A deputy in the Russian parliament thinks the United States might cut off Russia’s Internet and suggests Russians take measures to get ready for the information blackout.
Ilya Kostunov, the deputy in question, believes the US might want to undermine Russia’s Internet access in order to destabilize the economy and to agitate the social and political sentiment in the country. He has also asked the Ministry of Communications to prepare a contingency “civil defence plan” in case the RuNet goes dark, according to TJournal:
“More and more often we hear threats from NATO countries to destroy Russia’s economy. […] Since the routing on the Internet is controlled by ICANN, which is controlled by the US, switching off the Internet is actually possible. The Americans can switch off the Internet before elections, for instance, and blame Russian authorities for this.”
It’s worth noting that in March 2014 the US announced its intent to withdraw from its managing role in ICANN, the non-profit managing IP addresses and domains (stewardship of the IANA functions could pass on to the “global multistakeholder community” when the US contract with ICANN expires in September 2015), so Kostunov’s claims are somewhat threadbare in this regard. But he is not to be deterred, as he has suggested Russia needs a more autonomous Internet that could function independently of the rest of the world. This, Kostunov says, requires a set of software and technology solutions. One solution he offers is a special USB flash drive which “every Russian should have,” containing an ‘alternative routing system’ which could be launched in case of a Western-masterminded Internet blackout. The deputy did not elaborate on the details of this ‘alternative’ system or on what technologies could help make this possible.
Image courtesy of Tetyana Lokot © 2014.
The RuNet users reacted to the alarmist statement with a healthy dose of skepticism. Twitter user JosefK was full of scorn for Kostunov’s suggestions:
@tjournalru Every Russian citizen should have a special USB flash drive and a tin foil hat to boot.
The fear mongering around Internet cut-offs is the latest example in Russia’s ongoing quest for control over Internet access and user data. Earlier this week the Russian parliament moved to push the personal data storage law to an earlier start. The law, which obliges all online services with Russian users to store the users’ data on servers within Russia, will now come into power in January 2015, more that a year and a half ahead of the previously planned September 2016 date. Yevgeny Fyodorov, one of the deputies who lobbied for the earlier date, believes that Western sanctions endanger the RuNet users, and that the law will protect them.
We understand that a ruthless information attack is being unleashed in many directions, and the personal data of our citizens is under threat. […] In order to avoid various provocations and to rule out an escalation of the information war, we’ve made a collective decision to speed up the law’s coming into power.
Deputies are also concerned about Western Internet companies colluding with other states. Just this week, they accused Google of being anti-Russian and spying for Ukraine, after the Ukrainian state security service (SBU) announced it was cooperating with Google and YouTube in particular to thwart Russian efforts to manipulate and remove content online. Deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov believes the deal will allow Google to supply Ukraine with information about Russian Internet users, and has asked Russian authorities to investigate the matter, according to an Izvestia report.
As Russia becomes increasingly paranoid about threats to its information security, it will likely continue the trend towards the fragmentation of the global Internet, already evident in many other countries around the world. The security, however elusive, might come at the cost of free expression and unfettered access to the wealth of the world’s information and communication resources, which many Russians have grown to enjoy.
This post was originally published on Global Voices.
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Deadly logistics – the crematorium as our link with the past
“The identical correlation of killing methods: the identically-built gas chambers… the mass-production of round gas cannisters marked either “Zyklon A” or “Zyklon B”… the crematorium ovens built in exactly the same way… the same lay-out of death camps…
Special mobile crematoriums were made for the Nazi concentration camps. Proof of their existence comes from SS officer Paul Waldman, who was responsible for one of the most horrific incidents committed by the Third Reich – the massacre of many thousands of Russian POWs in one single operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The bodies of those killed in this massacre were burned in four mobile crematoriums, which were transported by being hitched to vehicles as trailers”
[Statement of the Assistant Chief Prosecutor of the USSR, Mr Leonid Smirnov, at the Nuremberg Trials – on the 14th, 15th, 18th and 19th of February, 1946]
Yes – this was an incident from the very darkest days of the Second World War. The bodies were those of people from the very same Ukraine as today – only then it was a region of the USSR. They had been mass-murdered, and were disposed of in high-tech, top-quality crematoriums made in Germany. Yet now, seventy years on, history is repeating itself. The corpses of hundreds of dead Ukrainian citizens are once again being burned in top-notch German crematoriums – the last word in modern tcchnology.
More detail is easy to obtain. Information about the delivery of mobile German-manufactured crematoriums to Ukraine – provided to cremate those killed in the so-called ‘ATO’ (‘Anti-Terror Operation’) in Ukraine’s south-east – was voiced in the press by Nazi MP Oleg Lyashko. It was written-off as the latest PR stunt from this controversial character – no-one even attached any significance to his story, perhaps wrongly? But in reality, all is far from simple.
This satellite photograph shows field crematoriums (ie mobile crematoriums), located by a military field hospital in the “Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone” at Novoaidar. Expert opinion endorses the photograph as genuine. This means that judging from the photograph, Lyashko’s story is actually true. There is some evidence to suggest that Lyashko knew about the presence of these mobile crematoriums some while ago – but for clear reasons, kept the information a secret.
However, on September 3rd, Ukrainian President Poroshenko announced “the possibility of special status for citizens living in the anti-terrorist operation zone”. In the opinion of the party favouring war, this statement made some attempt at rapprochement with the Donetsk National Republic – which pulled the legs out from under Mr Lyashko. Thus Lyashko, trying to scupper Poroshenko, blurted out one of the ‘Anti-Terror Operation’s’ darkest military secrets.
This grim secret – confirming that German-made mobile crematoriums are available to Ukrainian executioners – has become a most unpleasant memory jolt for Germany itself. It comes as a body blow to those Germans who are still transfixed by the guilt of their predecessors for the crematoriums of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Treblinka.
It certainly seems that today’s German government has learned nothing from the lessons of history. They began with tank tracks crashing across the Ukrainian fields, and then brought in the secret crematoriums for dead Ukrainians. What’s next? Consultation on building concentration camps for Ukraine’s south-east – a project titled by the modern Ukrainian government as ‘filtration’? Moving on to a partisan war? Greatly as we don’t wish to believe it, it’s clear that the genetic memory of Frau Merkel and her colleagues is broken.
original: http://oleglurie-new.livejournal.com/215155.html