Russia ‘Anti-Terrorism’ Laws Might Make Skype, Gmail, Facebook Illegal

Russia has gone under the international spotlight for quite some time already, with the situation in Crimea and all, but it seems that the once Communist country is about to rub people the wrong way yet again. How so, you ask? Apparently, Russia has now passed a range of new ‘anti-terrorism‘ laws that which might just see online services in the vein of Skype , Gmail and Facebook to be illegal unless the respective companies alter the way they work in within a time frame of half a year.

The new laws themselves would require service operators including Skype, Facebook and Gmail to store Russian user data on servers which are physically located in the country itself. There is one very simple reason behind this – Russian authorities intend to access to this data at their whim and fancy, and would need the servers to be located in Russia itself in order to place a request for such information without breaking any laws in the process.

What does this mean for Russians? Well, it happens to be a significant move which will provide the Russian government with an even greater degree of control when it comes to Internet usage. Yandex, a Russian based search engine, shared their two cents’ worth on this situation, “In our opinion, the adoption of the law will be another step towards the strengthening of state control over the Internet in Russia, which has a negative impact on the development industry.”

Do you agree with what Yandex said? In the past, Russia has voiced out their intention to ban Skype, Gmail and Hotmail after all.

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: Facebook, Google, Skype