Kremlin names the internet giants it will kidnap the Russian staff of if they don’t play ball in future
The Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor has told 13 foreign businesses, predominantly US tech firms, they must set up and/or maintain offices in Russia if they want to keep doing business in the country.
The list includes Google, Meta/Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram, as first reported by Reuters. Zoom, Viber, Spotify, Likee, Discord, Pinterest, and Twitch are also included.
All must now set up offices in Russia by 2022 at the latest, if they haven’t already got at least one. If they decline, the regulator can take “coercive measures,” such as removing the foreign businesses from Russian web search results, banning them from advertising or collecting data in the nation, and imposing other restrictions.
China trying to export its Great Firewall and governance model
China is actively trying to export its internal internet governance model, according to a paper from the International Cyber Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Titled “China’s cyber vision: How the Cyberspace Administration of China is building a new consensus on global internet governance”, the paper outlines how China perceives sovereignty over its internet as having equivalent importance to sovereignty over its territory.
“In the Member States of the European Union, national judicial authorities use the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), a region-wide judicial cooperation tool which allows countries to request and approve cross-border transfers of requested persons efficiently, without the need for political involvement.”
UK intel chief says MI6 must outsource innovation – and James Bond’s in-house ‘Q’ is nonsense
The head of the UK’s secretive Military Intelligence Section 6 agency – popularly known as MI6 – has delivered a rare speech in which he has warned that China, Iran, and Russia use information technology to destabilise rivals, and that the agency he leads can no longer rely on in-house innovation to develop the technologies the UK needs to defend itself.
MI6 boss Richard Moore (whose initial, one notes, is ‘M’) delivered a speech on Thursday at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and opened with an explanation of why the normally reclusive agency had taken the unusual step of allowing its leader to speak in public.
The ten countries will be “invoking constitutional rules as reason not to extradite their own nationals to the UK”, the letter said.
The accused is a 57-year-old British citizen who prosecutors believe passed official documents to Russian sources at least as far back as November 2020.
The USA has added another 37 organizations – 34 of them from China – to its list of businesses with which US interests can’t interact without a license, with 12 of them earning their places for developing “mind control weapons.”
As usual, the newly listed organisations earned their place on the grounds their activities represent a threat to national security. Less usually, this batch sees plenty barred for bodgy biotech.
Among the named organisations [PDF] is China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), plus 11 of its research institutes, “based on the body of information that AMMS and its eleven research institutes use biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end uses and end users, to include purported brain-control weaponry.”
