OPINION:
Russia recently passed laws which will give the Kremlin much more legal control over the internet and what Russians will be able to see online. To further this agenda of censoring available, cyberspace information, Russia is turning to the leader in the area, China, for off-the-shelf technology to do the job effectively.
The “great firewall” of Russia began being built with the Kremlin’s recent decision to block LinkedIn. “China remains our only serious ’ally,’ including in the IT sector,” a source in the Russian information technology industry told The Guardian, adding, “we are in fact actively switching to Chinese,” reports UPI.
The basic law that enabled this information crackdown is called Yarovaya’s Law and forces Russia telecommunications providers to hold information about its customer’s online history for a period of time, effectively giving the Russian government the ability to see anything a person has looked at on the internet. The infrastructure of the Russian internet is now controlled by the Kremlin as well. Chinese President Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have vowed to increase cooperation in many areas, including internet censorship and the economy.
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