
Reference Note on Russian Communications Surveillance - mikeevans
http://csis.org/publication/reference-note-russian-communications-surveillance
======
gesman
Q: "Does Russia intercept, store or analyze in any way the communications of
millions of individuals?”

A: Putin denied Russian mass surveillance, saying “Thank God, our special
services are strictly controlled by the state and society, and their activity
is regulated by law.”

===== "Putin denied..."?

He didn't deny anything.

He avoided answering the question by making generic statement about special
services being controlled.

~~~
brown9-2
Here is a fuller quote, from
[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/20/snowden-
s-c...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/20/snowden-s-camp-
staged-putin-q-a-was-a-screw-up.html)

 _Putin’s answer was predictable. “Of course, we know that criminals and
terrorists use technology for their criminal acts and of course the special
services have to use technical means to respond to their crimes,” he said.
“But we don’t have a mass-scale, uncontrollable efforts like that…Our special
services…are strictly controlled by the society and the law, and are regulated
by the law.”_

------
dmix
So basically Russia doesn't bother pretending it's not doing domestic
surveillance. They don't need to join something like a Five-eyes partnership
to get around their own legal limitations. They don't need other countries
hacking into their routers or tapping fiber (therefore increasing the
insecurity of their domestic networks), instead they are installing their own
monitoring devices, albeit at probably a much wider scale than a foreign
SIGINT partner could achieve.

~~~
webjprgm
If the law says they can do it, and that's what they do, then they still have
the moral upper hand over USA where the law says they can't or at least is
gray area yet they still do it.

~~~
devconsole
Not really. They don't have a way to change their laws. It's Putin's Russia.

~~~
ZenPro
Neither does the USA according to the Oligarchy Report being reported across
the Western media.

[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/21/americas-
oli...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/21/americas-oligarchy-
not-democracy-or-republic-unive/)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-
US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html)

[http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materi...](http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf)

~~~
devconsole
If that were strictly true, then SOPA would have passed.

~~~
ZenPro
How is the temporary shelving of SOPA proof that on over 1700 policy issues US
citizens have essentially zero chance of affecting the outcome of the
legislation?

As for SOPA - say hello to SOPA 2.0
[http://www.uspto.gov/news/publications/copyrightgreenpaper.p...](http://www.uspto.gov/news/publications/copyrightgreenpaper.pdf)

~~~
tzs
How is that SOPA 2.0?

~~~
ZenPro
Try reading it. Or at least searching for the report which is commonly
referred to as SOPA 2.0 by various opposition groups.

In essence however, SOPA in some form _will_ pass and this document represents
a new approach.

As someone posted before - it does not matter if it is SOPA 14.0 or SOPA 22.0
- it just needs to pass once. Very few examples of legislative repeal exist
outside of social equality.

------
Sprint
Directly to the source: [http://csis.org/publication/reference-note-russian-
communica...](http://csis.org/publication/reference-note-russian-
communications-surveillance)

~~~
dang
Thanks—fixed.

The original url [1] was blogspam—that is, it was a knock-off (or excerpt) of
some other, more original source. In such cases HN strongly prefers the
original source.

Submitters: blogspam is usually easy to recognize. Please check for that and
post the original instead.

1\.
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/info_on_russi...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/info_on_russian.html)

~~~
willvarfar
Calling Schneier "blogspam" means you don't read his blog.

You really really should.

~~~
dang
Funny, I had a line that said "Schneier's original, substantive pieces are
fine, of course" which I deleted as unnecessary. Perhaps I'll err the other
way and write too much.

"Blogspam" is an attribute of an article, not an author [1]. I defined it
above, and even included "or excerpt" to cover the current case.

I enjoy reading Schneier. Many of his articles are on-topic for HN. But the
more lightweight ones often aren't (because there are more solid sources and
we only want so many about a given topic). As for as a mere excerpt like this,
there shouldn't even be a question.

None of this means these pieces aren't appropriate on Schneier's site. It's
natural for his blog to be a clearinghouse for stuff he didn't write, but
wants to share. Not all of it, though, is perfect for HN, where (a) the front
page is space-constrained; (b) we want the most substantive pieces on a given
story; (c) we prefer original sources.

1\. Had I said "spamblog", you'd have had a point. :)

------
jmnicolas
Well we all knew that the Russians didn't care about privacy ... what was
shocking about Snowden revelations is that this kind of surveillance happens
in a nation that presents itself as a free country.

~~~
drdaeman
There's no single "Russians" entity that has a solid opinion on this matter.

Many Russians do generally care about communications privacy, many don't know
a thing about how telcos work (so they're genuinely unaware on the whole
matter), and many don't care about privacy as long as they're not confronted
with privacy issues directly (i.e. _their_ private conversations suddenly
getting public).

~~~
jmnicolas
Off course I was talking about the Russian government.

I guess the average Russian citizen has enough fear left from the soviet era
(or the current one for that matter) to know that it would be unwise to
question how the government handle surveillance.

------
borski
Everyone should really be on a VPN. We built an easy way to get your own
personal VPN during Sochi, but lots of people are still using it now:
[https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/vpn](https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/vpn)

The interesting part about this is that the ISPs pay for it. I didn't know
that. Forcing someone to pay for you to spy on them is ballsy.

~~~
drdaeman
VPNs do protect against rogue networks like a hacker sitting on the same open
hotspot and listening for credentials.

In a more global way, unless you're fine with one high-grade adversary spying
on you, but not others (i.e. good with NSA, but not so happy with FSB), VPNs
don't provide any real security.

~~~
borski
Right. I tend to trust my country with my data more than a foreign country.
That may be wrong, but it's how I currently feel.

Not sure why my earlier post is being downvoted =\

~~~
ForHackernews
* I tend to trust my country with my data more than a foreign country.*

That's probably a misguided attitude. Your own country is in a much better
position to persecute you than some random foreign power.

------
dschiptsov
What a news. One better ask about manufacturers of the collector and
implementors of the necessary features.)

