
Russia's parliament votes to unplug internet from world - hal9000xp
https://www.dw.com/en/russias-parliament-votes-to-unplug-internet-from-world/a-48334411
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anoncake
The title does not match the article:

> The law will create an independent infrastructure for the Russian internet,
> or "Runet," which will essentially _allow_ Russia to pull up its virtual
> drawbridges in case of attack.

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Grue3
If there's technical capability, there's no doubt they will do it, with or
without an "attack" (a fake orchestrated attack can always be used as
pretext). It's obvious to everyone this will be another Great Firewall.

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Nasrudith
Yeah any talk of a "drawbridge" or "emergency shutdown button" has always been
either sheer ignorance or a pretext for censorship. Since if you want security
you don't shut it down for everyone but either disconnect everything of
infastructural importance.

If your power plants are at risk of hacking you don't prepare by planning to
shutdown the internet - you prepare by making sure it can work when unplugged
them from insecure networks. Because if loss of said connectivity would cause
problems shutting it down is no help and if it doesn't there is no need to
boost collateral damage - unleas that is the /real/ goal.

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jdsully
Be charitable here,

Its much easier to disconnect the international connections than to
simultaneously disconnect _every_ piece of critical infrastructure at once
during an attack. While I believe this is probably a pretext for further
censorship, the underlying rationale does have merit.

International disconnects also have the benefit of your internal
communications mostly keep working.

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lucas_membrane
The rationale has more merit for a regime that considers facts illegitimate
tools of western degeneracy and aggression while waging its own cyber war than
for one that wants to work for cyber peace.

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Mirioron
I wonder if this will be the future of the internet. It honestly wouldn't
surprise me if the EU tried doing the same.

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lostjohnny
Not the same at all.

EU is just settings rules for the internal EU market.

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colejohnson66
Couldn’t one argue that Russia is just setting rules for its internal market?

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rmykhajliw
I suppose this will make a world much easier place for everyone. Both the US
and Russia will get a clear enemy, they will keep trying to fight for years,
dozen of years, without any achievable success, because any fail you can
easily transform in temporary lost in a long run game. If I were the US
president or EU, I'd definitely helped them for build this a new internet iron
curtains, because it will definitely limit their progress and stuck a new
mallow of "replace everything from the west". It's a just basic economy theory
of Adam Smith: bigger taxes, bigger obstacles for intonational trade, hurt in
the first time your own economy. So I'm definitely support this, lets make
russia weak!

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yaris
The thing is that after USSR has disappeared Russia is not on par with US
anymore, neither economically nor technically. So "will keep trying to fight"
will end much earlier than anticipated by many.

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ineedasername
Not quite an iron curtain, maybe silicon curtain?

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pcmaffey
So the Russian Firewall?

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fisherwithac
As someone who knows very little about the Internet backbone and networking in
general, would this even be technically feasible to do?

We know that in certain countries there exist "single points" where a majority
of internet traffic flows [0], but if those points get cut off, couldn't you
reroute the traffic? Isn't that the point of decentralization in the first
place?

And if it's technically feasible, would encryption tools like VPNs, DNS
encryption or even Tor help in a situation like this?

[0] - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-
business/wp/2014...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-
business/wp/2014/03/05/why-ashburn-va-is-the-center-of-the-
internet/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8593ae25a99c)

~~~
ahje
From what I can read in that article, the law will simply mandate that
Roskomnadzor gets to control the internet access points, and it's also hinted
that services will be required to host their data in Russia, to some extent.
That would give them the ability to shut down most of the Internet traffic to
and from the rest of the world, while still allowing important services to run
without disruptions.

That's the theory anyway. In practice, I assume Russian web services are just
as dependant on third-party providers as the rest of us are.

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a0-prw
This is perfectly understandable, given US hostility to Russia.

