Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that basically prohibits anonymous web surfing in his country.
In fact, effective Nov. 1, it bans forms of technology that allow anonymous access to banned websites in Russia. This ban covers services that allow people to use it Internet anonymously, such as virtual private networks (VCPNs) and proxies, and requires ISPs to block websites that host these services.
Leonid Levin, chairman of Russia's parliamentary committee on information and communication policy, told the agency news RIA Novosti that the law 'includes only the restriction of access to information already prohibited by law or by a judicial decision'.
Russia's website blacklist, introduced in 2012, was originally intended to apply to websites that had content with illegal drugs, παιδική πορνογραφία, και αυτοκτονίες, αλλά το 2013 επεκτάθηκε σε οποιοδήποτε περιεχόμενο «ύποπτο εξτρεμισμού». Η τροποποίηση επιτρέπει την ευέλικτη ερμηνεία, και αφήσει τη Ρωσία να απαγορεύσει κάθε υλικό που επικρίνει τις opinions του εκάστοτε κυβερνήτη ή φαίνεται να αποδυναμώνει την εξουσία της governments.
2015, for example, Russia banned briefly Reddit and Wikipedia along with pages that have content for drug use. At that time, Nikolay Kononov, editor-in-chief of DigitalMag.ru, said that these moves were less relevant to the content of the web pages and more were done to show that they can ban what they want, whenever they want. It's a show of intimidation. "
Russia is not the only country that banned tools for anonymity Web surfing, such as VPNs. This month China announced that it would restrict unauthorized VPNs, and recently, all VPN applications have moved away from the Apple App Store version in China.
