Following the passage of a 2019 law allowing Russian Internet traffic to be isolated from the World Wide Web in case of an emergency, the country’s government has arranged to hold exercises to prepare for such a scenario at least once a year. A new posting appeared October 21 on Russia’s official government website to …
Internet isolation exercises to take place in Russia at least once every year Read More
Russia’s largest bank and its financial regulator last week called for tougher penalties to be put in place against cybercrime. Governor of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina and Sberbank CEO German Gref highlighted how criminal responsibility in Russia for some cyber crimes is softer than in the United States, while for others it is completely …
Finance heads call for stronger cybercrime punishments Read More
Shares in Russian tech giant Yandex have plummeted after reports the Kremlin is backing plans to limit the stakes of foreign owners in Russian “online information resources.” Yandex shares fell by 17% in the first minutes of trading on the Nasdaq exchange in New York on Friday, wiping more than $1 billion from the company’s …
Yandex shares plummet as Russia considers limits on foreign ownership Read More
The Russian government is stepping-up its plans to introduce new taxes on tech giants like Facebook, Apple and Google. The government’s draft budget plan, published last week by the Finance Ministry, highlights “significant shortcomings in the principles of how digital companies are taxed [which] lead to the fact that the effective rate of tax paid …
According to independent-minded online publication Meduza, the Russian Presidential Affairs Department’s Scientific Research Computing Center “develops systems to monitor and deanonymize social-media users, and it sells these systems to government and private clients alike.” In a long journalistic investigation published last week, Meduza found that the services ‘PSKOV’ and ‘Sherlock,’ for example, can be used …
Report: How Kremlin-managed research center sells services to deanonymize anyone in Russia Read More
On Sunday Sept. 8, while Moscow voters were called to renew the city parliament, a remote electronic voting procedure was made available to a fraction (6%) of them – in three city districts – as an alternative to paper ballot. The experiment was presented as “secure and honest” thanks to the use of blockchain. This technology “ensured the safety …
Statistical abnormalities cast suspicion on Moscow’s first blockchain e-voting Read More
Today the Russian Federation Council’s Commission on Protecting State Sovereignty and Preventing Foreign Interference met for the first time since nationwide local elections on September 8. As usual, the senators warned that anti-Kremlin opposition leaders and U.S. media companies pose an existential threat to Russia. Meduza offers a rough summary of the most colorful remarks …
Roskomnadzor, the Russian Internet and telecom regulator, has asked Facebook and Google to ban political advertising during the Sunday election and on the preceding day, in accordance with Russian legislation. Non-compliance would be viewed as meddling in Russia’s sovereign affairs, Roskomnadzor said on Friday, as reported by Reuters. Several regional elections will be held in …
Russia requests Facebook and Google to ban political ads during election Read More
The Russian authorities are discussing the creation of a state-run Internet traffic monitoring system that would determine precisely the viewership of web content and online advertising. These discussions were reported yesterday by business daily Vedomosti, which cited government and industry sources. Such a system would provide the content creation and advertising industries with comprehensive and …
Russian government aims to monitor Internet traffic and advertising flows Read More
In recent months, Russian authorities took a variety of measures targeting the Internet economy, presenting them as efforts to combat terrorism or restore the country’s digital sovereignty. However, behind these initiatives lies “a union of bureaucrats and security agents, the business aspirations of state capitalists, and the Russian authorities’ desire to control the Internet,” writes …
Behind the Kremlin’s new offensive against the Internet economy Read More
Sberbank, the state-owned financial and digital giant, is discussing with the city and country authorities the creation of a dedicated platform and framework in Moscow to experiment AI technologies. Participants in the experimental site would benefit from a privileged legal and tax framework and be allowed to leverage the Russian capital’s huge data volumes. The …
Moscow city aims to launch experimental platform for AI technologies Read More
This past Friday Russian lawmaker Anton Gorelkin submitted to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, a bill targeting “significant [online] information resources” with the capacity of “collecting information on [Russian] users.” Should their foreign ownership exceed 20%, such “information resources” will not be allowed to conduct advertising activities in Russia – an implicit way …
