If a Russian citizen sends an SMS message, his or her telecommunications provider will keep a copy of that message for six months. And the metadata — who texted who when, and from what device — will be on file for three years. And any service that offers encrypted communications needs to help the police unscramble messages, or face a $15,000 fine.
All that and more is wrapped in a piece of legislation passed by the State Duma, which is the lower house of the Russian legislature, Ars Technica is reporting. Now it needs to pass the Federation Council, the upper house of the legislation, before being passed by President Vladimir Putin.
At least one Russian resident, NSA leaker Edward Snowden, is speaking out.
Mass surveillance doesn't work. This bill will take money and liberty from every Russian without improving safety. It should not be signed.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) June 25, 2016
Snowden added that, in addition to encroaching on privacy, the measures are impractical, and require a massive buildup of storage capacity by telecommunications companies.
Three such companies, MTS, Megafon and Vimpelcom, agree, and have publicly rejected the proposal as impractical, going so far as to say it’s financially impossible to implement.
And the encryption measures aren’t likely to be effective, either. Any online service, from messenger apps to websites, has to help the Federal Security Service decipher messages sent by its users. But there are plenty of ways to send encrypted messages without involving third parties, as we’re sure many Russian cyber-criminals are aware. The law puts a great deal of burden on sites that offer users security without much of a law enforcement payoff.
Of course, this isn’t a uniquely Russian issue. The US government has flirted with banning encryption at times, and the FBI tried to force Apple to decrypted an iPhone not so long ago. But it’s disturbing to see digital rights encroached anywhere.
A virtual private network (VPN) encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a server run by the VPN provider. Websites see the VPN server’s IP address instead of yours, and you can get around geo-blocks, censorship, and ISP throttling. The best VPN services are paid, but there are still a handful of free options that do the job well.
Most free VPNs come with a hidden cost, because running servers isn’t cheap and a company that doesn’t charge you has to make its money somewhere else. Many do so by logging your browsing activity and selling it to advertisers, while others flood you with ads and track you across apps.
A stocked computer cache may be convenient for logging into and out of go-to sites in seconds flat, but a major buildup of these tracking codes could significantly impact your PC’s performance. If you’ve noticed that your PC has been running rather slow of late, or you’re using a new browser and don’t know how to clear its cache, we’ve got you covered with the following guide.
If you’re looking to clean up your Gmail inbox, but you don’t want to delete anything permanently, then choosing the archive option is your best bet. Whenever you archive an email, it is removed from your inbox folder while still remaining accessible. Here’s how to access any emails you have archived previously, as well as how to move such messages back to your regular inbox for fast access.