Putin Signs Law To Ban VPNs, Proxies In Russia

Russia President, Vladimir Putin has signed a law over the weekend that prohibits use of technology to access websites banned in Russia, including virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxies. The new law will come into effect on 1 November, Reuters reports.

Under the law signed by Putin on Saturday (29 July) and published on the Russian government's website on Sunday, internet service providers will be required to block websites that offer VPNs and other proxy services.

The law was approved by the Duma, the lower house of parliament, last week as thousands of people protested in the streets of Moscow demanding an end to Russian efforts to control and monitor online content.

Russian lawmakers argue that the law will help prevent the spread of extremist content and ideas online. Leonid Levin, the head of the Duma's information policy committee, said the law is not intended to introduce new restrictions for law-abiding Russians, but rather block access to "illegal content," RIA news agency reports.

Another law signed by Putin on Saturday will require operators of instant messaging services, including messenger apps, to identify users through their phone numbers after 1 January, 2018. It will also require these operators to restrict access to users, at the government's request, if people are found to be spreading illegal content.

The law will come into effect before the Russian presidential election in March 2018. Putin is expected to seek and secure another six-year term in the election. The new laws were signed shortly after it was revealed that Apple had pulled VPN apps from its China App store at the request of the government.

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Apple Removes All VPN Apps From Chinese App Store

Apple appears to have complied with the wishes of Chinese censors and removed all major VPN apps from the China-based branch of its App Store, a move which will make it harder for consumers to dodge the country’s pervasive restrictions on internet freedom.

As TechCrunch noted, it’s still possible for users to create an App Store account under a fake identity from another country, though the process to do so is somewhat obscure. A VPN is the only way for users to bypass the Chinese internet censorship system (the so-called “Great Firewall”), which has only grown more stringent in the two decades since it was enacted and prevents an estimated 700 million people from accessing politically inconvenient parts of the web.

“We’re disappointed in this development, as it represents the most drastic measure the Chinese government has taken to block the use of VPNs to date, and we are troubled to see Apple aiding China’s censorship efforts,” ExpressVPN, one of the companies impacted by the removal, wrote in a blog post. “ExpressVPN strongly condemns these measures, which threaten free speech and civil liberties.”

ExpressVPN posted what it said was a letter they had received from Apple notifying them “your application will be removed from the China App Store because it includes content that it is illegal in China” and “it is your responsibility to understand and make sure your app conforms with all local law,” not just Apple guidelines.

When major Western tech companies are faced with the choice of sticking to core values or losing access to the extremely valuable and growing Chinese marketplace, the latter option often wins out. In 2010, Google decided to shut down the censored China branch of its search engine service after it discovered the government had launched cyberattacks to gain entry to human rights activists’ Gmail accounts, though it is in
negotiations to come back.

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China To Ban Personal VPNs By February 2018

For nearly 20 years, the so-called Great Firewall of China has limited the ability of mainland Chinese citizens to access the uncensored internet. The laws used to give the government authority to regulate the internet were passed in 1997, and work on what China called the Golden Shield Project began in 2003.

The Great Firewall isn’t just a single, monolithic system. It includes a wide range of tactics and techniques, including IP blocking and DNS / URL filtering, suspected DNS poisoning, search term censorship, both automatic and manual monitoring of social media for certain keywords or protest advocacy, TCP connection monitoring and resets, personal internet history monitoring of at least some individuals, and some additional capabilities on top of that. The Great Firewall has done at least some detection and banning of VPNs for years, but if a new report in the South China Morning Post is accurate, China may be moving to kill that loophole for good.

The report , sourced to “people familiar with the matter,” claims China’s government has told all of its telecommunications carriers to ban all individual access to VPN services. Up to this point, these services have operated in a bit of a legal gray area, at least where corporate usage was concerned, though the government’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has pledged to crack down on illicit VPN usage by corporations. At least one service provider, GreenVPN, announced earlier this year that it would cease all operations on July 1 after receiving “a notice from regulatory departments.” It did not comment further on the situation.

The new rules restricting access to VPNs could make it harder for companies to do business in China. While they have the option to lease lines to access the international internet, they must register such service usage with the government, which presumably keeps tabs on it to ensure it remains above-board (by Chinese standards).

Difficulty balancing the demands of the government and its own institutional practices led Google to leave China in 2010. While other companies have continued to operate according to the government’s requirements, these new rules won’t make that any easier, according to Jake Parker, the Beijing-based vice president of the US-China Business Council.

“This seems to impact individuals,” Parker told the South China Morning Post. “[But] VPNs are incredibly important for companies trying to access global services outside of China. In the past, any effort to cut off internal corporate VPNs has been enough to make a company think about closing or reducing operations in China. It’s that big a deal.”

Then again, a number of US companies have managed to find solutions to previous “big deals” where China is concerned, given the size of its markets and rapidly growing economy. If this report is accurate, individuals in China who want access to uncensored international news will soon have even fewer options.

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