Russia’s media watchdog has classified 640 blogs and online communities as equal to the media, making their content subject to certain restrictions, the watchdog said on its Twitter page Monday. Under the law adopted last year, bloggers and Internet users with public web pages visited by more than 3,000 people a day are eligible for inclusion …
Hundreds of Russian bloggers registered with media regulator Read More
Earlier this month US citizen Kendrick White, a prominent figure in the Russian tech and venture scene, got involuntarily involved in a witch hunt targeting foreign citizens whose presence in Russia is judged “undesirable” in some political and media circles. While civil high tech coooperation had thus far remained virtually unaffected by the international tensions, …
President Vladimir Putin said he was in favor of only “minimal” restrictions on the Internet, but added that he expected Russian citizens to respond with a forceful promotion of Moscow’s views to any “hostile” publications online. Putin made the comments during a meeting with young IT professionals taking part in the National Education Youth Forum. In the meeting, which was held Tuesday in the Vladimir region, Putin …
Putin says he supports “minimal” Internet restrictions Read More
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a controversial bill that allows citizens to demand that internet search engines remove links to personal information deemed “false” and “irrelevant,” as well as to that distributed in violation of the law. The law on the so-called “right to be forgotten,” signed by Putin on July 14, …
Just two months before the new Russian law on personal data storage will come into effect, many international players are implementing the necessary steps to comply with it. Thus last month Booking.com announced that all data from its Russian users will soon be transfered to a local data center. Preceding Booking.com were such companies as eBay, Google, PayPal, …
Global players challenged by new Russian law on personal data storage Read More
In June 2015 Russia launched the comprehensive project BrosayemKurit.rf (translation: Let’s Quit Smoking). The country celebrated World No Tobacco Day on May 31 with the release of another mobile application, “Smoke Free Area.” With the app a user can take a photo of an establishment where the ban on smoking in public places is violated and send …
No smoking, please: Russian mobile health technologies Read More
This week the Center for New Media & Society will host their colleagues Rob Faris and Bruce Etling from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University for a number of joint events in Moscow. These meetings will take place under the project “Crossing Boundaries with New Media” jointly implemented by the Center and the Berkman Center under the US-Russia …
MI6 has pulled its spies out of ‘hostile countries’ and America’s intelligence agencies are on high alert after Russia and China cracked encrypted files leaked by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden. The top-secret documents contain information that could lead to the identification of British and American spies, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and …
As a result of a meeting earlier this month between the Russian minister of telecommunications and mass media Nikolai Nikiforov and Iraqi ambassador Ismail Mukhsin, the two countries are willing to develop ties in the field of telecommunications, information technologies and postal services. Government bodies, private companies, scientific and educational organizations are potentially concerned, according …
Russia and Iraq to develop cooperation in the fields of IT and telecommunications Read More
State-owned fund of funds RVC has launched GenerationS 2015, the second edition of its annual initiative to stimulate innovation in large Russian companies. Corporations associated with this “corporate accelerator” include mobile operator MTS, hydroelectricity firm RusHydro, construction group Morton, national savings bank Sberbank, Johnson & Johnson, and more. “Enterprise customers formulate the requirements for the selected …
The United States on Friday announced that U.S. companies can still give users in Crimea access to a range of free online communications services, despite an earlier U.S. ban on providing any services to the region after it was annexed by Russia last year. The decision will allow U.S. Internet companies such as Apple and Google — who previously announced that they were cutting off service to Crimea — …
US social networks, blogs allowed back into Crimea Read More
After Western sanctions began shutting down sales of high-tech internet equipment to Russia’s military and security forces, employees at technology giant Cisco Systems Inc. altered sales records and booked deals under a false customer name, according to internal company documents. The intent, according to a confidential source with deep knowledge of Cisco’s Moscow operations, was …
BuzzFeed: After sanctions, Cisco altered sales records in Russia Read More
