Russia & US Attacking Free Web, New Internet Laws

Russia & US Both Attack Free Web. Russia just passed a new law requiring blogs, that have 3000 or more visitors per day, to register with the Russian government. The authors will have to sign the posts with their real name, and if bloggers fail to make their real name visible, the law would require hosting providers and owners of blogging platforms to provide the information. In parallel the Russian government is launching a program to scan Russian websites with special software to find obscenities in online written material.

According to RT, state-registered bloggers will be banned from posting “extremist and terrorist information, propagating pornography or violence, and disclosing state or commercial secrets. The bloggers will be obliged to verify the information they post, delete false reports and abstain from disclosing people’s personal data. They will also be banned from using obscene language.”

The idea that Putin cares enough about online cursing to write a new law and build a massive web spider to track down infringements stretches credulity. A more plausible explanation is that this measure is designed to allow the Russian government to build the infrastructure to monitor political speech, and prevent the U.S. from attempting to launch a synthetic color revolution within their borders. After what happened in Ukraine, and after the Cuba “Twitter” scandal it should be obvious that this is a real threat. Forcing tiny bloggers to register with the government though is the wrong approach. It isn’t just totalitarian, it’s bad PR. It provides ammunition to those working to demonize Russia. This law will have a knock on effect for Russian foreign policy as well because it damages the credibility of Russian media outlets, and often these outlets are the only ones willing to broadcast information that counters NATO propaganda.

The U.S. government would love to have legislation like this, and they’ve been quietly working behind the scenes to lay the framework for the regulation of online media, but they are much more careful about the PR aspect. They pretty much have to be. The American people, though they’ve already lost most of their constitutional protections, are still willing to fight for a few things. Sure the military can now detain anyone indefinitely without trial (thanks to the NDAA), and the NSA is monitoring everyone’s communications indiscriminately, but you had better not touch the internet. The mass resistance to SOPA demonstrated that principle pretty well.

The fact that the Russian government was able to pass this law without a backlash illustrates just how drastically cultures can differ psychology. It also demonstrates just how similar the psychology of governments are.

FBI Drafts Law to Require Websites to Grant Backdoor Access to Government Agencies

This is PRISM on steroids.

I’m sure you’ve heard about PRISM, the NSA’s surveillance program which enlisted the cooperation of tech giants like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft (and thereby Skype). That program involved companies voluntarily granting the U.S. government backdoor access to user communications and data. This was a scandal, and of course the companies involved were not about to reveal the technical methods used to grant that access. In the case of Microsoft, we have specific documents from the Snowden leaks which show that Microsoft helped the NSA by developing a way to break their own encryption, thereby allowing real time monitoring of Skype audio and video. If you think that’s creepy, wait till you hear what they are trying to do next.

 Right now the FBI Director Robert Mueller is traveling around the country meeting with CEOs and lawyers of major tech firms in an attempt to convince them not to publicly oppose a new law that they have drafted, a law making it mandatory for all websites which have over a certain number of users to install code that would allow the U.S. government to monitor all communications.

Seriously? If you’re like me, you probably did a double take when you read that.

According to CNET, the FCC is already making active inquiries into the matter, which indicates that they are preparing to create new regulations.
“We have noticed a massive uptick in the amount of FCC CALEA inquiries and enforcement proceedings within the last year, most of which are intended to address ‘Going Dark’ issues,” says Christopher Canter, lead compliance counsel at the Marashlian and Donahue law firm, which specializes in CALEA. “This generally means that the FCC is laying the groundwork for regulatory action.”

The FBI’s legislation, is just one component of what the agency is internally referring to as the “National Electronic Surveillance Strategy.” The law has gotten the Department of “Justice” stamp of approval.

As President Vladimir Putin quietly signed a new law requiring popular online voices to register with the government, a measure that lawyers, internet pioneers and political activists said on Tuesday would give the government a much wider ability to track who said what online. Putin’s action on Monday, just weeks after he disparaged the internet as “a special CIA project,” borrowed a page from the restrictive internet playbooks of many governments around the world that have been steadily smothering online freedoms

Without yet mentioning TPP & NSA leaks unveiling the attacks on the Internet. Corporations and countries begging the web to surrender. Free speech shall be upheld, these criminals won’t win.

http://scgnews.com/fbi-drafts-law-to-require-websites-to-grant-backdoor-access-to-government-agencies , http://scgnews.com/russias-new-law-regulating-online-speech-the-envy-of-us-politicians , http://article.wn.com/view/2014/05/07/russia_tightens_web_control_with_8216bloggers_law_8217/