Giovanni Leghissa <giovanni.leghissa@unito.it> writes:

> https://cepa.org/russias-red-boxes-menace-the-internet/

Per i pigri come me ho aggiunto l'oggetto e sotto metto un estratto
(arbitrario mio) del contenuto:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

The legislation he proposed now would require tech platforms, including
Facebook, Twitter and Google, to open offices in the country and
register with the Internet censorship agency Roskomnadzor to help block
information the Russian government doesn’t like. The objective is to put
tech giants in a vulnerable position by forcing them to comply with the
Kremlin’s requirements, or face the unpalatable alternatives of huge
fines, a service shutdown, bans on advertising their services, or
hosting ads on their platforms.

“Our draft law would oblige owners of large information resources with a
daily audience in Russia of at least 500,000 people to open official
offices, which would fully represent their interests and answer for
their activities," Khinshtein wrote on his Telegram channel. The bill is
expected to be adopted by the end of June and to come into force next
year.

[...] The two countries’ top internet censors regularly exchange visits,
including Fang Binxing, the architect of The Great Firewall; Russia and
China signed several bilateral agreements on the internet, including one
on cooperation in information security. That agreement underlined the
importance of the sovereign internet – the idea that every nation has a
right to control the internet in their country.

The sovereign internet was a response to the Kremlin’s recognition that
local filtering efforts — by forcing internet service providers (ISPs)
to block undesirable websites, internet protocol (IP) addresses, and
pages — had proved clumsy and inefficient. The videos about Putin’s
palaces and the investigations into the corruption of senior officials
remain accessible. The technology failed the Kremlin.

[...] Recently, Russia announced its candidate to head the ITU. Rashid
Ismailov, is a former deputy chief of the Russian communications
ministry and a former executive at Huawei. (The election will be held in
2022). A gray-haired and mild-mannered man in his mid-50s, Ismailov
speaks fluent English. He graduated from university as a historian and
spent most of his career in telecom business. But his manners cannot
disguise a tough stand towards internet freedoms. Smart and technically
savvy, he is very proud that he was CEO of the Russian company tasked by
the government to install Red Boxes throughout the country. And indeed,
his effort was productive —100 % of Russian mobile traffic is filtered
through sovereign internet infrastructure.

Ismailov has been very honest and straight, talking at the Russian
Internet Governance Forum in April. He said that the monopoly of global
tech giants prevents the development of domestic companies and echoed
the point of many Western countries that such firms to pay a fair share
of taxes in the countries where they operate. But he used the point to
reach a very different conclusion — arguing these facts made it
necessary to establish new internet standards, with a goal to eliminate
“digital inequality” in developing nations and adopt common standards
for digital identification. That his argument has nothing to do with
economics or fair competition but is purely political is clear from the
first public application of the sovereign internet he had helped to
build, its use forced Twitter to remove tweets and links about the
recent protests in Russia.

Now the Kremlin is using the same system to harass Google and to force
it to take down YouTube videos the Kremlin dislikes. This offensive
won’t stop with Twitter and Google, neither will it be limited to
Russia’s borders — Ismailov’s ITU candidacy being the proof.

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---


--
380° (Giovanni Biscuolo public alter ego)

«Noi, incompetenti come siamo,
 non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché»

Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice
but very few check the facts.  Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>.
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