Internet freedom in Russia took a hit yesterday, as the Kremlin implemented new online filtering protocols that could result in widespread government monitoring of web traffic — all due to a measure purportedly aimed at protecting Russia’s youth.

This is far from the first time protecting children has been invoked in support of laws requiring a significant online surveillance, just last year the U.S. House considered the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, which would have mandated internet service providers (ISPs) to maintain records of everything you do on the Internet every year, and give the government access to the data without a warrant under the same pretenses.

The evolution of the Russian law should make American citizens thankful the U.S. legislation failed: While it originated as a blocking mechanism for obscene content, since passage, Russian courts have said the measure can be used to ban political extremism and critics of President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the Ministry of Communications concluded Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is the only way to implement it. DPI is a method of data processing involving looking at the details of the packets sent across networks to determine how to process or reroute the information. Logistically, this will require Russia’s ISPs to maintain detailed records of user traffic and would allow the Russian government a potential backdoor into the private lives of Russia’s internet users. As Eric King, head of research at Privacy International explained to Wired, this has some very troubling implications:

“No Western democracy has yet implemented a dragnet black-box DPI surveillance system due to the crushing effect it would have on free speech and privacy… DPI allows the state to peer into everyone’s internet traffic and read, copy or even modify e-mails and webpages: We now know that such techniques were deployed in pre-revolutionary Tunisia. It can also compromise critical circumvention tools, tools that help citizens evade authoritarian internet controls in countries like Iran and China.”

All of this makes DPI sound sinister, and it can be: the late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi used DPI to track online dissent in Libya, and has proven a cost effective way for totalitarian regimes to censor and target political opposition. Although, there are legitimate uses — particularly in network protection — most internet freedom advocates are against large scale implementation due to the damage potential abuse would for freedom of speech and privacy rights, especially in nations with poor track records on human rights issues (such as Russia).

However, most ISPs are already keeping tabs on what their subscribers are generally up to online and have the ability to use DPI on case by case basis — and as with much of the technology interacting with personal details, the questions of who has access to what breakdown of information, under what conditions, and with what safeguards to prevent abuse are critical to their responsible use. Even in countries with more respectable track records on these issues than Russia,  DPI can cause considerable controversy, such as when it was proposed as part of new cybersecurity protocols in the United Kingdom.

Depending on how Russia’s mandated DPI processing is implemented and utilized, it may serve as a cautionary tale not only about how the justifications for legislation don’t represent their actual applications, but how structured surveillance can stifle the free flow of ideas online.

Mitt Romney delivered what he reportedly dubbed his “closing argument” speech today in Wisconsin and while he rattled off a series of attacks on the Obama administration for various alleged failures, the former Massachusetts governor entirely ignored foreign policy. Actually not entirely. Romney did repeat his “wrongheaded” claim that he would label China a currency manipulator upon taking office, an idea that pretty much no one thinks is a good one.

It’s not entirely surprising that Romney had nothing to say today about veterans, the U.S. military, the war it is engaged in in Afghanistan or any other national security issue (recall he didn’t mention the troops or the war in Afghanistan in his RNC speech). He and his campaign has gone to great lengths to avoid talking foreign policy throughout the campaign. When he does, Romney sounds a lot like President Obama, at least he has since securing the Republican nomination for president. Before that though, Romney sounded more like Dick Cheney, which made sense because most of his foreign policy advisers are holdovers from from the George W. Bush administration.

Bush administration Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell recently noticed this trend. “The governor who was speaking at the [presidential foreign policy] debate was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier,” Powell said late last month while endorsing Obama for president, adding, “My concern which I’ve expressed previously in a public way is that sometimes I don’t sense he has thought through these issues as thoroughly.”

Obama delivered his “closing argument” speech yesterday, also in Wisconsin. “So long as I’m Commander-in-Chief, we will pursue our enemies with the strongest military the world has ever known,” he said. “But it’s time to use the savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to start paying down our debts here and rebuilding America.”

This week Mitt Romney’s son Matt traveled to Moscow for business and, reports say, allayed any concerns the Russian government had about his father’s harsh stance on Russia. When it comes to Russia, Mitt Romney has been brash, at one point labeling Russia “without question our number one geopolitical foe” and “a geopolitical adversary.” He’s also repeatedly lashed out at President Obama for allegedly being weak on Russia. But according to a New York Times report, Matt Romney is trying to convince Russia that the tough talk is just talk:

“But while in Moscow, Mr. Romney told a Russian known to be able to deliver messages to Mr. Putin that despite the campaign rhetoric, his father wants good relations if he becomes president, according to a person informed about the conversation.”

Romney’s statements have drawn negative feedback from Republicans like Sen. Richard Luger, who called Romney’s statements on Russia “discredited objections.” Others, like former Secretary of State Colin Powell have gone even further, urging Romney to develop more nuance on the issue. In May, Powell said:

“I think he really needs to not just accept these cataclysmic sort of pronouncements. I think he really needs to think carefully about these statements because they’re now on the wall for people to see. … Let’s not go creating enemies where none yet exist. Does this mean that we should trust Putin or Medvedev? No. Let’s be mature people and look at the reality of the situation and not find ways to see if we can hyperbolize the situation.”

Russia experts were dismayed at Romney’s harsh stance. Steve Pifer, the Brookings Institution’s Arms Control Initiative director, told the New York Times in May that Romney’s arguments “left people scratching their heads.” Romney’s stance even “set off disagreements among some of his foreign policy advisers” according to the New York Times and signaled to some of his inner circle his view of “foreign policy conflicts as zero-sum negotiations.” One foreign policy adviser told the Daily Beast that “the campaign should have walked it back and moved on.”

Some Russian officials weren’t amused by Romney’s words. In July, a top international affairs official said of Romney’s words: “If he is serious about this, I’m afraid he may choose the neocon-type people…In the first year of his presidency, we may have a full-scale crisis.” Dmitri Medvedev, Russia’s former president and current prime minister, commented too: “My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time. It is 2012, not the mid-1970s.” But Vladimir Putin, Russia’s current president, dismissed Romney’s statements as “pre-election rhetoric.”

A slew of new reporting this morning debunks Fox News reports claiming that the Obama administration withheld assistance during the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. With these revelations, the combined conservative narrative as led by Fox News — that the Obama administration failed to respond adequately during the attack and that mainstream media has not covered Benghazi enough — is in further disarray.

The Los Angeles Times’ version of the CIA’s role focuses the most heavily on pushing back on Fox’s spin:

“At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could,” a senior intelligence official said in a statement. “There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support.”

Fox reporter Jennifer Griffin claimed in an “exclusive” report last week that the CIA denied Tyrone Woods, one of the four Americans killed in the attack, permission to help repel the assault. Griffin’s reporting spun off into a bevy of conspiracy theories on the far right. The Pentagon, White House, and CIA had all previously denied refusing requests for support. The New York Times reports on the Pentagon’s involvement:

[A] senior official also sought to rebut reports that C.I.A. requests for support from the Pentagon that night had gone unheeded.

In fact, the official said, the military diverted a Predator drone from a reconnaissance mission in Darnah, 90 miles away, in time to oversee the mission’s evacuation. The two commandos, based at the embassy in Tripoli, joined the reinforcements. And a military transport plane flew the wounded Americans and Mr. Stevens’s body out of Libya.

The new reports also contain previously unreported details about the CIA’s role in Benghazi. President Obama and Secretary of Defense Panetta did order U.S. forces into the region, but the CIA was the first to respond to the attack, arriving on the scene in under half an hour.

The lack of security at the outpost in Benghazi, far removed from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, has been the subject of inquiry by both Fox News and Congressional Republicans. The Wall Street Journal sheds new light onto why that was the case. The CIA and State Department had entered into a series of secret deals in which the Agency would provide emergency security to the diplomats operating within Libya.

While the State Department primarily relied upon local Libyan militias for day-to-day protection, as well as contracted British private security, the arrangement between it and the CIA explains why the outpost seemed under-protected. The revelation also will prompt a renewed look at the State Department’s decisions to remove Department of Defense-provided security from the Embassy in Tripoli, which were highly scrutinized during Rep. Darrel Issa’s hearings.

The primary role of the CIA was intelligence gathering and covert operations within Benghazi. Agents there operated out of an annex originally reported to be an offshoot of the diplomatic mission, revealed officially — and accidentally — during Issa’s highly politicized hearing into the Benghazi attacks. The Agency’s large presence may also help explain why the diplomatic compound was open to journalists and looters for weeks after the attack, as more vital intelligence documents were collected.

Washington Post’s David Ignatius has gone as far as to produce a detailed minute-by-minute timeline, of the events that night. These reports together give the clearest picture yet of the events in Benghazi. Rather than the Obama Presidency unraveling as the news organization has claimed, it appears to be Fox News’ narrative that is coming undone instead.