
As Russia attacks Ukraine, the authorities in Moscow are intensifying a censorship campaign at home by squeezing some of the world’s biggest tech companies.
As Russia attacks Ukraine, the authorities in Moscow are intensifying a censorship campaign at home by squeezing some of the world’s biggest tech companies.
Google, Apple and others were warned that they must comply with a new law, which would make them more vulnerable to the Kremlin’s censorship demands.
Russia has limited access to Facebook over the platform’s stance on the accounts of several Moscow-backed news outlets amid the invasion of Ukraine.
For decades, Hong Kong’s internet operated outside the reach of China’s vast army of censors, guaranteeing the free flow of information that undergirds the city’s status as a global business hub.
As Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, spiraled into chaos last month over rising energy costs and anger at the government, the country’s leaders took a drastic step to quell protests: They blocked the internet.
A China-style internet gateway scheduled to be imposed in Cambodia this week would grant the government far greater powers to conduct mass surveillance, censor and control the country’s internet, rights groups have warned.
This was no ordinary internet blackout. For five days, the ninth largest country in the world was a black box.
The Kazakhstan government shut off the internet nationwide on Jan. 5, 2022, in response to widespread civil unrest in the country. The unrest started on Jan. 2, after the government lifted the price cap on liquid natural gas, which Kazakhs use to fuel their cars. The Kazakhstan town of Zhanaozen, an oil and gas hub, erupted with a protest against sharply rising fuel prices.
A Russian court fined Google nearly $100 million Friday for “systematic failure to remove banned content” — the largest such penalty yet in the country as Moscow attempts to rein in Western tech giants.
Russia’s boldest moves to censor the internet began in the most mundane of ways — with a series of bureaucratic emails and forms.
The messages, sent by Russia’s powerful internet regulator, demanded technical details — like traffic numbers, equipment specifications and connection speeds — from companies that provide internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then the black boxes arrived.
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