Russia has banned VPNs and other technology that allows users to gain anonymous access to websites.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0new law\u00a0(link via Google Translate), signed today by President Vladimir Putin, goes into effect on Nov. 1 and represents another major blow to an open Internet. This weekend, news broke that\u00a0Apple has removed most major VPN apps from the App Store in China\u00a0to\u00a0comply with regulations passed earlier this year\u00a0that require VPN apps to be explicitly licensed by the Chinese government.<\/p>\n
According to state-run news agency RIA\u00a0(link via Google Translate), Leonid Levin, chairman of the Duma\u2019s committee on information policy and technology, has said that the law is not targeted at \u201cintroducing new bans for law-abiding citizens.\u201d Instead, he claims it is to prohibit access to illegal content. The scope of what is considered \u201cillegal content\u201d in Russia, however, has widened considerably during Putin\u2019s third term as president, with the government exerting more control over what people access or post online. As\u00a0Freedom House notes, \u201canti-extremism laws are widely used as a pretext to block political content, often without judicial oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s attempts to limit access to online information are concurrent with legislation that may put the privacy of users at risk. In 2015, the government passed legislation that\u00a0requires all user data\u00a0from Russian citizens to be stored in Russian-based servers, and last year it passed another law that requires telecoms and Internet service providers to retain traffic data for up to a year, a move that\u00a0prompted VPN provider Private Internet Access\u00a0to\u00a0discontinue its Russian gateways.<\/p>\n
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Source: TechCrunch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia has banned VPNs and other technology that allows users to gain anonymous access to websites. The\u00a0new law\u00a0(link via Google Translate), signed today by President Vladimir Putin, goes into effect on Nov. 1 and represents another major blow to an open Internet. This weekend, news broke that\u00a0Apple has removed most major VPN apps from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":340909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106],"tags":[7224,910,9770],"yoast_head":"\n