[Sixstrings]

Moscow (AFP) - Russia's parliament passed a bill on Friday requiring Internet companies to store Russians' personal data inside the country in an apparent move to pressure sites such as Facebook and Twitter into handing over user information.

"Our entire lives are stored over there," he said, adding that companies should build data centres in Russia.

The bill would increase pressure on social networking services which do not have offices in Russia and have become a vital resource for anti-government groups.

Both Facebook and Twitter refuse to hand over user data to governments.

Just days before the bill was formally proposed last month, Twitter's public policy chief Colin Crowell visited Russia to speak with media watchdog Roskomnadzor. Few details of the visit were publicised, but access to user data is thought to have been top of the list.

Russia is also asking Twitter to open a local office, which the company has so far refused to do.

"Nobody wants to relocate to Russia, but I am pessimistic. I think (the Russian authorities) will make them relocate the servers," said Andrei Soldatov, a journalist who tracks Russia's security services.

"For the most part, this is directed against Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/russian-lawmakers-pass-bill-restricting-internet-172456389.html

So it's being presented as a way to protect Russia from "american criminals" that would steal Russian people's identity or whatever.

I don't think that really goes on. Only problems we have are with east euro hackers, for goodness sake.

More of the same fear of the US -- "all our lives are stored over there in the US."

Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter do not want to hand over the data as that could be used to crack down on activists. And -- why should they have to relocate? To Russia? Russia has gas it exports, well we have Facebook. That's called trade.

Further down in the article, some more serious free speech restriction:

Lawmakers have already passed a slew of restrictions, including a requirement for bloggers to register as media if they have more than 3,000 followers and a law directed against "extremist" language that could see Russians go to jail for up to five years for retweeting offensive information.

Conservative lawmakers are also discussing the possibility of widespread Internet filters that could only be lifted for people who hand over their passport information.

Holy cow.

Russians have to register if they have more than 3,000 followers on their blog?

Russians can go to jail for "retweeting offensive information?"

Russia may pass internet filters that require passport registry, with the government, to use the itnernet???

[Keith_McClary]

The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police

The National Security Agency last year significantly expanded its cooperative relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Interior, one of the world’s most repressive and abusive government agencies. An April 2013 top secret memo provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden details the agency’s plans “to provide direct analytic and technical support” to the Saudis on “internal security” matters.

The Saudi Ministry of Interior—referred to in the document as MOI— has been condemned for years as one of the most brutal human rights violators in the world. In 2013, the U.S. State Department reported that “Ministry of Interior officials sometimes subjected prisoners and detainees to torture and other physical abuse,” specifically mentioning a 2011 episode in which MOI agents allegedly “poured an antiseptic cleaning liquid down [the] throat” of one human rights activist. The report also notes the MOI’s use of invasive surveillance targeted at political and religious dissidents.

But as the State Department publicly catalogued those very abuses, the NSA worked to provide increased surveillance assistance to the ministry that perpetrated them. The move is part of the Obama Administration’s increasingly close ties with the Saudi regime; beyond the new cooperation with the MOI, the memo describes “a period of rejuvenation” for the NSA’s relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Defense.
...
Over the past year, the Saudi government has escalated its crackdown on activists, dissidents, and critics of the government. Earlier this month, Saudi human rights lawyer and activist Waleed Abu al-Khair was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a so-called “terrorist court” on charges of undermining the state and insulting the judiciary. In May, a liberal blogger, Raif Badawi, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes; in June, human rights activist Mukhlif Shammari was sentenced to five years in prison for writing about the mistreatment of Saudi women.

[rondanyd]

Good on Twitter on saying no. Do the Russians who proposed this understand the concept of the "internet"? It doesn't really matter where the servers are located. If a group of hackers decide they are going to get information from a specific person or company, it won't matter where the server is. And besides, who wants to go to Russia?

[Keith_McClary]

(Reuters) - Ukraine has blocked 14 Russian television channels from its cable networks to stop them spreading war propaganda, an Interior Ministry official said on Tuesday. Aug 19
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... QM20140819

[JV153]

It's Google* that stores more information than Facebook and Twitter combined and multiplied by a hundred. Sorry to say that e-mails are also open reading country if not encrypted.

* not that everything about Google is bad, it really is an excellent search engine.

I'm also quite sure that sites like peakoil.com are being monitored by several national security agencies.

[Pops]

Pretty well all the big social networks and providers like verizon not only comply with "court orders" but work actively to give NSA info - daily.

[Keith_McClary]

Pretty well all the big social networks and providers like verizon not only comply with "court orders" but work actively to give NSA info - daily.

I won't ask you about PO.com. If you told us they'd have to shoot you.