Honestly, if LinkedIn disappeared today worldwide, I wouldn't miss it one second. It's really more of a chore than anything else. When you're looking for a job, or looking to recruit, it's helpful, but they haven't made the case of general everyday use, and I doubt they ever will.
Last month I had to spend an hour making sure someone hadn't opened a LinkedIn account under my 8 year olds name after his aunt asked us why LinkedIn is suggesting she connect with him. Turned out she had his iCloud email in her contacts because she FaceTimes with him. LinkedIn thought it was OK to use her contact list to make it appear like he had an account there. The bastards found a way to waste my time even though I have no account with them. Humanity would be generally better off without LinkedIn.
Really? Three of my last five jobs came from Linked-in.
I find it very convenient to have offers come-in out of the blue, only having to pay the cost of tweaking my profile once a year, and occasionally skimming/deleting random recruiter messages.
I see it as being open to opportunities. Usually, I would only look for a job when: 1) Unemployed, or 2) Unsatisfied at my current position. In both cases I would be motivated to solve the problem ASAP.
But being approached when happily employed gives you the upper hand during negotiations, allowing you to make demands that you would usually not be so confident to make. Not to mention becoming aware of good opportunities when your "job radar" is turned off.
Until last month I was in the "LinkedIn is irrelevant"-camp. Then I got the best job offer of my career from a company that does consulting from one of former employer. They don't want to steal people from customers, but when I finally got around update my LinkedIn profile I was contacted three hours later.
Without LinkedIn I would never have gotten the offer, because my new employer would have had no chance of knowing that I no longer work for one of their customers.
> but they haven't made the case of general everyday use, and I doubt they ever will
But who thinks of LI as general purpose social media? I don't think anybody uses LI except in the strict context of finding new jobs, and making sure you can find new jobs in the future.
I don't get the criticism. It's like blaming the screwdriver for not being able to hammer in a nail.
It's a jobs site. And for that purpose it's pretty good. End of story.
> I don't think anybody uses LI except in the strict context of finding new jobs, and making sure you can find new jobs in the future.
I also use it as an up to date electronic rolodex of sorts. Is this person still working at Cisco? What's their current contact info? Let me LinkIn with you so I don't need to keep this business card, etc.
The issue is not about LinkedIn. The problem is that there is silly law that requires all personal data of Russian citizens to be stored on the servers located in Russia. It means that Russian government can block access to pretty much any website on the internet that they don't like.
You should see the dev groups on fb. People post screen shot of their code and ask for help. Sometimes you can spot an actual photography of a monitor with code on it.
I didn't know about this crazy new regulatory requirements until now. Quoting from an article [1] describing the new law:
> “When collecting personal data, including through information and the internet telecommunications network, the operator is required to provide a record that the systematization, accumulation, storage, updating and retrieval of personal data of citizens of the Russian Federation, is held on databases located in the territory of the Russian Federation.”
I could imagine that complying to this regulation wont be worthwhile for most companies.
Edit: The interesting thing is, that the law seems not to forbid to store the data outside of Russia, it "just" dictates that the data has to be stored in Russia also.
> The interesting thing is, that the law seems not to forbid to store the data outside of Russia, it "just" dictates that the data has to be stored in Russia also.
Correct! I was on a team trying to architect a solution for this and the requirements was really diffuse. We ended up doing a DB "replication" (via triggers) to a Russian cloud provider after the data had been committed in a european data center. The lawyers signed off on it but there were no clear guidelines from the Ministry of Communication (http://minsvyaz.ru/) on what was OK from an tech implementation view.
However, I feel that the best solution for solving it was to have all Russian traffic routed through something like a reverse web proxy which would first write the data to servers located in Russia or fail the request.
Since you may not reliably determine the citizenship via traffic routes, probably, it's better to ask user during signup about his country (simple pre-filled "Where are you from?" question, true answer on which is required by ToS) and then route his data through a native (Russian, Chinese etc) server, which can store it and "request" further processing overseas (this fulfills all the requirements of the law, including both storage and primary processing).
As a contractor outside of EU/USA I stuggle a lot to handle those regulations for PII(personal identify information). We have no rights to transfer even a single bit of PII out of EU/USA networks.
So I just don't understand, why it's such a news after all.
This is from another article [1] about the “Yarovaya package":
> Finally, any online service (including social networks, email, or messaging services) that uses encrypted data is now required to permit the Federal Security Service (FSB) to access and read their services’ encrypted communications, including providing any encryption keys.
It is not clear from this article also if you can encrpyt the user data and keep the key. But I guess that wouldn't be along of the spirit of this law.
At the end of the day, creating many of these services is trivial. Creating a LinkedIn clone is trivial, and one will pop up in Russia giving some Russian owners profit and creating jobs for Russians. So how it's bad for the Russian economy, or the economy of any country to do this, is beyond me. On the other hand, dictatorships and capitalist democracies love to gather as much information as they can on their citizens, so it will allow Russians to get more information on their citizens. Which may be bad for some of them.
Sure, but reaching a critical mass isn't. And for Russian freelancers looking for work outside of Russia a Russian LinkedIn isn't helpful. Maybe the problems with this regulation will be more obvious if a service like Github is blocked.
We actually had Github banned in Russia once or twice for short periods of time (like hours or days). Because of some repository contained joke text about how to commit suicide.
LinkedIn clone already exists for quite a long time.
The professionali.ru service even copied the original design when it was launched. Not successful. :)
The real alternative - startup MoiKrug.ru ("my circle"), that was launched in mid-2000s - was purchased by Yandex, made irrelevant by lack of clear strategy and finally sold to some other investor.
It's not about the economy, it's about control. Give them control or get out. Eventually the only companies left are those that will acquiesce to Russian demands.
Same as National Security Letter. You give the government what it wants, or else. At the end of the day the difference is soft power vs. hard power. The thugs dressing in nice suits and having their agents mess your business up through audits or lawsuits, or thugs sending their secret police to mess you up. The end result is they get what they want no matter what.
Uh... You can't send a national security letter to a foreign company that has no presence in the US. Well, you can probably send it, but since the foreign company is not bound by US laws, they can ignore it and even publish it (this is my understanding, IANAL).
The whole point of this Russian law is to remove this limitation.
I guess the question is what qualifies as presence in your view. LinkedIn has a presence in Russia due to it's Russian clientele, that's why Kremlin is going after them in the first place.
This is only party relevant, but in the past few years the US started going after people solely based on the fact that they have some money in a US bank (and no other ties, i.e. 'presence'). So now you have the US Federal court in Brooklyn prosecuting the FIFA corruption scandal.
The original point stands, I think. If a state actor has interest in your affairs, they will find legal ways to spy on you, or create new laws so they can. Honestly, the NSA scandal, and the gross violation of personal privacy in the US after 9/11 should have taught people that. And the US is the bastion of modern democracy (saying this w/o sarcasm) to boot.
The State department has gone after companies that had no US presence, they did so on the basis of Americans using the website which they feel gives them jurisdiction. It's very similar to that.
What are some of those companies? I'd be curious to read about that. Because it doesn't sound like the state dept. has any legal basis here, just American specialism.
At any rate, US is not the bastion of freedom that Russia's actions should be compared to. Especially so when it involves three-letter agencies.
To clarify the distinction I'm trying to make - yes, US doing some shady shit, mostly trying to keep it in secret. Russia is explicitly legalizing such shady shit. And doing even shadier shit in secret.
From how I understanding "Russian state philosophy" (if there's such a thing) I'd even intuitively assume they're not necessarily primarily interested in gathering everything-about-everyone but in ensuring no other party (especially private western/multinational corps) gain potentially such an information advantage over them. We've arrived in an age when non-sovereign entities can gain leverage over sovereign entities and thus become "geopolitical players", to be "reckoned with".
That's my understanding of it, also. Just the other day I was discussing with a work colleague about what would have happened had FB not been blocked in China almost from the very beginning. Imagine all the Chinese' people data sitting on a server a couple of keystrokes away from entities like the NSA. Our example, made half-jokingly, was something along the lines of: "Imagine how much information you can gain just by tracking the GPS positions of the personal secretaries attached to important Chinese Communist Party power figures".
Because a large part of the Russian software market is overseas.and many developers work on contract. Further, this helps the Kremlin's agenda which has lead to economic stagnation, and the average gdp of Russians dropping below that of China.
Are you hoping I won't type /china/ in the URL? The statement "average gdp of Russians dropping below that of China" is still not true. Though I am not an expert on the subject, nor do I have a interest in Russia.
I thought you were contesting the bigger argument that Russia's economy is stagnating, since the link you provided did not contradict anything else (there was no reference to China).
I wonder what sort of onus is on the operators to determine the citizenship of its users. How do I know that Andrey Zhukov is a citizen of the Russian Federation? Does a Russian name and a home address of Saint Petersburg suffice?
As a Russian citizen, I used LinkedIn heavily to find jobs in Europe (along with stackoverflow.com/jobs). I keep a lot of contacts there (e.g. former colleagues and European recruiters, some of them are very helpful).
I found it's alarming that LinkedIn is blocked in Russia. Blocking LinkedIn significantly reduces chances to find a job in Europe.
But I expected that since I watched closely on new laws restricting internet freedom in Russia.
Official motivation behind this law is to prevent US spying on Russian citizens (this law was proposed after Snowden's scandal).
Of course, this motivation was a lie as everything else which came out of dirty rotten mouths of nasty Kremlin bastards.
The real motivation is that the Kremlin loves to spy on its own citizens. And they already did that for a long time.
The problem is that these anti-freedom laws do bother only very small percentage of Russians. The rest of Russia won't even notice if Kremlin completely shuts down access to the global internet. Heck, the majority of Russians doesn't even bother to learn elementary English!
Stupid people buy everything Kremlin tells them, including version about protecting Russian citizens from US NSA.
The general principle is that any government is constantly trying to expand itself and limit citizen's freedoms. The only force which can prevent government from endlessly limiting citizen's freedoms is the majority of citizens (definitely not a minority of non-rich citizens). Every freedom above what masses asking for is only at mercy of the government's bueracrats.
It means that in absolutely any country masses fully deserve their government.
So I consider myself as a part of absolute tiny minority of Russian citizens which has no voice at all (thanks to backward masses).
That's why I left Russia and I hope forever!
I think LinkedIn could be unblocked if LinkedIn agrees to meet these crazy requirements. Even if LinkedIn would be unblocked, it won't change sad state of freedoms in Russia.
P.S. I hope to get rid of toxic Russian citizenship in the future.
> Heck, the majority of Russians doesn't even bother to learn elementary English!
> Stupid people buy everything Kremlin tells them, including version about protecting Russian citizens from US NSA.
> thanks to backward masses
> P.S. I hope to get rid of toxic Russian citizenship in the future.
I think the only thing toxic here is how you write and view other humans and your fellow countrymen as inferior beings.
I have no Russian heritage, but I lived in rural cities around Russia for a year and was there another 6 months in Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is definitely much different from the Western world and there are a lot of things I disagree with, but I would never call anyone stupid for supporting Putin or the government.
Calling folks stupid and backward for supporting stuff you dont support is just you thinking you are better than everyone else when you are not. Don't be a dick because some people are less fortunate than you and didn't have an opportunity to learn critical thinking. Even people much smarter than you might support what you don't like. The world isn't black and white.
You are in for a rude awakening if you believe that other governments don't lie to their citizens. Whatever government you currently support and get your new citizenship from, you are a pawn and part of the "backward masses" for whatever fucked up scheme that government is cooking up to screw you over.
This majority is totally fine to imprison unwanted minorities. This majority is totally fine to restrict my freedoms. This majority thinks they are right because they are majority.
So in short, the majority asks me to sacrifice myself for their sake because I'm in minority and they are in majority.
I think it is completely appalling how russian majority treats minorities, I'm not even talking about political parties or freedom of speech. Homosexuals and smaller ethnicities there are having hard time. A friend of mine lived in Russia, being half black - the constant racism from general populace forced him to leave. I like russian people but not russian society. Some psychologists say that societies have collective consciousness, whatever that is, in the case of Russia it has many scars and it just can't be pretty, that's probably one of the reasons russians are attached to their literary cultural identity. I give them that, their literature is great, although it's problematic that so many russians still think that their culture is somehow superior to others.
I have left my parents and many friends and colleagues in Russia. They all are kind and smart and good people.
They just can't leave the country as I did: they don't want to, they are bound to their family, they have business there, they don't work in IT, they don't know English etc.
The fact that you've left Russia is not making you `special` or `elite`.
There are bad and stupid people everywhere, as well as good and smart and awesome people. World is not black and white.
Being part of a minority is not the same as being 'elite' or 'special' in the sense you seem to imply, and I can't see that the author claims to be part of some kind of elite either? What are you trying to say ?
(ethnic minority and progressive here) This majority can pretty easily be convinced that everything you are mentioning is bad. They are not dumb, they are misguided and they have very poor political education. It's not their fault they behave so, it's the legacy, they have to live with. It will take a lot of time to convince them all that their current way of thought is not right, not good and do not serve their interests, but this sacrifice of time and effort may worth it - for future generations, at least. You may say that it's not your war and you'll be right. But forgive them for they see not the full picture (Luke 23:34).
Yes. Any thinking person should be against democracy in the sense of "any time we can get one vote over 50% for something we should pass the something".
This is why the US government was set up with various undemocratic features. This is why there are things like constitutions that require supermajorities to modify.
Protecting minorities from the tyranny of the majority is one of the main purposes of good governmenance.
Any thinking person recognizes that in the function "votes(issue) > X%" X isn't fixed to 50. I think people should get a say in proportion to how much it affects them and having X be 100% is a perfectly sane and optimal democratic decision process.
In a free society, the rule of the people is only one of the pillars of freedom. Other pillars include the rule of law, certain inalienable rights, etc. Without these, the rule of the people descend into majoritianism or ochlocracy.
The textbook example of ochlocracy is the French Revolution between the Insurrection of 10 August 1792 and the Thermidorian Reaction.
> I think the only thing toxic here is how you write and view other humans and your fellow countrymen as inferior beings.
Eh, might be toxic. Might be a natural human response to seeing the majority of his countrymen accept propaganda without question. You don't know this guy. For me his comment read more like a frustrated individual than someone that thinks he is superior.
I imagine similar trends can be found in many countries, including the US. The desire to belong is strong, and sometimes it's in our best interest to think less and cheer more.
Nah, having lived in such a country (ex-USSR), I'm pretty confident to call most of who still lives there stupid as fuck in regards to the bigger picture.
When you live with such people long enough but still can't understand what the flying fuck is everyone thinking, then it's either you're insane or them.
Sometimes it turns out it's them. 50% of the world's population is literally dumber than the average.
This is exactly why here in Russia people generally do not like so called "liberals". Try to understand a person who feels himself as he's at the next evolution stage. There is no any chance that the majority votes for him or party he represents or supports. Unfortunately, such persons associate themself with democracy, what automatically discredits this word in our country.
"In 1990, Elizabeth Newton did a fascinating psychology experiment: She paired participants into teams of two: one tapper and one listener. The tappers picked one of 25 well-known songs and would tap out the rhythm on a table. Their partner - the designated listener - was asked to guess the song. How do you think they did?
Not well. Of the 120 songs tapped out on the table, the listeners only guessed 3 of them correctly - a measly 2.5 percent. But get this: before the listeners gave their answer, the tappers were asked to predict how likely their partner was to get it right. Their guess? Tappers thought their partners would get the song 50 percent of the time. You know, only overconfident by a factor of 20. What made the tappers so far off?
They lost perspective because they were "cursed" with the additional knowledge of the song title.Chip and Dan Heath use the story in their book Made to Stick to introduce the term:
"The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it's like to lack that knowledge. When they're tapping, they can't imagine what it's like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. And it becomes difficult or us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our listeners' state of mind.""
I am a Russian too, moved to New Zealand.
I was talking to my colleague from Russia via Linkedin, he was asking me about moving to NZ, getting the visa and so on.
But now he can't read my response...sigh
Some small russian ISP just do not synchronize their database of blacklisted sites with Roskomnadzor central database.
Also, LinkedIn seems to have several IP addresses, some of them may not be blacklisted yet.
The main problem is in tendency itself: the government writes crazy laws and trying to enforce these laws in real life.
It's good that these laws still are not very effective (I mean it's still possible to bypass them) but looking over last 4 years, I see how significantly internet freedom is deteriorated in Russia (i.e. before 2012, there was no such thing is Russian firewall which maintained at federal level by the government).
It certainly indirectly translates to it though. English + internet = tons more information. English + travel = far more destinations. English + business = far more international opportunities.
For example, want to open up some business in Germany? You're going to have an easier time speaking either German or English than if you just speak Russian. Swap in Chinese/French/Spanish/Arabic if you like, but all of these still take a back seat to English (at the moment).
That's true, but learning a foreign language takes money and incredible amount of time (hundreds or thousands of hours). Potential opportunities by themselves are not going to keep many people motivated enough to push through.
Internet is indeed very beneficial in a sense that it provides a tangible reward path at least for learning basics.
Knowing more languages allows you to get perspective and info from more people. English has the most diverse perspectives because it is the de facto language of business around the world. Russian is spoken in... Russia. Knowing only Russian limits you to Russian information sources and perspectives.
"Basic English is enough for that" ?
I am amazed at the simplicity of the work you are referring to. Do they still pay a salary for that, or are these people supposed to work for free? Maybe they get paid through something like a Russian fiverr?
>The general principle is that any government is constantly trying to expand itself and limit citizen's freedoms. The only force which can prevent government from endlessly limiting citizen's freedoms is the majority of citizens (definitely not a minority of non-rich citizens). Every freedom above what masses asking for is only at mercy of the government's bueracrats.
The fundamental issue affecting all governments and organizations is that they select for Machiavellian or power-growing behaviours. An individual not maximizing power would lose to one who does, as greater power can buy more allies and followers.
There is a reason we see these outcomes in almost every country. It is emergent behaviour. Blaming the people - or even the politicians - will not help. It is our structures that are inherently flawed; you can't expect people to act against their own interests.
Why should Russia allow a US company to mine private data about its citizens on a large scale when it is known that the US government basically can force any US company to hand over any data it desires.
That's why they have passed a law whereby private data from social networks about its citizens has to be stored within Russia and must not be transmitted to any other country.
Linkedin knew that but they ignored it, probably because it didn't make economic sense for them
You can argue if it is acceptable or not for a government to step in and prevent foreign governments from acquiring such data about its population, but calling people stupid like you did frankly makes _you_ look stupid.
That was my point. As a libertarian I would in general tend towards not having the government involved with this stuff, but Russia and the US are two countries which have bad relations at the moment and there's uncertainty if they might have a military conflict in the near future.
Here it's hard to say if it is justified as I do not know what the US secret services and the US military might be able to do with this kind of data in a conflict. (having the passwords of XX million Russians could be devastating in a cyberattack as many will do the stupid thing and reuse the same password everywhere)
They already have the passwords. Also, Russia doesn't and won't force any company to store users' data exclusively under their jurisdiction, as this would not allow any foreign company to operate in Russia, making your arguments incorrect.
Which is a good reason to let them continue collecting them indefinitely?
> Also, Russia doesn't and won't force any company to store users' data exclusively under their jurisdiction, as this would not allow any foreign company to operate in Russia, making your arguments incorrect.
You state this as if it was a fact, but there is great uncertainty among lawyers and businesses if the law requires data to be stored exclusively in Russia or if that's not the case. In any way you'll have to ask for permission which they might never grant you if you are a company like Facebook that's storing very sensitive information.
> Which is a good reason to let them continue collecting them indefinitely?
Which is not something your government can forbid or even verify, they have no way of enforcing anything under other jurisdictions. Whatever company says it did or didn't do there - the government has no choice but to believe them.
Look, I'm a Libertarian as I stated before, I do not even want a government to exist as they are oppressive by nature but I recognise that there's brutal geopolitical competition among world powers.
I can't say with the little information I've got if it is necessary or not but I understand the rationale whereby someone might implement this because they are not willing to bet the survival of their people or their nation on the goodwill of others.
As people point out in comments below, the law does no such thing. It doesn't prohibit storing user data outside of Russia, so it doesn't offer any privacy protections whatsoever. What it does is require that data to also be stored inside Russia, where it is subject to warrants (and warrantless wiretapping under SORM-2 and similar arrangements). Which is really everything you need to know about the purpose of the law.
Speaking more broadly - yeah, Russia is an authoritarian populist regime with a known penchant for human rights abuses and suppression of political dissent. And so it's going to be judged as such when it does things, not equally to any other country. This is similar to how we judge people differently, and ascribe different motivations, based on their past actions that we know about.
I'm Russian. The only cliches that I have about Russia are those derived from my experience growing up and living in Russia for 25 years of my life, before finally deciding that it isn't going to get any better, and there's nothing I can do to fix it.
One other aspect is the extreme degree of federalism in US. When looking at it from the outside, people generally tend to pay more attention to what's happening on the federal level. But in truth, state and local politics are much more relevant to day-to-day stuff, and there's a very broad range to pick from when deciding which state to live in. Of course, in practice you also get limitations like "where can I actually find a job?" etc; but there's still plenty of options).
And state and especially local politics are easier to influence, too. State politics more so in states that have some form of voter initiatives (which mine does), which rewards grassroots bottom-up efforts.
I believe so. Or, to put it more precisely - I believe my chances of fixing things, and of seeing better things come, are much higher in US than in Russia. Even now.
The problem is, that legislation does not actually protect citizen data. All code is still controlled by LinkedIn, and Russian goverment still have no idea what it does. If FBI (or CIA or any other agency) comes to LinkedIn with an order, then does it matter if the technician serving the request pulls the data from Russian, European or US database? The data will be delivered anyway.
Moreover, the law does not actually prevent the companies from storing data somewhere else -- Article 12 mentions many allowed reasons to send the data to other countries.
(I don't know what kind of) news for you: US and UK are both such governments. With less action between the surveillance and the police I guess, for now.
Well, afaik VPN is so widely used in Russia and even bimbo girls know how to use it. When you are going to Turkey for vacation, VK.com ( Russian Facebook) is blocked there because of porno content and you have to use VPN. Then there are resources as bbc news and netflix that didnt allow to watch video from Russia due to copyright reasons, and that again always was worked around with VPN.
> The real motivation is that the Kremlin loves to spy on its own citizens. And they already did that for a long time.
This doesn't prevent or help Russia from spying on its own citizens.
I get that you are anxious. But the traffic that travels from your computer to servers outside of Russia is just as easy to spy on for Russian intelligence services as the case where the servers are located inside the country.
It does, however, make it more difficult for the US to spy on Russian citizens, which it has been caught trying to do.
But the traffic that travels from your computer to servers outside of Russia is just as easy to spy on for Russian intelligence services as the case where the servers are located inside the country.
Ehh.. no? TLS protects the data against snooping, but only borders protect you from warrants. Russia based servers are subject to Russian law and warrants.
I see that the tacit assumption in this thread is that the FSB can't defeat simple consumer encryption.
The certificates in Russian citizens' browsers allow the Russian government to intercept their communications. This is just one of hundreds of weaknesses to that belief.
> The certificates in Russian citizens' browsers allow the Russian government to intercept their communications.
There are no government certs in Russian citizens' browsers at the moment. Furthermore, government mandated hardware, that ISPs have to install, is not installed in a configuration permitting any kind of MITM, it only sees mirrored traffic.
> everbody wants to know now how those certificates are included in Russian citizens browsers.
Included in the builds.
> And while you are at it you could also tell us how this regulation make it more difficult for the US to spy on Russian citizens
The traffic will stay inside of infrastructure controlled by the Russian government through its domestic ISPs, rather than exiting the country to ingestion nodes disclosed by Snowden to be used to surveil on internet traffic.
Russian citizens download and install specially crafted builds instead of the officials ones? Are they forced, or do they they trust those FSB builds more?
> The traffic will stay inside of infrastructure controlled by the Russian government through its domestic ISPs, rather than exiting the country.
I guess we are not talking about the same, because the the regulation doesn't dictate this. It "just" says, that there has to be a copy of the data in Russia. The server can still be outside of Russia.
It would. That's what certificate pinning is for. If they did that and (ab)used it, they'd be found out in no time.
This whole conversation is just not going anywhere. The Russian government can't snoop your tls data if it leaves the country, end of story. That's the reason for this law and the article to begin with!
No, it does make a huge difference, actually. If the traffic is travelling to outside servers, it can be encrypted, and there's no mitigation that they can do to get access. But if it ends up on the servers inside the country, they control the endpoint where it has to be decrypted to be processed. Then it becomes a kind of a reverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM#SORM-2 set-up, with every prominent service provider having a preinstalled tap for the agencies.
I wonder what the Kremlin thinks of Livejournal.ru these days? Livejournal's a "back in the 2000s" memory for most of the English world, but as far as I know, Livejournal.ru is the top blogging-oriented network in Russia (http://blog.webcertain.com/targeting-russia-the-top-8-russia...). Also as far as I know, LJ's servers are still in the USA.
Technically it has, but only for unencrypted communications and without cooperation from internet companies. Which they really want to change with all the new laws and everything.
So the assertion is that Russian intelligence services cannot thwart encryption, including the encryption that it standardized for civilian use?
If this were true, I would feel very comfortable speaking about politics in Russia, as in the United States all consumer-grade encryption is being broken by our intelligence services.
I'm not sure what you mean by "civilian use encryption". If it's SSL, then I don't see how they would have the means - so far as I know, it's still cryptographically secure, and unlike US, they can't just force certificate authorities to cooperate and allow them to do MITM.
There have been some attempts by the ISPs to enable MITM, but it's very crude - they basically block SSL, except for their own custom root certificate that they explicitly require you to install, and then they use that to MITM you. It's all very blatant, and I think there was only one ISP actually trying to do it.
Also, I'm not aware of any cases of dissenters caught because their encryption was broken. Most people who get persecuted for their views said all the things they did out in the open, either to make a stand, or because they were careless.
And you buy everything various conspiracy theorists and layman politicians sell to you. We have some issues, right, but your generalizing 'stupid' attitude is really better off this land, no matter who's in power.
Similarly, please continue to leak as many illegal activities of the United States government as possible, it will motivate our people to change government (by force, maybe) faster.
That was quick - it's already not accessible from Megafon cellular networks.
LinkedIn is quite popular among international HRs hiring software developers in Russia. HRs may still have access, but the workforce now does not. What was the point not to comply with regulatory requirements? Too small market? Too hard to throw some user data to a server in some Moscow datacenter for persistent storage?
Risk of leaking of databases, which are vital for their business, is too high, IMHO. Did you remember closed government databases, with private information, written on CD and sold at Gorbushka for pennies?
LinkedIn doesn't seem to mind if their Chinese databases are leaked; they complied with similar requirements there. If the market in Russia were as large as China, I'm certain they would make a compromise too.
That risk isn't bigger than anywhere else since we are talking about private company really concerned about security. How many leaks were there through government channels from Mail.ru Group or Yandex? None, and the reason is that, given all necessary security measures taken, you cannot just copy such a database to CD. The access will be limited to few well-paid people in IT Ops, the database can be secured using a solution certified by FSB (and even if FSB will hack it, these guys do not expose themselves by selling CDs on Gorbushka).
«A vendor going by the online handle of “saul_berenson” is selling 57 million Mail.ru accounts on darknet in BTC 1.0000 (628.78 US Dollar).
The sold data includes emails and MD5 passwords of Mail.ru users. According to the seller, “these passwords are very easy to crack.” Remember Mail.ru was hacked twice, one in July and August 2016 when 27 million accounts were stolen and before that in May 2016 when 57 million accounts were stolen. We suspect that the stolen data is from May 2016 breach.
Yandex is another Russian Internet giant serving as the country’s largest search engine and like Mail.ru the corporation has been under attack by hackers numerous times. However, now, a vendor is selling 6.5 million Yandex accounts containing emails and passwords. The total number of sold accounts is 659,5756 with both hashed and clear-text passwords.»
The whole idea of an government operation, like that, is to put finger first, then whole hand. When data will be in Russia, government will demand 24x7 access to it. Then data will be copied somewhere, then sold.
Seriously? I can give you free access to credentials from 164,611,595 LinkedIn accounts right now. This data has been copied and sold many times over with zero help from any government.
LinkedIn didn't just "get blocked" out of the blue. They got blocked after many warnings and plenty of time during which they refused to take basic steps to comply with the laws of a sovereign nation. Just set up some servers in a Russian datacenter and be done with it! But instead they blew it off, or created the impression of blowing it off, by going running to the Russian bureaucrats on the last day -- as if the whole thing were a big surprise!
If you wanted to insult them, show them you didn't take them seriously and didn't make a plan to comply with their laws, I can't think of a better way to do it than going to them on the last day to ask for more time. If I were those bureaucrats I would take especial relish in cutting them off. (And that's aside from the fact that it's a worthless site in the first place.)
Sometimes when you get Tased it's because of crooked cops, but most of the time it's because you're being an ass, disregarding the laws of the people, despite many warnings, and not taking simple steps to comply.
LinkedIn denied to play by rules of idiots. Shame on Google etc who supports and promotes censorship by accepting the rules of censorship. Internet ends when every country will start to force everyone else to do what they think is good.
Russia likes to copy EU strategies and uses them for other purposes. For example, the EU and its members really like to go after US companies for privacy protection. This is usually a good thing for the consumers, but can feel like a targeted attack to the US companies in question.
However, when the Russian Federation does - on the surface - almost the same thing, it suddenly has a very different impact...
Putin likes to make it look that way, yes. And on the surface it does. Beneath the surface, there are lots of important differences.
The EU doesn't block websites. It doesn't control the media. It ensures freedom of speech. It makes it possible even for US companies to do business in the EU, without the fear that their servers are seized whenever some corrupt regime decides to. The EU doesn't go after dissidents... and the list goes on and on...
That's so naive, to think that any country isn't simply pursuing its own interests.
I'll argue some of your points for fun.
> The EU doesn't block websites
Really? What about all the torrent sites being blocked? Same as Russia, EU has their own agenda for blocking websites. It doesn't need to be for the same reasons or the same websites.
> It doesn't control the media.
Really? Pretty sure any newspaper/tv station has an affiliation/bias with one party/view or another.
Also, same as Russia having state owned media, other countries in Europe have that too, for example the public national televisions and radios. Then there is the social media. Try posting something illegal on facebook and see if it is controlled or not. Try calling for a protest against something. You might get a visit from the police [1].
> It ensures freedom of speech
What exactly is freedom of speech? No country has 100% freedom of speech. How much does Russia have? How much do other countries have? How do you measure it? Let's say in Russia I can't insult Putin (although probably you can), in UK I can't insult the queen, in US I can't insult the FBI. Is there a difference? Insulting can mean different things in different countries.
> It makes it possible even for US companies to do business in the EU
Of course they do, EU is almost like another part of the US. In collaboration with the US they also use these tech companies to spy. But still, not all US business is welcomed. Some countries protect their own interests. That is why this EU-US free trade treaty is hard to get signed.
> without the fear that their servers are seized whenever some corrupt regime decides to
Yeah, US companies definitely do not fear their servers being seized because the US is doing all the seizing. In any case, this is a mutual benefit deal. But recently there is a shift against big US companies and their tax practices. So far, there was no seizing, but let's see what happens next.
> The EU doesn't go after dissidents
What about Snowden, what about Assange? Pretty sure Assange would go to Russia if he could.
Of course, EU encourages and protects dissidents of countries such as China and Russia. In turn these countries do the same. But nobody is better.
It still blows my mind that people are on linkedin. If you are not a recruiter/hiring manager it's only real purpose (that I can see) is to be a boasting board for achievements and a easy to ignore place to receive recruiting emails.
Got a dream job out of the blue through LinkedIn.
Was skeptical when the cold call came in, but decided to talk to the recruiter and ended up accepting the offer.
YMMV, but you never know.
I get good value. I work in marketing, client side.
I use it for recruiting to see backgrounds, how peeps career developed etc.
I use it for making business deals. Occasionally I'll reach out to another person where I can see the opportunity to partner on something. How well this is received surprised me at first. I assume it's because I'm not a sales person trying to sell something approach, and it shows people do read their messages.
I use it to keep an eye on what friends and colleges in are doing.
People us it to approach me, often spam but I get much more on email and occasionally get useful introductions.
I use it to look at other companies if I'm thinking of working with them. E.g you can get an idea of if a company is growing/shrinking via their headcount and other things like that.
I've used it to escalate issues I'm having with a business to senior guys that can sort problems. And once used it to flag a database breach I found to a CEO after their IT guys hadn't responded to my emails.....for 6 months...
So it is plenty useful in my user-case and I'm happy for them to show me some ads in return.
It's great for lead gen, researching competitors, networking, etc. It doesn't apply much to a developer's day to day, but there are more than just developers out there. Recruiting is a very small part of Linkedin.
I got lots of interesting offers from linkedin. Also I didn't have to bother to write my CV in years, because I can just link anyone to my up to date linkedin profile.
Internet ends when every country will start to force everyone else to do what they think is good. In digital world physical geo-location doesn’t matter unless you want to fool someone. You can store data in Russia but give access to it to CIA. You can store data in USA but make it impossible to access by CIA.
I'm not in Russia but I can pretty much confirm this. It feels like the number of reposts on VK containing videos from small companies asking for referrals to fill positions has almost quadrupled in last several months. I guess it's working out quite well.
Well I went to see if there was any news on this for an Australian, and all I found when I logged into LinkedIn was this advice regarding "restricting" my account from use:
> Amid a tense stand-off and attempt at negotiations, Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor has started to enforce a proposed block of LinkedIn in the country, after the social network failed to transfer Russian user data to servers located in the country, violating a law instituted in Russia requiring all online sites to store personal data on national servers.
Not the worst rationale. Keep in mind that countries such as Canada and EU countries also have different privacy laws that US corporations have ran afoul of from time to time.
The magic of Facebook, Twitter, etc are not the technologies. Sure, as they grow, they need more elegant than off-the-shelf solutions. But hacking together a Twitter clone in a week is the easy part - getting people to use it, building a community, etc, is the hard part.
I'm sure this has nothing to do with recent articles detailing how Russian FSB agents successfully use LinkedIn to find, contact, groom, and network with potential sources and agents on Wall Street.
