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Whines like the only comrade with a dictator. We all know he didn’t build it by himself, like AlGore. If you like your Barack you can keep your Vlad. Obamacare says so.
Maybe Google should just invade Russia and takeover their government.
One word: Snowden.
Putin’s new approach to the Internet helps explain the recent spate of online censorship laws passed by the Duma (the lower chamber of Russian parliament), and routinely rubberstamped by the Federation Council (Russia’s Senate).
According to these new laws, any local or foreign website may be banned in Russia without explanation; and any blogger with a total audience over 3,000 readers must register as a mass-media institution with the government (this was included as part of the “antiterrorist legislation package” compiled after the Volgograd bus and railway bombings just ahead of the Olympics).
Another law, proposed by deputy Irina Yarovaya of United Russia, would require anyone wishing to broadcast his or her views online to obtain a permit from the government. Yet another, proposed by one of her colleagues, would require anyone wishing to register a webpage to pay 1,000 roubles up front.
Nor have companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google escaped Putin’s crackdown. Under the new laws, any social media platform that wishes to serve a Russian audience will be obliged to retain all user data for at least six months and to surrender this information to Russian security services upon request, without a court ruling or any other form of justification or explanation.
Moreover, any foreign social media platform serving Russian users has to physically keep all sensible user data within the boundaries of the Russian Federation.
And we’re not talking Russian user data, but rather all personal information of any user who happens to have some readers from Russia—like, say, Barack Obama, who has no less than 3,000 Russian nationals among the 40.5 million subscribers to his Facebook page.
Twitter should also prepare to move all of Obama’s personal data to Russia and hand it over to the FSB, since both Putin and Medvedev are his followers on Twitter. Ditto for Google.
If any of these companies don’t comply they would be subject to administrative fines, up to 500,000 roubles ($14,000), and Russian ISPs would have to block access to these platforms.
This Orwellian masterpiece of legislation was signed into law by Vladimir Putin on May 5, 2014 . . .