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Filed under: Russia
 Four major news stories about the Russian Internet published in recent days show that the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin has launched an all-out assault seeking to obliterate this last vestige of freedom of expression and genuine information and finalize Russia's transition to a neo-Soviet regime.
First, scholar and blogger Paul Goble reported that new data indicates that access to the Internet is no longer growing, and in fact is shrinking. CNews reported stark results:
The internet subscriber base formed [in Russia] within the last half a year has decreased by 2 million this summer as compared to spring. According to the latest survey "Internet in Russia," carried out by FOM, the subscriber base using the internet for half a year came to 26.8 million this summer, which is by 1.9 million lower than in spring. Monthly internet user base has decreased by 2.4 million to 22.4 million. Thus, 24% of the population above 18 used the internet in summer.
Russia's Internet base, in other words, was already puny, but at least it was growing. Now, that's no longer the case. Other news indicated clearly that this result has been brought about directly by the Kremlin's policies, even as the incomes of ordinary Russians is supposedly rising, making them better able to afford access.
For instance, the New York Times reported that Russia has become the leading source of Internet corruption, with Russian hackers becoming "something akin to national heroes last spring when a wave of Internet attacks was launched from Russia against Web sites in Estonia, the former Soviet republic." In other words, Russia's corruption is essentially state-sponsored and being weaponized for political gain (that's the Times graphic at the top of the page). The Washington Post reported that Russia is now the world leader in online child pornography, spam generation and outright theft by fraud.
Next, the Post reported on how Russia, already having mobilized a malignant cadre of online terrorists to attack voices of dissent and having taken over all significant outlets of journalism in the print and television areas, is now aggressively looking to seize control of source material on the Internet.
And finally, the Ukrainian Internet hub Maidan reported that the Kremlin is using the tactics of cyber attack, previously employed against recalcitrant foreign governments like Estonia, against domestic human rights organizations, who had retreated to the Internet as their last bastion after years of relentless assaults on their non-virtual activities.
All this is happening even before Russia's upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections over the next few months, perhaps in an effort to assert even more control over the outcomes of those ballots. Do you dare to imagine what will occur when Russia's politicians are no longer constrained by them? Russia's Internet is on its last legs, and it is the last vestige of non-Soviet life. The time is now to act aggressively to protect it.
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Comments
Artfldgr says:
Is it any wonder given their focus? That they are the first state to realize weaponization of the internet, and actually act on that, given that the first one to use a new crime/attack gets a free pass.
In other words, their system is so power based that they cant have as primary focus production before conquest (or potential conquest). They realize that if some of their people can use the internet to run long distance scams to free states, foul up state computers, steal information, and on and on…
Why the heck would they let such a weapon sit in the hands of the general population?
Given that they love stalin, one must also assume that, that which you love and admire you emulate.
"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?" - Joseph Stalin
In this conceptual, the internet is infinitely more dangerous than the guns of revolution. While the restructuring of the political system allowed them to change how the west regareded the leadership, and let then run wild through the candy store stealing information… that was a boon… and the reverse was ALWAYS resisted, which is one reason why they cant get traction to move forward.
The internet, creates a situation where you have to allow an unorganized and unwatched population trade information at the node level, and that scale free network is what gives the super efficiencies.
Of course they are always trying to make a one sided coin, a left without a right, a dark without a light.
If you want the efficiencies that distributed computing and action in a free state has, you cant restrict the information and material flow for review purposes.
As much as the US hates the drug trade, unlike russia, they would never actually search all containers. The amount of material traded is too much… and so they weigh the situation against productivity, and such… and accept the negative that comes with the huge benefit.. while the Russian system, the goals of the party should be the goals of the people and the party does not suffer if they grind everything to a halt for their own reasons. the people suffer, but the party does not. and so they are willing to do such things.
So is it any wonder that they will see the internet as putting high explosives and such in the hands of the people that they don’t like (as the average people are not their proletariat, but the lumpen proletariat that has to be swept away), and who do not like them…
The key thing from that book I recommended was that she noted that when the state starts to be like this, you can no longer use the people as any kind of barometer. We forget how a westerner would visit, and the whole image promoted was Potemkin and false backed.
Same now.. the less transparent the state and press and such… the less anything the public says or seems tosay actually matters or means something. It would be like imagining walking around the city to talk to people in stalins era and that person would sit and gripe the way a westerner would about theirs. I have no doubt that the older people know whats coming, and so they are not talking and such to make sure that later there are no records as to their ‘true’ natures… (another reason why the net on the peoples side didn’t grow so fast, all the talk on the net exposes a persons inner natures and such, puts in in print, stamps it with a date and it can be saved for instant recall)
The younger people don’t believe the level that it will or can get, and so they blindly go on…
Meanwhile the democratic putin (at least in his eyes), is removing the most democratic system that has ever hit the planet or the species called man!!!
Yup. A real defender of freedom.
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