
Russia to disconnect from the internet as part of a planned test - yread
https://www.zdnet.com/article/russia-to-disconnect-from-the-internet-as-part-of-a-planned-test/
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135085)

------
amai
Did they learn this from Egypt?

"Autocratic governments often limit phone and Internet access in tense times.
But the Internet has never faced anything like what happened in Egypt on
Friday, when the government of a country with 80 million people and a
modernizing economy cut off nearly all access to the network and shut down
cellphone service."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/technology/internet/29cut...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/technology/internet/29cutoff.html)

~~~
rando444
I think you misunderstand. The Russians are leaving the networks up, just
testing how they function autonomously.

The Egyptians turned everything off.

------
varelaz
I think the main purpose of this is to force local users to migrate to local
services. Right now a lot of services that used by citizens are hosted outside
of Russia and cannot be influenced or managed by government. They afraid
disconnection as sanction. They have a law that companies should store
personal data in local data centers. But most of the foreign companies don't
obey it, so that's the lever. I don't think that disconnection could protect
from cyber war, viruses and attacks could be easily run from inside.

~~~
benj111
The main purpose is create their own 'great firewall' (electronic curtain???)

Edit: The BBC article has a bit more detail.

"The test is also expected to involve ISPs demonstrating that they can direct
data to government-controlled routing points. These will filter traffic so
that data sent between Russians reaches its destination, but any destined for
foreign computers is discarded."

Why else would you need to discard outbound traffic?

[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47198426?intlink_from_ur...](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47198426?intlink_from_url=&link_location=live-
reporting-story)

~~~
reacweb
Every country in the world has become dependent on the Internet. If ever, on
the impulse of a poorly-minded president, the United States decides to
sanction a country by cutting off its access to the Internet, this country
would find itself in a very unpleasant situation. The United States has
already demonstrated its tendency to raise sanctions, its tendency to elect
unreasonable presidents and its tendency to threaten Russia. I am not Russian,
but I think it is quite wise for Russia to be prepared for this kind of
eventuality. Si vis pacem para bellum.

~~~
benj111
For the US that would become self defeating. Because at that point other
countries would start looking around for a solution that doesn't involve the
US.

See for example, the EU setting up a system to continue trade with Iran.

You are probably right that Russia should be worried on some level. But so far
Russia seems to be the main driving force behind cyber warfare at the moment
so I'm not really sure they can complain.

------
PavlovsCat
> The first example of relatively large-scale citizen journalism online was
> during the August 1991 coup attempt by eight high-level Soviet officials.
> There were two days of confrontation between demonstrators and troops,
> during which all Russian media except Usenet news groups were shut down by
> the authorities. Usenet, a precursor of today's Internet discussion forums,
> carried traffic into, out of and within Russia (70 cities) during the days
> of the coup attempt.

[..]

> "Don't worry, we're OK, though frightened and angry. Moscow is full of tanks
> and military machines, I hate them. They try to close all mass media, they
> shutted up CNN an hour ago, Soviet TV transmits opera and old movies. But,
> thanks Heaven, they don't consider RELCOM mass media or they simply forgot
> about it. Now we transmit information enough to put us in prison for the
> rest of our life :-). Hope all will turn out well at long last..." \--
> Polina Antonova

[http://cis471.blogspot.com/2011/01/before-twitter-
revolution...](http://cis471.blogspot.com/2011/01/before-twitter-revolutions-
there-was.html)

I'm not happy how this is turning out, actually. Though I'm not thinking of
just Russia, the situation is too pathetic across the board for anyone to
point fingers at anyone. I'm not some kind of old school hacker either, I
don't even get advanced math. But just as someone who was fascinated and
inspired by "this stuff" since childhood, just by the stuff I saw in .readme
files, I think this is true, even I can tell from the sidelines: the precious
few ideals that made this all actually worthwhile, maybe noble even, were just
quietly dropped by the wayside by too many, and subsequently not even
encountered in the first place by even more. And that kinda breaks my heart.

------
artellectual
In Thailand the government tried to 'Ban' facebook once. They blocked facebook
and netizens DDoSed government sites by going on the site and hitting refresh,
on top of that they faced immense backlash on social media. They enabled
facebook again with in a matter of a couple of hours. Later they blamed it on
the ISP.

Banning / Blocking any kind of internet usually doesn't work well for the
government. Especially in a society that has already been relatively free
online. The Economy of countries now depend on the Internet. Any government
stupid enough to even test this kind of technology will face the consequences.

~~~
etrautmann
While I'd like to believe this is true, doesn't China control content
unfortunately effectively?

~~~
artellectual
China is also feeling the effect. In Thailand right now there are entire
villages / neighborhoods full of Chinese immigrants who have migrated away
from China. Once they tasted freedom going back to live just isn’t feasible
anymore. So much do the that now the Chinese government have stopped people
from moving large amounts of cash out of the country to buy real estate
outside of China. They are definitely feeling the effect.

I also know a lot of foreigners who have been operating businesses in China
for the past 7 years and are now moving out because they feel their civil /
organizational liberties are being invaded.

People find ways of revolting without being killed. Freedom is a powerful
force. Blocking and controlling is like a game of whack a mole. There is one
of you and billions of moles, the Chinese government and Russian government
are fighting a losing battle. Of course none of this is reported because of
censorship. But if you read the news and you understand what’s going on on the
ground level it all makes sense.

------
drinchev
This "experiment" looks like a way to enforce DNS / caching services / mail
services to store their data inside Russia. Which makes it easier for anyone
with just a letter from the court to get it.

~~~
est
more like stopped routing on ISP level.

------
tetha
Now I'm back thinking about my plans to learn amateur radio operation. The
internet stops being a way to go to relay information if a bigger government
decides to do something horrible to their citizens.

~~~
setquk
Government would shut down all the amateur radio operators pretty quickly
(you’re on a database). Plus it’s not quite as romantic or reliable as it
sounds, especially on HF at the moment.

Go do it for sure, but you’ll find trivial confirmations and conversations
about declining health and not a lot else.

I only operate CW (morse) myself because that’s more interesting and there is
a technical challenge.

------
writepub
Whatever your opinion of Russian politics, from a technical standpoint, aiming
for full autonomy of critical services at a national scale, is praise worthy!

If successful, this is also scary, as Russia will be free to wreck havoc on
the general internet, without domestic impact

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Indeed. I think of all those "Slack is down, everyone can't work" moments when
I think of this. They're really trying to remove outside dependencies, and
limiting the ability for other actors to use those dependencies against them.

My guess is the US thinks along the same lines, but since most things Internet
are US-based to begin with, they're probably less concerned with a dramatic
public test.

~~~
nur0n
> since most things Internet are US-based

What is meant by this?

~~~
rchakra3
They probably mean that a large percentage of internet services are hosted on
US-based servers. As a regular AWS/Azure customer, the regions in which I tend
to see provisioning issues makes this _seem_ right, though I'd love to see
some numbers.

~~~
Retric
For various reasons the internet maps much closer to GDP than Population. But,
largely it’s a case of smaller economies driving less advertising dollars
which supports fewer websites. So it’s also weighted more to consumer spending
than raw GDP.

------
simula67
I guess this should have been expected after Putin's interview with Megyn
Kelly

Disconnecting Iran from SWIFT[1], continuing use of export controls [2] even
after the fall of Soviet Union etc have demonstrated that non-western powers
may not have sufficient room to set foreign policy on their own.

This might improve that situation a little bit for current and future Russian
governments

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-iran-sanctions-
swift/swi...](https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-iran-sanctions-swift/swift-
system-to-disconnect-some-iranian-banks-this-weekend-idUSFWN1XK0YW)

[2] [https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/regulations/export-
adminis...](https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/regulations/export-
administration-regulations-ear)

~~~
ernst_klim
How exactly did western powers impede Russia? By implementing very modest
sanctions against the selected assholes from the mafia state?

>This might improve that situation a little bit for current and future Russian
governments

Yeah, a totalitarian militarized state with state propaganda and own internal
government-approved network, I've dreamed about that for my whole life.

~~~
simula67
Are you seriously under the illusion that western powers do not try to impede
Russia ? John McCain flew in to support Ukrainian revolutionaries against Pro-
Russian government : [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-
mccain-uk...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-
ukraine-protests-support-just-cause)

>militarized state

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
cage/wp/2017/06/3...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
cage/wp/2017/06/30/does-military-equipment-lead-police-officers-to-be-more-
violent-we-did-the-research/?utm_term=.2eefc78900c2)

> state propaganda

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller)

> own internal government-approved network

From :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America)

"From 1948 until its repeal in 2013, Voice of America was forbidden to
broadcast directly to American citizens under § 501 of the Smith–Mundt Act.
The act was repealed as a result of the passing of the Smith-Mundt
Modernization Act provision of the National Defense Authorization Act for
2013. The intent of the legislation in 1948 was to protect the American public
from propaganda actions by their own government."

> I've dreamed about that for my whole life

Live the dream!

~~~
ernst_klim
>Are you seriously under the illusion that western powers do not try to impede
Russia ?

Again, impede Russian government in what? Murdering and enslaving its people?

The majority of cases in the European Court of Human Rights are from Russia,
first sanctions were applied when a lawyer investigating corruption among the
officials was killed in prison awaiting trial.

Which positive Russian policies applied for the sake of people and not for the
sake of enslaving and murdering its people were impeded by the west?

------
ToFab123
I am currently writing a microservice application. One of my test cases
involves cutting access to internet to ensure that my application can handle
that situation. What Russia is doing here is the same. Just on a different
scale.

------
hguhghuff
There’s no situation for which “disconnect internet” could be the answer.

~~~
eps
That's not "disconnecting the Internet".

It's oddly enough the reverse.

From what it looks like, the idea is to try and make sure that the country's
IT infruatructure and its essential public services - email, web, search, etc.
- remain functional, should it be ever cut off from the Internet for whatever
reason. It's a doomsday thinking, it goes against the very essence of the
Internet, but this is something aimed at asserting country's independence.

I'd prefer this would've not been needed, but given the current state of
affairs I can't say I'm shoked they are doing this.

~~~
theon144
Yes, but as is also implied in the article, the practices that allow you to
withstand an "outage" are also practices that allow you to temporarily close
yourself off on demand.

Without the context, purely infrastructure-wise, what kind of scenario does
"Roskomnazor will inspect the traffic to block prohibited content and make
sure traffic between Russian users stays inside the country" imply to you?

~~~
eps
It's the same scenario that causes severe pushback against Huawei. No country
wants their data to flow through other country's infrastructure, period.

It's just that many don't have any say in this and can't do much about it, but
most realize this now. This is clearly a concern for both security and control
reasons, which are two sides of the same coin. Any control can be abused. For
every Roskomnadzor there's the US governement denying SWIFT to Iran and
forcing EU to deploy a new system to work with the latter. So to me this looks
more about power tugging at a country level with a freebie of a simpler
censorship thrown in. Not the other way around.

------
samcday
If something like Starlink goes live, would it possibly be a way for citizens
of a country that chooses to nope out of the global internet to stay online?

~~~
Gaelan
That's an interesting scenario. Assuming they're completely isolated, I
imagine you'd end up with an industry of smuggling the internet—build a tunnel
under the border, run some fiber (is there a way to do a high-bandwidth
wireless link?), host a VPN accessible from within the county, profit
handsomely.

------
d__k
> Russia to disconnect from the internet as part of a planned test

This is precisely what I would do as an engineer if I was responsible for
operating such kind of network infrastructure

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emilsedgh
Interesting. Iran announced the same thing last month but then canceled it due
to major backlash from people and enterprises.

I wonder if the two governments were aligned.

------
JackPoach
Wasn't this already a top news yesterday (BBC article on the same subject)?

