If you’re a tweeter or facebooker in Russia you may soon have to forsake your social media activities and get back to work because Pootie Poot (as George W. Bush called him) might ban your favorite time-sucking services!
Russia’s media watchdog has written to Google, Twitter and Facebook warning them against violating Russian Internet laws and a spokesman said on Thursday they risk being blocked if they do not comply with the rules.
Roskomnadzor said it had sent letters this week to the three U.S.-based Internet firms asking them to comply with Internet laws which critics of President Vladimir Putin have decried as censorship.
“In our letters we regularly remind (companies) of the consequences of violating the legislation,” said Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Ampelonsky.
He added that, because of the encryption technology used by the three firms, Russia had no way of blocking specific websites and so could only bring down particular content it deemed in violation of law by blocking access to their whole services.
To comply with the law, the three firms must hand over data on Russian bloggers with more than 3,000 readers per day, and take down websites that Roskomnadzor sees as containing calls for “unsanctioned protests and unrest”, Ampelonsky said.
While it sounds like they’re just asking to respect Russian laws, Putin’s critics say he’s just shutting down dissenting voices in an act of government censorship:
[Putin] promised late last year not to put the Internet under full government control, but Kremlin critics see the Internet laws as part of a crackdown on freedom of speech since Putin returned to the Kremlin for a third term in 2012.
A law passed last year gives Russian prosecutors the right to block without a court decision websites with information about protests that have not been sanctioned by authorities.
Under other legislation, bloggers with large followings must go through an official registration procedure and have their identities confirmed by a government agency.
I hope Obama doesn’t get any bright ideas about the same here!