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Russian Authorities Seek Total Control Over Internet
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 18 Issue: 140
By: Kseniya Kirillova
September 15, 2021 08:50 PM Age: 4 days
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But according to Michael Talanov, an IT specialist from San Francisco, California, the Russian authorities have had access to the personal online data of users for quite some time. According to him, the Russian special services can intercept any communications on their territory, including through encrypted messengers. This is done via a legal request sent to international Internet regulators for the issuance of a fake Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption certificate to the Russian authorities. Such a procedure is intended for persons or companies suspected of terrorist activities, but the Kremlin uses it universally. Thus, the Russian special services are able to intercept all online traffic physically passing within Russian borders. In addition to accessing confidential data, this technology, according to Talanov, is used to replace Internet content (Author’s interview, September 9).
The Russian authorities do not bother to conceal the fact that they largely borrowed the technologies for establishing full control over the Internet space from their Chinese colleagues...
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However, under the pretext of this threat, the Russian authorities demand control not only over critical infrastructure but over the entire Internet space, including news content and social networks (YouTube, September 6). In a similar fashion, the topic of “information war” serves to justify the destruction of journalism as such and reduces it to propaganda, in which journalists are referred to as nothing less than “soldiers of the information corps” (YouTube, August 4). Such a formulation of the question not only serves to justify repression but also calls for strengthening it, for example, to initiate criminal cases of treason against journalists (YouTube, August 21). To judge from the aggressiveness of Russian propaganda, censorship and repression in the information space will only intensify.