On Tuesday, July 1, the Russian State Duma, or parliament, passed the first bill requiring that the personal data of all Russians be stored inside the country, according to Tech Crunch. If the bill is enforced, the effect would be felt across a wide range of industries that Russians are involved in. Every online service, from Facebook and Google to small-scale apps and websites, will need to have physical servers within Russian borders.
The new rule does not stop there; companies that are not from Russia would not be allowed to send data outside of Russia unless they can guarantee that it will be stored in Russia. The push to store Russian’s data in Russia is a part of an initiative to restrict Internet use. Russian President Vladimir Putin is said to have squeezed shut the funnel of information to quiet people who oppose his position on a variety of issues.
Coincidentally, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is a resident of Russia. Snowden was awarded the German “whistleblower prize” in 2013 for his “bold efforts to expose the massive and unsuspecting monitoring and storage of communication data, which cannot be accepted in democratic societies.”
If the law passes, online organizations have until September 2016 to comply with the new guidelines. Some officials feel that Russia is taking notes from China and their stringent Internet policy, sometimes referred to as the Great Firewall of China. China has taken the most extreme approach to Internet censorship to date. Hot keywords and phrases like “Tibetan independence” and “democracy movements” won’t garner any web results in China.
While Chinese engineers find new ways to lock information away from the average citizen, hackers, or hacktivists, look to free up sensitive information through software. Hacktivist Bill Xia shared just how tough the Chinese government is in terms of web restrictions.
“They are very smart… We have to move very quickly,” Xia said, according to ABC News.
China and Russia are not the only countries with stringent demands on Internet access. Cuba’s rules on web usage are among the most stringent in the world—a special permit is required to use the Internet and all emails are monitored. Saudi Arabia has plans to regulate YouTube channels through the General Authority for Audiovisual Media, a recently formed watchdog.
Comment Template