I honestly don't see how american-run social media companies can disentangle themselves from the NSA now. It remains to be seen if the public in most countries will even take notice, but this kind of response will not be the last we see from foreign government agencies. If Facebook or Gmail do fall from public grace, the only certain thing is that their successor won't be run by an american company. International trust in american companies may be fundamentally tainted now.
> If Facebook or Gmail do fall from public grace, the only certain thing is that their successor won't be run by an american company.
Who's to say we'll ever see a major international company like that again? I foresee a future where DNS root server control is yanked away from the USG and the internet is partitioned.
The pendulum has peaked at globalization and now it's swinging towards isolationism. Whether we like it or not borders have been drawn along the previously wild-west-like internet, and it may take on the form of virtual Berlin Walls.
Hopefully someday we can enjoy the same euphoria that followed Germany's reunification but on a global scale, and that day may take a century to get here.
Yes, I can't wait to apply for virtual visas to visit foreign internet sites, which I guess we'll need after a full scale balkanization of the internet.
On a more serious note, I hope the internet stays together, but that the pendulum will start swinging back from "cloud" to decentralized, federated or even P2P protocols and services. Wasn't it originally meant that way? (with NNTP, email, ...).
I'd definitely read a sci-fi book based on those premises. Preferably, lead character would be developer. Not hacker; I'm not interested much in that point of view.
Kind of reminds me of an abstraction of the Snow Crash concept of city-state issued visas and specialized bar codes that allow you to walk into said city-state problem free.
The pendulum has peaked at globalization and now it's swinging towards isolationism. Whether we like it or not borders have been drawn along the previously wild-west-like internet, and it may take on the form of virtual Berlin Walls.
Brilliant insight. Globalization will probably be only a blink of an eye when compared to the history of human civilization. A snapshot in time when conditions were favorable.
Now the conditions are changing again: peak oil, international surveillance and rising labour costs in developing countries are all deal breakers.
If I'm a Russian citizen outside the reach of the US government, then why do I care if the ones spying on me are the NSA or Facebook and Google themselves? The latest revelations change nothing for me.
Fact is, Russians don't use Facebook and Gmail because they have more popular local alternatives. This decision is ultimately more about trade protectionism than anything else, much like the US witch-hunt on ZTE and Huawei.
Well, this is a typical link bait, peppered with the eerie "cold war" overtones. Let me clear up a few things.
Firstly, the proposal is covering specifically military and state employees. No one is going to shut down Gmail or Facebook countrywide. This is ridiculous.
Secondly, it's not a ban, but a request to develop a set of instructions on handling in-house data for the employees.
Thirdly, the proposal calls for encryption of all sensitive data sent over the internet.
I wonder why it was changed, that one is bad enough.
I have to say, if I were asked by a business which valued privacy, I'd tell then to contractually and physically block all US services.
I mean, if I were working one some product I wanted to keep secret for reasonable market reasons, like hell would I want my employees using gmail and the like to discuss it. I would also be nervous about employees leaving them selves open to blackmail because of facebook posts. Look at Alan Turing's experience of being gay. Say my lead developer was a member of a "secret" gay group on FB and became compromised? Now imagine I was not a business, but a government.
OK, I understand why you don't want people you work with to use Gmail. But treason for using Gmail? And what is the penalty? And we think this is a fair idea, to completely ruin people's lives because they use the 'wrong' internet service that we don't like?
The article says "immediately limit civil servants’ access to the popular US internet services and social networks" - which I have to admit actually makes sense.
If the NSA can get details of the personal lives of individuals then it could open them up for blackmail and therefore to be a security risk.
Years ago, when Russia was vehemently against US expanding its anti-rocket shields, I was against Russia, and supported US, because "US are the good guys, right?". Over the past few years I've started to understand Russia's position. Nobody should want US to become too powerful, because clearly you can't depend on Americans to keep their own government in check, no matter how good the US Constitution is.
So I kind've understand this move from Russia, too, even though it will probably end badly for Russia, to the point where they become more like China, but I feel that US deserves this from every country in the world, until they roll back all the spying, and end these programs and laws (Patriot Act, FISA).
I imagine that if there are hundreds of corporations lobbying the US government to stop because they are losing business overseas, they will eventually do it, because they know that the end of the day, and despite all their public statements, the spying is not that useful for catching terrorists, and specific investigations and wiretapping should still be possible under reasonable laws anyway.
A bit of history in relation to the proposed anti-ballistic defense system in Europe.
In 2002, the US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty with Russia. The treaty had been active since the 70s and sought to decrease the amount of those very systems installed. In the same year, no longer bound by the treaty, the US started to look into expansion of its defense arsenal in Europe, which eventually led them to Poland.
It is no surprise then that Russia saw it as an unfriendly gesture at best. Any independent country would, when all of a sudden someone dumps the anti-ballistic treaty and then decides to build a defensive shield along your borders.
The EU has traditionally been used as a playground to advance the US agenda. The proposed defense system is no exception. Gladly, it did not come to fruition. Otherwise, we'd seen a very different Europe now.
Given our attachment to history, Russia is still often seen as this "cold war" aggressor out to get you. But if the past decade is of any lesson, I think we have a new candidate on this role.
US decided to be sneaky and said it was to protect against nuclear missiles from Iran and North Korea and other rogue terrorist states. That was to reply to Russia' public objections and accusation of restarting the nuclear arms race.
That was a PR stunt most of all, so Russia replied in like, they offered a an already existing Russian base to be upgraded and used jointly. It would have been even closer to Iran and North Korea. It would have protected Russia and Western Europe from "terrorist rogue states".
US kind of got caught with its pants down ... "oh oh, we can't and ... stuff".
Russia then said ok, put missiles in Poland we'll just put our theater tactical nuclear missiles (Iskander) in Kaliningrad and at first whiff of danger destroy all of Poland.
US backed down and now I think they are courting Romania or the Czech Republic to install systems there. (Presumably out of range of Iskander missiles)
>Any independent country would, when all of a sudden someone dumps the anti-ballistic treaty and then decides to build a defensive shield along your borders.
Look at this from Poland's side. Not building the defensive shield means that Russia has still the right to pressure the country with missiles. Russia wouldn't need to object the defense shield if they didn't want that. Pressuring your neighbors with weapons is still cold war tactics. In this case Russia was clearly the bad guy. Russia is also the bad guy when it manipulates the energy prices for Europe, but it seems that wasn't enough for them.
> Look at this from Poland's side. Not building the defensive shield means that Russia has still the right to pressure the country with missiles. Russia wouldn't need to object the defense shield if they didn't want that. Pressuring your neighbors with weapons is still cold war tactics. In this case Russia was clearly the bad guy. Russia is also the bad guy when it manipulates the energy prices for Europe, but it seems that wasn't enough for them.
Look at this from Cuba's side. Not deploying the missiles means that the US has still the right to pressure the country with its military might. The US wouldn't need to object the defense shield if they didn't want that. Pressuring your neighbors with weapons is still cold war tactics. In this case US was clearly the bad guy. US is also the bad guy when it manipulates the energy prices for the world, but it seems that wasn't enough for them.
Would the missile defence system that was planned for Poland really have protected Poland from attack from Russia? They are pretty close so cruise missiles and/or aircraft would presumably be preferable to use rather than ballistic missiles.
The opposite is true. Poland would have been wiped out as the first order of business if anything was about to start. I suspect them being a prime target might have given them some thought.
The Russians apparently announced they would have deployed Iskander theatre missiles in the Kaliningrad Oblast to target any US missile defence base in Poland:
Poland's side is not so important here. Nobody's blaming Poland for taking US missiles, they're blaming the US for putting them there. It's as if Russia decided they wanted to put missiles in Cuba.
Its not about blame. Its about the diplomatic message of the whole story. And the diplomatic message is that Russia can still pressure Poland, with weapons, if it deems necessary. So Poland better behaves accordingly. This show of power and bullying was typical for the cold war, and this story went down in that same manner. Nobody would fire missiles today there, but the possibility/capability is what matters, not the will. If you look at it his way, then the US's role in this is the least important.
If you look at it from Poland's point of view, of course that's true. What I'm saying is that they were US missiles targeting Russian ones, which was a re-escalation of the arms race that has the potential to kill us all, including the Polish. Poland's local concerns are valid based on the history between Poland and Russia, but small in the grand scheme of things.
Totally agree. We have (essentially) all of the military might, start putting up defense shield, then invade the wrong country, against the better intelligence of the Russians and some Europeans. I also sympathize a bit with the Russians for wanting their own checks and balances against the US, as our attitude was clearly "we're going to do whatever we want and don't really care what you think."
Perhaps surprisingly, but I also agree with the situation from Russia's perspective.
There's an argument to be made about ABM against small-state actors like Iran and NK, but any system that becomes a serious deterrent to ballistic missiles puts an incredible upheaval in our "balance of power" and potentially leads to an arms race, increase in conflict, proxy wars, etc. Not good news.
I don't agree that Russia should have a say in when NATO would be able to operate such a system, but a notification requirement would be fine, if not actually allowing a Russian liaison to be stationed with the operations center controlling such a system.
To be fair, most of Eastern Europe was under the Soviet boot in my lifetime, and I'm only 30. I'm sure Eastern European residents are happy that their American allies are not letting their guard down re:Russia.
Just because one side of a conflict starts to do something bad does not make the other side the good guys!
"even though it will probably end badly for Russia, to the point where they become more like China"
Not sure what you mean by this.
As a European I'm pretty uncomfortable with the idea of a foreign government being able to snoop on my internet communications and I'm hoping European leaders take a stand on this. I don't see that leading any where bad though.
Ahh makes sense, sorry I presumed he meant in terms of a more repressive approach to communication.
I can't see why any governments would be happy with the US monitoring their citizens communication. If the US laws don't change I'd imagine you will find a lot of alternative services having to appear pretty quickly.
Russia's best anti-US play right now is to offer massively cheap bandwidth between China/Korea/Japan, South Asia, and Europe.
Yes, they will have to look after it. No, it won't be cheap. But in terms of intelligence gathering, it has the potential to significantly impact the US' ease of access to huge bodies of information by cutting North America out of the heart of the internet.
At this point, I really wish someone would do that. IMO the US has had its time and it's time they started getting cut out more. Having said that, I'm not sure if anyone would trust services coming out of Russia.
"Having said that, I'm not sure if anyone would trust services coming out of Russia."
It may be worth reminding people that if the US currently seems to be heading into a police state, that Russia within living memory has manifested one.
I'm all for holding the US accountable, but let's not collectively be idiots and think that this is all uniquely a US problem, and that therefore we can just stop worrying about everywhere else in the world and let them do whatever because they aren't the US, they must be awesome. We're still criticizing the US for heading in a direction that quite a few other major countries have already arrived at. It's great criticism, it's legitimate concerns, but don't get overexcited and give everybody else a pass.
Can anyone say with a straight face that Russia won't sniff Internet traffic with the same basic purposes and approaches, either now or anytime in, say, the next ten years? I sure wouldn't bet any money on that claim.
- If the US becomes a totalitarian regime, then all of your data can be used to imprison you for political transgressions. If you live in the US, but your data is in Russia, the Russians aren't going to care about your political transgressions (e.g. calling for a protest) against the US government.
- If your data is in a different country than where you are physically located, then there is less of a chance of your local machine being compromised. For example, Russia is going to be less likely to send an agent to the US to bug a computer (e.g. hardware keylogger) unless you are a really high-value target.
In my opinion the problem is having an entity like the US. If it were a lot of smaller, less powerful countries this wouldn't be an issue. If one of those countries tried crap like this all businesses could just leave. But the US has such a large market, companies are willing to put up with insane amounts of BS to maintain access to it. And let's be honest; at this point only the opinion of the companies matters to the US government.
The attraction is that it provides greatly needed decentralization for the internet at large. It doesn't solve the spying problem, but it does contribute to solving the global hegemon with turnkey totalitarian surveillance problem in a meaningful way that both Russia and the rest of the world can derive value from.
Not sure, I wouldn't be surprised if other regions now take action to stop this happening again. I'm not sure what sort of bureaucratic solution the EU will come up with but I'm hoping they're annoyed enough to do something.
If we are talking about being charged with treason and possibly executed, it's interesting to me that you are OK with brutal state oppression in Russia just because it hurts the US. It gives some insight into your priorities: hurting the US is more important to you than whether people are subject to gross injustice by an authoritarian state.
> hundreds of corporations lobbying the US government to stop
And then if the government say that they stopped, how can you ever be sure they did?
Unless we use free (as in freedom) software, open encrypted communication protocols, and decentralized network services, we are trusting too much of our computing and communication to third parties, which are subject to political powers, that always do whatever they can to protect themselves. The government should not be trusted, it must be controlled. Corporations should not be trusted either.
> "clearly you can't depend on Americans to keep their own government in check, no matter how good the US Constitution is."
The Government has been taking away our rights for years, the general public seems to expect the government to solve all of their problems and give them free paychecks.
Of course, I really would be surprised to find out the America is the only country spying on their own citizens.
This has been going on for years and everyone knew it.. now with the leak hopefully we can reign in our own government and abolish the practice officially.
See this? This is part of the problem, stop being so stereotypically blinkered.
The rest of the world doesn't care if the US government is spying on its own citizens. The US government is ACCOUNTABLE to its own citizens (well nominally, but hey...), so if they don't like it they're in a position to do something about it.
As a none US citizen, I care that the US government is spying on ME, unilaterally and without any accountability.
This is what the rest of the world cares about. Stop pissing away what little sympathy you have by moaning like a spoiled child about the bad shit your government is doing to YOU, and open your fucking eyes to what it's doing to EVERYONE ELSE.
This move is not from Russia (as country/people) but it is from Russian government. They are constantly doing this as it is the only way to make the look better than they actually are.
When does establishing a good defense (for an ally no less) become an act of aggression? Certainly it's not a purely passive act, but it's also a far cry from aggression seen by both Russia and the US in the past.
>because clearly you can't depend on Any Country to keep their own government in check, no matter how good Their Laws Are.
FTFY. The fact is, laws/constitutions/whatever are utterly meaningless. Without enforcement, that is. And it's not up to us to enforce it, it's up to government officials. They can and do simply ignore laws whenever they wish. Sometimes a check/balance kicks in and makes them pay some kind of penalty, sometimes nothing happens.
Russia isn't worried about America becoming too powerful. Russia's stance is that your country should worry about itself, and leave other countries alone. Putin has said many snarky remarks in this respect.
Terrorists who are competent harden their communications to avoid US sigint, where the superiority of the US agencies is paramount and well-known.
The US is known to have particularly weak human intelligence networks (few spies actually capable of infiltrating foreign terrorist groups). Al Qaeda and the rest know that it's incredibly risky to use electronic communications, so the people that you'd want to monitor already know they're being targeted.
Naturally, the US government's response to this has been to bet more heavily on signals intelligence.
Very soon, Russia, Saudi, India and anyother countries can demand Google, Facebook, twitter,'s servers be located inside their borders and allow their own intelligent agents to access, inspect it.
Since China block google, Facebook, twitter already, they can also make the demand for Apple imsg, icloud, Microsoft and Skype servers be inside China , else they are blocked. Apple, M$ will have to agree or risk loosing that market.
Which is technically illegal in most countries, storing government information on foreign systems.
Up until now, it may have been tolerated as long as it didn't concern obviously sensitive information, but you can expect a total ban in most countries on the planet, not just paranoid Russia.
Since I don't know enough about Russia, I can't dismiss this report as sensationalist, but something tells me it is.
Perhaps someone with more knowledge can tell us if Russian law requires intent to prove "high treason"? And how influential is this "Lower House deputy" anyway?
This is just another episode in anti-american hysteria reality show called Russian internal politics.
>if Russian law requires
there is no such thing as "Russian law" in the sense "law" is understood in the Western world. There is though a will of whoever has the power - it is real Russian law and it doesn't require any prove for a guilty verdict.
>And how influential is this "Lower House deputy" anyway?
Just a government mouthpiece. The elections are based on party lists. So beyond 10th position in the leading party and 2-3rd position in other parties, these people are unknown nobodies. Some just buy the position in the list to
get immunity from various criminal prosecutions the face.
Obviously providing such data to the NSA is a crime. It's helping a foreign power, and it is taking away jobs from Russians at various Russian intelligence programs who now have less information about Russian citizens to look at.....
Another interesting turn of events. It seems Russia is considering asylum for Snowden:
The head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's State Duma, or lower house of parliament, predicted "hysteria in the United States," if Russia were to agree to shelter Mr. Snowden, whom he likened to controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“Having promised Snowden refuge, Moscow is taking up the defense of those persecuted for political reasons. There will be hysteria in the United States,” Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter. “In listening to phone calls and tacking Internet activity, U.S. intelligence agencies have violated the laws of their own country. In this sense, Snowden—like Assange—is a human-rights activist.”
Week ago, criminal case against vkontakte.ru's founder Pavel Durov was closed stating that he didn't intent to hit road police officer by a car after traffic jam halted his fleeing.
He did or he didn't, the rumor now is that FSB doesn't need classified intelligence committee hearings to access vkontakte.ru data now.
I can believe that, even more after they started requesting mobile phone numbers to login into vk.com. Since I refuse to give my number I cannot access or remove my profile.
What about Google Voice or a localized alternative for a virtual phone number? Worst case - burner phone.
Another thing to keep in mind: even if you "delete" your profile, given the situation there's zero guarantee that all copies of the data will be destroyed.
Of course they do. The thing is that Snowden's status makes him a huge asset for every foreign power out there. Who knows where he will go. The US government would be smart to give him immunity to prosecution for this act (and merely take away his security clearance) just to keep that from happening.
Not really. Make sure it is an official assurance by the US government. Make sure that the press gets copies. Then return to the US. I don't think they can prosecute after giving official assurance not to in exchange for his return. Maybe even demand that they make the offer in a press conference by the Attorney General. My understanding is that such might actually be thrown out of court.
>I don't think they can prosecute after giving official assurance not to in exchange for his return.
Why not? If they then arrested him, what would we do about it? Nothing. And, of course, they could always just use some nonsense charge if they want to pretend they were following their own made up rules.
We grow up wanting to believe that rules, constitutions and so on are firm, solid entities we can depend on, but it's all just an illusion. It's no more real than those in power allow it to be.
I'm sure they could find something to arrest him for afterward if they liked, or find an ally to request extradition. Presumably nobody's going to give him immunity against future crimes, and I doubt extradition treaties even allow that.
But doesn't this go the other way too? I mean if he makes it worth the while of a foreign state to stay, they have tremendous power over him and can basically hold that over his head forever.
I think the fact that the US is now a country that people seek political asylum _from_ is going to globally change people's perspective on the country.
If he's given a presidential pardon, and that is then rescinded, presidential pardons don't exist any more [1]. The only question is then, is he really worth it?
[1] In case that's not clear, consider: who would trust them?
And who cares if pardons don't "exist" anymore? Presidents can still give them and jails will still let people out who get them. They can apply the rules how ever they like. Selective application of rules has been the norm for some time now.
Notoriety still provides some protection and the illusion of things being consistent is still important. More likely if they want to go that far, they will look for something else unrelated to charge him with, like wire fraud or something.
That could be deterred by a threat to leak more, but then that becomes a dangerous game for both sides.
True, although DDG's dedication to anonymizing searches seems it would make data retrieval more difficult.
That said, the options look unappealing. If it really comes down to it, would you rather be giving your information away to US, Chinese or Russian agents?
We saw this already with Skype.
FSB: we are not able to eavesdrop Skype calls and Skype is controlled by US, so it must be banned.
And some time later: we reached an agreement with Microsoft, Skype is OK.
Putin gets divorced and all of a sudden there are Russian warships moving into the Mediterranean and now Russian citizens might be punished for using Facebook or Gmail.
