its allegiance to the Russian law in whatever form it takes after being pushed through the legislative process. Not exactly a heartening indicator of Microsoft's new-found willingness to stand up to government overreach.

Filed Under: data, russia, skype
Companies: microsoft, skype

Russian Authorities Threaten To Block CloudFlare And Other Key Infrastructural Sites

from the here-comes-balkanization dept

This is getting boring. Every time Techdirt writes about Russian Internet blocking, it's along the lines of: "just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, it does." Here's another one. As a post from TorrentFreak explains, Russia's telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor maintains a blacklist of sites that allegedly promote the usual bad stuff -- child pornography, criminal activities, suicide etc. In news that will surprise no one that understands how the Internet works, Roskomnadzor is finding it hard to enforce those blocks on material held on servers located outside Russia:

The problem, the watchdog says, is being caused by foreign hosts and service providers, mainly in the United States, who are refusing to disable access to a range of 'illegal' material when Russian authorities ask. The sites they host apparently "hop around" from location to location, but within the same provider, testing Roskomnadzor's patience.

Instead of realizing that it needs to re-think its approach, it has decided to double-down by blocking entire sites, rather than just material on them. Many of those are typical file-sharing or torrent sites, but according to TorrentFreak, Roskomnadzor won't stop there:

Stop-ddos.net, staminus.net and incapsula.com are all US-based content-agnostic services that provide websites with DDoS and other security-related protection. Even though they clearly do not provide any illegal content, they are being held responsible for the activities of their customers.

That is, the Russian agency is failing to distinguish between those offering possibly illegal content, and those that simply provide the plumbing. Worryingly, Roskomnadzor may well block some pretty important infrastructure companies:

And, as if it couldn't get any worse, rounding off the Russian list is CloudFlare, a US-based CDN [content delivery network] company that assists many hundreds of thousands of sites worldwide. Back in March, CloudFlare experienced technical difficulties which resulted in 750,000 sites being taken offline. If the Russians block CloudFlare, similar numbers of sites would be rendered locally inaccessible.

That would cut off millions of Russians from many worthwhile sites, while doing little to stop those who are determined to acquire materials illegally. That means this approach, too, will fail to achieve Roskomnadzor's unrealistic goals, and that the Russian agency will then move on to even more extreme measures. It can only be a matter of time before it decides to cut off all Internet sites located outside Russia -- purely to protect the children, you understand.

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Filed Under: censorship, overkill, russia

There's Only One Place To Put The Blame For Russian, Chinese Fallout From NSA Spying: On The NSA

from the everything-else-is-a-distraction dept

We recently wrote about how Kurt Eichenwald's bizarre and irrational deference to his friends in the security state led him to claim that Ed Snowden is a Chinese spy, whose work was specifically designed to aid China in its attempts to attack the internet. The level of cognitive dissonance to make such an argument is quite stunning. Thankfully, most people seemed to see right through the insanity. In the meantime, over at The Guardian, John Kampfner has what might be considered the much more accurate version of the same story. It notes how the knowledge of the NSA's activities have played right into Russia and China's hands concerning their efforts to gain greater control over the internet:

Slowly but surely governance of the internet is moving from the existing mishmash of institutions and into the hands of national governments. The Chinese call this "cyber autonomy".

Authoritarian regimes are showing ever-greater confidence in restricting information, filtering, blocking, monitoring and punishing anyone who steps over the mark.

And, yes, the knowledge of what the US is doing is giving the Chinese, Russians and plenty of others greater confidence to push for their own agenda. Amazingly, and in a sad statement on the state of the US government today, the report notes that a Chinese official recently argued: At the recent IGF in Indonesia the Chinese were, for the first time, out in force. One "expert" offered to explain to a US state department official why US human rights standards are not up to scratch and how China could help. This is, certainly, all just political posturing from a country that has a dreadful human rights record, but as we've noted plenty of times, the loss of any semblance of a moral high ground by the US on human rights has serious consequences. But unlike Eichenwald, Kampfner doesn't blame the messenger. Instead he puts the blame squarely where it belongs -- on the US government for its activities.

American dominance of the internet is being challenged on several fronts. The Obama administration and its spooks only have themselves to blame.

Except, of course, they're using compliant mouthpieces like Eichenwald to, instead, try to blame the messenger. Nothing is going to get fixed here until the current leadership either takes responsibility or is replaced in office by those who will take responsibility.

Filed Under: china, cybersecurity, espionage, hacking, kurt eichenwald, nsa, russia, spying

Russia's Leading Social Network VKontakte Cleared Of Copyright Infringement

from the surprising,-but-maybe-irrelevant dept

VKontakte is not only the largest social networking site in Russia, but is also one of the biggest unauthorized repositories of copyright music, thanks to its file-hosting service. Given the moves to clamp down on copyright infringement in Russia, it seemed only a matter of time before VKontakte found itself in hot water because of this. And yet, as Torrent Freak reports, something unexpected has happened:

Russia's largest social network has been cleared of copyright infringement charges by a court in St. Petersburg. A lawsuit brought by a famous local records label alleged that VKontakte should be held liable for music piracy carried out by its users. However a judge ruled that there was no way the site could monitor all user uploads for infringement and in any event, no operator of Vkontakte had anything to do with the downloading, recording, and dissemination of any infringing content.

This is, of course, an eminently sensible ruling, because it is indeed impossible for VKontakte to check every upload for possible infringement, not least because copyright law is so complex that only courts are competent to make that call. However, it looks like unauthorized uploads may be going away anyway:

Earlier this year the site's founder said that talks were underway with Universal, Warner and Sony with a view to making their content available to the site's users as part of a licensing deal.

It seems inevitable that part of that deal would be the elimination of all those unofficial copies. VKontakte's recent court win will at least strengthen its negotiating position when it comes to arguing over the details.

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Filed Under: copyright, russia, secondary liability, social media
Companies: vkontakte

US Intelligence Effectively Admits That, Despite Earlier Statements, They Don't Think Snowden Gave Docs To Russians

from the apparently-they-figured-out-what-he-had dept

The Washington Post has an interesting article about James Clapper calling intelligence officials around the globe to effectively pre-warn them that cooperative activities with US intelligence agencies are likely to be revealed in the press before long, thanks to Ed Snowden. It's a worthwhile read, but two things struck me about it:

1. It sounds like the NSA might have finally figured out what Snowden took, only five or so months later.
2. They seem to know that (contrary to what they've claimed publicly) Russia does not have access to the trove of Snowden docs. That's not stated explicitly, but the following snippet makes it pretty clear:

   In one case, for instance, the files contain information about a program run from a NATO country against Russia that provides valuable intelligence for the U.S. Air Force and Navy, said one U.S. official, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. Snowden faces theft and espionage charges.
   
   “If the Russians knew about it, it wouldn’t be hard for them to take appropriate measures to put a stop to it,” the official said.

   That statement certainly indicates that the Russians haven't taken those appropriate measures... meaning that they don't yet know about it. Of course, Snowden himself recently insisted that he got rid of the docs before going to Russia, but some chose not to believe him. The statements above suggest not only that Snowden was being truthful, but also that administration and Congressional officials who insist that Snowden gave the documents to the Russian are ignorant or lying.

It's funny how a little sunlight and transparency often has a contagious way of revealing even more over time...

Filed Under: ed snowden, intelligence, james clapper, leaks, russia

Ed Snowden Confirms He Took None Of The Documents To Russia

from the as-expected dept

As we noted last month, from earlier comments Ed Snowden had made about it being impossible for him to reveal the documents he leaked to the Russians or Chinese, it seemed quite likely that he got rid of the documents and had no copies any more himself. This seemed even more likely after the report from earlier this week that the four laptops he took were more of a diversion than anything else. And now, Snowden has confirmed directly that he handed the documents off to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald and did not keep copies for himself, as he's now explained to the NY Times' James Risen.

Mr. Snowden said he gave all of the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong, before flying to Moscow, and did not keep any copies for himself. He did not take the files to Russia “because it wouldn’t serve the public interest,” he said.

“What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward?” he added.

While he obviously did take them to Hong Kong, that was before anyone was paying attention to him, and he notes that he was well aware of how to hide the documents from the Chinese, having actually taught a class at the NSA on Chinese cybercounterintelligence.

“There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,” he said.

He further noted that the NSA is well aware that neither the Russians nor Chinese got access to the documents, meaning that when US officials are suggesting that he gave the docs to both (or that they got them from him) they're either ignorant or lying. He also explained that, contrary to the claims from some that he "defected" to Russia, his intent had never been to "defect" to either Russia or China, but (as people have noted) due to the US's own actions, he's effectively been stranded in Russia for the time being.

Filed Under: china, documents, ed snowden, leaks, russia

Russia Plans To Launch Sputnik Again -- This Time As A Search Engine

from the easier-said-than-done dept

Techdirt has been reporting for a while the efforts of the Russian government to bring the Internet there under control. It now seems that it is taking a new approach: as well as banning or criminalizing activities it doesn't like, it wants to compete with them directly. Specifically, it plans to fund a new Russian search engine, called "Sputnik", named after the first artificial satellite, put into space by the Russians in 1957. According to an article in the news magazine "Der Spiegel" (original in German), this is designed to address two problems at once.

The first is the risk that Russia's leading search engine, Yandex, might fall into hostile hands. Yandex currently holds 60% of the Russian search engine market, and makes a healthy $400 million profit on revenue of $1 billion, and so would be a tempting target for a take-over. The danger for the Russian government is that it might go to someone hostile to their policies. In fact, Yandex has already proved something of a thorn in the Russian government's side, since it has not only supported opposition figures on several occasions, but it has the habit of linking to foreign sites that contradict the official line.

That's the second problem that Sputnik is designed to solve. The hope seems to be that in time it will become one of the main sources of information for Russians when they go online, and allow the government to ensure that no inconvenient facts are served up when they search on sensitive subjects.

Of course, it's one thing to talk about launching a search engine that will take on Yandex and Google (which currently holds around 26% of the market), and quite another to deliver. As Techdirt reported back in 2006, similar plans by the French government to set up its own search engine soon fizzled out. The article in Der Spiegel talks of the Russian government providing around $20 million dollars to fund the new project, and notes that this seems far too little to take on Yandex with its 3,500 employees. As well as a large workforce, Yandex also has a healthy bank balance thanks to an earlier flotation on the New York Stock Exchange that brought it an extra $1.3 billion to bolster its already considerable resources.

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Filed Under: russia, search engine, sputnik
Companies: google, sputnik, yandex

Russian Pirates Offer To Host NASA's Website While US Government Is Shutdown

from the adopt-a-us-gov't-webiste dept

The government shutdown leading to various government websites being taken offline has been the subject of much mocking. But, for people who rely on those websites, it can be quite a nuisance. So perhaps it's time to start an "adopt a federal website" program, where others are willing to host the downed websites until such time as the government gets its act together. It appears that the Russian Pirate Party has kicked all this off by offering to host NASA's downed website. The full statement on the party's website is somewhat amusing:

To NASA, USA
from Pirate Party of Russia

Dear Madame/Sir,

We do care about the situation around your web site and the budget crisis in USA. Thereby we would like to offer you bulletproof collocation or dedicated servers on our hosting platform till the end of the crisis. We stand for Internet privacy, and as the result you would not have to worry about programs such as PRISM and other illegal activities of secret services of different countries. Your traffic, your activity and the activity of your users will be in safety.

We love Mars!

Perhaps we can set up an crowdfunding campaign to get this kind of thing moving.

Filed Under: government shutdown, pirate party, russia, websites

Russians Censor Website About Russians Censoring Websites

from the we've-gone-meta dept

There are a few things that seem fairly clear about the Russian government. First, it loves to censor stuff, preferring whitelists to blacklists. Secondly, the Russian government isn't so big on this whole free speech thing, and it's even less enthused about anonymous speech. Also, we know that the Russian government likes to limit what it calls "obscenities," which not only feature your common curse words and YouTube style internet comments, but also anyone who is gay and likes being gay enough to tell someone else that being gay ain't so bad. And, finally, I now know the Russian government sucks at irony.

I say that because a language art website in Russia that published a bunch of satirical material on how gay people give the Kremlin the censorious heebie-jeebies has been itself censored.

In August, Russian-language art website published two satirical ebooks spoofing Russia's new anti-gay propaganda" laws, Homosexuality for Kids and Lesbianism for Kids. Now, they along with their entire blogging platform, is apparently banned in Russia. The two gay "guidebooks" are full of explicit images and tongue-in-cheek pronouncements like "Sometimes, when you look at another boy, you suddenly feel happy and strange." But as Animal New York points out, "one look through them and you know they're not gay textbooks for children. If you don't, you are silly or tyrannical Kremlin minion."

Methinks the Russian government doth protest too much. That aside, here's the lesson for all of you interested in civics: authoritarian regimes suck because they have no sense of humor. When you can't let an art site poke fun at you, you've lost all governing perspective and you should expect the revolution to begin post-haste, because if there's something people won't put up with it's the inability to have a laugh.

Meanwhile, back in the non-hissy-fit world, this censoring by Russia is Streisanding the blocked site to world's attention.

Luckily for Looo.ch, being banned by one of America's geopolitical adversaries is a great way to get blogs to write about you here in the U.S.. So what is looo.ch? It's the online home of New York-based Ukranian artists Anatoli Ulyanov and Natasha Masharova. The site is a raw, intriguing collection of projects, many of which seem to be direct provocations of Russia's overzealous web censors, recently empowered by the blacklist law that allows sites to be blocked if they are deemed to contain "information dangerous for children."

Ah, the "for the children" excuse to silence political opponents. And oldie but a goldie, as they say, except that a previously minor website's message is now front and center in the news. Your move, humorless Russian censor-borgs!

Filed Under: censorship, russia