Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Putin considers plan to unplug Russia from the internet 'in an emergency'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/19/vladimir-putin-plan-unplug-russia-internet-emergency-kremlin-moscow
 
 
Putin considers plan to unplug Russia from the internet 'in an emergency'
 
Kremlin to discuss taking control of the .ru domain and measures to 
disconnect Russians from the web in the event of unrest
 
Luke Harding and agencies in Moscow
The Guardian, Friday 19 September 2014 17.17 BST
 
The Kremlin is considering radical plans to unplug Russia from the 
global internet in the event of a serious military confrontation or big 
anti-government protests at home, Russian officials hinted on Friday.
 
President Vladimir Putin will convene a meeting of his security council 
on Monday. It will discuss what steps Moscow might take to disconnect 
Russian citizens from the web "in an emergency", the Vedomosti newspaper 
reported. The goal would be to strengthen Russia's sovereignty in 
cyberspace. The proposals could also bring the domain .ru under state 
control, it suggested.
 
Russian TV and most of the country's newspapers are under the Kremlin's 
thumb. But unlike in China, the Russian internet has so far remained a 
comparatively open place for discussion, albeit one contested by 
state-sponsored bloggers and Putin fans.
 
The move comes at a time when Russia has been bitterly critical of the 
western media, which Moscow says has adopted a biased attitude towards 
events in Ukraine. Russian channels have portrayed the conflict in 
Ukraine as a heroic fight against "fascists" in Kiev. They have disputed 
western reports that Russian soldiers and heavy weapons are involved. A 
BBC team that went to investigate reports of Russian servicemen killed 
in Ukraine was beaten up this week.
 
According to Vedomosti, Russia plans to introduce the new measures early 
next year. The Kremlin has been wrestling for some time with how to 
reduce Russia's dependency on American technology and digital 
infrastructure, amid fears that its communications are vulnerable to US 
spying. It has mooted building a "national internet", which would in 
effect be a domestic intranet. These proposals go further, expanding the 
government's control over ordinary Russian internet users and their 
digital habits.
 
Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia's spy agencies, described the plans 
as big news. In an email from Moscow he said he "didn't actually 
believe" Russian officials would disconnect the internet. But he said 
the moves were a "real step forward in the development of a besieged 
fortress mentality".
 
He wrote: "Before, such ideas were mostly to do with so-called 
government communications (how to make them independent from western 
technologies). Now they want to expand this crazy idea to the entire 
internet of the country."
 
Soldatov said it would be technically possible for Moscow to shut off 
the internet because Russia has "surprisingly few" international 
exchange points. All of them are under the control of national 
long-distance operations, like Rostelecom, which are close to the 
authorities, he said.
 
The most ominous element, he added, was the security council's apparent 
proposal to take control over .ru, as well as the domains .su (for 
Soviet Union) and .рф (Russian Federation in Cyrillic). These domains 
currently belong to a non-government organisation, the coordination 
centre of the national domain, rather than to government. Many are 
currently hosted abroad.
 
"The thing might be approved very quickly, and this means it shows a way 
to the next step – to force all domains in the .ru zone to be hosted in 
Russia," Soldatov said. Kazakhstan, an authoritarian state intolerant of 
online criticism, did something similar two years ago, he said, adding 
that such a move would affect his own website Agentura.ru, which is 
hosted in Germany.
 
Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed the meeting would take 
place on Monday, adding that much of it was likely to be in closed 
session. The communications ministry declined to comment on Friday.
 
While Putin enjoys popular support, with his approval ratings boosted by 
Russia's takeover of Crimea from Ukraine in March, the danger of mass 
unrest is not lost on the Kremlin. In 2011-2012 tens of thousands of 
Russians protested in Moscow after Putin announced he was returning as 
president and shoving aside his temporary successor Dmitry Medvedev. The 
protests fizzled out following a series of arrests, harassment of 
opposition figures, and high-profile trials.
 
The Russian economy, which is already teetering on the verge of 
recession, is reeling from ever more stringent Western sanctions over 
Moscow's alleged support for separatists in eastern-Ukraine. Washington 
and Brussels have introduced several rounds of sanctions that are the 
toughest punitive measures since the cold war.
 
An employee of a large communications provider told Vedomosti Moscow did 
not want to unplug the world wide web but to protect Russian cyberspace 
in case of further western sanctions that may affect the internet.
-- 
Namib
.....
There's a blaze of light in every word (Leonard Cohen)

se credi che esista un solo governo al mondo che non abbia già pronti nel cassetto i piani per tagliare internet in 5 minuti, sei un fesso senza paragoni persino in un ng di freaks come IP