Pro-Kremlin activists are increasingly using underground hacker networks to suppress the political opposition and independent media which they believe pose a danger to Vladimir Putin's hold on power in Russia

In December 2011, Wikileaks released ‘Spy Files’, a project revealing details of the burgeoning surveillance and interception industry. The list of companies providing high-tech equipment to governments included a number of Russian firms, which are emerging as global leaders in the industry. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan took to investigate how the Soviet Union’s expertise in spy technology is being adapted to the new reality of global capitalism.

Richard Lourie writes asks Sergey Brin via the Moscow Times that Google figure out how to estimate crowd size using real time satellite imagery. (via Elizabeth)

With more than 50 million users, Russia has the biggest internet audience in Europe. And recent protests show people are now discovering how powerful a tool online activism can be

The Kremlin's Ham-handed Effort to Squelch Online Dissent

On September 12 China, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan released a Resolution for the UN General Assembly entitled "International code of conduct for information security." The resolution, which is not expected to pass, asks governments to pledge to curb "the dissemination of information that incites terrorism, secessionism or extremism or that undermines other countries’ political, economic and social stability, as well as their spiritual and cultural environment."

"Russia's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will control over law and order in social networks, to prevent a recurrence of riots on the script of Tunisia and Egypt." [Russian]

"according to the news legislation, distribution of extremist content online can be punished with 5 years in jail. Vzglyad website explains the legislation treates the publication of content in blogs as public distribution and makes the status of blogs similar to status of mass media."

"The latest Distributed Denial-of-Service attack (the second this year) on the most popular Russian blogging network, LiveJournal, has prompted a mass exodus of bloggers to different platforms and is significantly re-shaping the country's blogosphere. But will their reach be weakened?"

In collaboration with students of Columbia University's journalism school, World Policy Institute publishes a series of student-produced articles about access to information and online tools/projects in Latin America, Russia, Asia, and the Middle East.

A two-day workshop in Moscow focused on OER and the licensing of educational resources. Speakers represent Open University UK and Creative Commons chapters around the world. There is also a strong focus on CIS with summaries of OER movements in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Latvia, and Belarus.

Boosterish piece on Russian tech scene from Daily Telegraph.

"Vladimir Putin signed a 20-page executive order requiring all public institutions in Russia to replace proprietary software, developed by companies like Microsoft and Adobe, with free open-source alternatives by 2015...In all likelihood, his real fear is that Russia's growing dependence on proprietary software, especially programs sold by foreign vendors, has immense implications for the country's national security. "

"James Zirin speaks with Meg Roggensack. She says  that a delicate balance must be struck between free expression and free trade as Human Rights First calls out Microsoft for helping the Russians crack down on dissidents."

"Russian media and blogosphere ponder who is responsible for the nationalists’ riots in Moscow [RUS] in mid-December. Some claim the radical nationalists exploited the anger of the football fans, others look for the guilty among the fans themselves and bloggers suspect [RUS] the Kremlin in initiating the violent events. But the authorities found their own scapegoat – the Internet."

A nive review of Medvedev's first six months on Twitter: "Apple should almost be paying him for the publicity."

"Sadly, the online activity of the ‘YouTube cops' has not yet changed things for the better. Quite to the contrary: many of the most notorious of these newborn “video-bloggers” have been prosecuted."

Runet oped: "But there are other areas where Mail.ru is uniquely Russian. It is not just a Russian internet company: to all intents and purposes it is the Russian internet. It owns or part-owns sites, including the country’s top two social networking sites and its largest free e-mail service, that together represent as much as 70 per cent of page views on the Russian-language web.

Concentrating the ownership of a resource in a few trusted hands has proved an established method of economic management for the Kremlin. Oil, metals, transport, television and other commanding heights of the Russian economy are either in state hands or in companies that are at least quasi-state – owned by oligarchs dependent on Kremlin patronage."

"Alexey Navalny's website navalny.ru is down after publishing materials on Transneft, Russian oil pipeline operator. The compromising materials claiming that top officials were involved in stealing over 4 billion dollars from the government budget, however, are available at his LiveJournal account [RUS] and several mirror websites (here and here)."

"Russians may be able to vote in the country's 2011 parliamentary elections on the Internet or via text message, the head of the Russian Central Election Commission said on Tuesday."

"Opposition blogger pilgrim_67 (GV covered one of his investigations) has been suspended in LiveJournal (After posting a link to the video against child pornography - full story here) and had to move to Blogspot and lj.rossia.org. The case indicated insecurity of LiveJournal as platform for opposition bloggers. LJ currently hosts about 80 percent of Russian political blogosphere."

Analysis of the North Caucasian blogosphere

"is WikiLeaks really ready to take on the world's more callous states?"

jerzy sez: "for the digest?"

One to track - needs second sourcing.

EFF reports on the Russia / Microsoft story

Michael Geist provides some analysis of the MS/Russia story

"Microsoft announced sweeping changes on Monday to ensure that the authorities in Russia and elsewhere do not use crackdowns on software piracy as an excuse to suppress advocacy or opposition groups, effectively prohibiting its lawyers from taking part in such cases."

"Russian police use the pretense of enforcing Microsoft's copyrights as an excuse to raid the offices of human rights, environmental and dissident NGOs, and Microsoft has not intervened to stop it"

"A criminal case has been started against Alexander Sorokin (aka LJ user commentator40), Echo Moskvy reported [RUS]. He is charged with libel against Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleev [EN] for the post [RUS] in which he compares Russian regional governors to Latin American dictators. It is the second famous case [EN] of prosecuting a blogger in this region in 2010."

"LJ-user irka-knopkina writes [RUS] about a Vyksa city website [RUS] that is allegedly DDoS'ed for posting information about wildfires. Administration of a local factory prohibited access to the website to its employees, blogger added. Vyksa and surrounding areas were hit by severe wildfires recently."

Includes gems like, "Be a nuisance", "Don't go to the FSB", and "Always set one government agency against another."

"On July 16, 2010, Komsomolsk-on-Amur city court issued a decision [RUS] requested by the city prosecutor. The decision requires a local Internet provider “Rosnet” to block IP-addresses of five websites: lib.rus (the judge meant lib.rus.ec, a Russian Internet library), thelib.ru, www.zhurnal.ru, web.archive.org, and… youtube.com.

"The court believes those websites host extremist content (several online copies of “Mein Kampf” and a video “Russia for Russians” that accompanied a skinhead-related song uploaded by a user from Serbia [RUS]) while the provider was accused of “not blocking them.”"

And it is "rain".

Russian open government spending data portal

English language blog post on new Russian government spending transparency portal.

"Roskomnadzor, a federal service that supervises Internet and mass media communication for the Russian Ministry of Telecommunications, has introduced a new “one day rule” that says online media must delete or edit “inappropriate” comments on their websites within one day of being notified or risk losing their mass media registrations."