Russian Law Allowing Inspection and Internet Disconnection Takes Effect
RandomFactor writes:
A new, and controversial, law went into effect this week in Russia. 'The National Digital Economy Program" was
signed by President Vladimir Putin in May, it requires Russian to route traffic through nodes under the control of the Russian Government. ISPs are obliged to install technical devices provided by the authorities to allow traffic inspection.
Of course, the concentration of the traffic through nodes controlled by Moscow and the deployment of technical hardware provided by the government could open the door to a massive surveillance
Russian authorities will be able to censor online content and to spy on persons of interest.
According to the Russian government, the law aims at ensuring that Russian sites will be reachable even if disconnected to the global internet, a scenario that could result from a cyber attack or an outage caused by an incident.
Russia also recently announced annual tests disconnecting from the global internet to assess the impacts of such a move.
Currently none of the twelve top level DNS providers are located in Russia, making the effort interesting to be sure.
Human Rights Watch and activists fear Russia aims to build a system like the Chinese Great Firewall that could be used to apply strict censorship.
The government however immediately laid such fears to rest when it "denied any intent of disconnecting Russian netizens from the Internet."
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