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.

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.”

Mitt Romney has spent considerable effort trying to avoid foreign policy and national security this campaign season. But when he’s had to engage, he’s forced to strike a delicate balance between satisfying his neocon advisers and right-wing war base on the one hand — while speaking to the rest of the country, which has no appetite for the militaristic Republican policies that have plagued this country since 2001, on the other.

In recent weeks, Romney made good on a promise he made earlier this year to a wealthy donor that he would try to exploit a foreign policy crisis for political gain. “If something of that nature presents itself,” Romney said, referring to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, “I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.” With the attack that killed four Americans at the U.S diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya last month, Romney has done just that.

The basis of Romney’s foreign policy critique of President Obama is that Obama went around the world and apologized for America after he became president. Of course, this never happened, but the baseless attack has been a hallmark from Romney’s campaign with respect to foreign policy. Indeed, Romney’s foray into foreign policy has been a bumpy road. Here’s a timeline from throughout the 2012 presidential campaign that lays it all out:

EARLY 2011

– Romney accused President Obama of “mission creep” and “mission muddle” in Libya. “Military action cannot be under-deliberated and ad hoc,” he said. Libyan rebels ousted then-Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi five months later. (In his book, Romney attacked Obama for appeasing Qaddafi.) [4/21/2011]

– Romney announces he is officially running for president and, in doing so, chides Obama for “leading from behind” in Libya. One wonders if Romney would criticize Nelson Mandela, who once said: “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” [6/02/2011]

– Romney says he will let the generals dictate his Afghanistan policy. “I want those troops to come home based upon not politics, not based upon economics, but instead based upon the conditions on the ground determined by the generals,” he said. [6/13/2011]
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Eleven Russian nationals have been indicted in U.S. District Court for being part of a false-front operation to procure sensitive microelectronics for Russian military and state security agency use. The Department of Justice is charging that the Russian company APEX, Ltd. worked through a Houston-based front company, ARC, Inc. to illegally export these U.S.-made components to Russia. The court documents show several instances of APEX falsifying reports to circumvent U.S. customs.

APEX is the owner of several subsidiary companies within Russia and its clientele includes the Russian Ministry of Defense, to which it is a certified supplier of electronics, and the FSB, the domestic intelligence agency that replaced the KGB. To aid in their deception, APEX allegedly ordered several of its employees to delete from its webpage images of missiles and other military equipment and references to the company’s ties to the Russian military.

APEX is charged with circumventing both the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Arms Export Control Act. These laws require providing notification of “end user information” and “end use information,” or just who will be the entity actually utilizing the parts in question and how. The Justice Department says in a press release on the case:

[T]he defendants went to great lengths to conceal their procurement activities for the Russian military. For example, on one occasion, defendants Posobilov and Yuri Savin, the Director of Marketing at another Russian procurement firm, discussed how best to conceal the fact that certain goods Savin had purchased from Arc were intended for the Russian military. Savin asked Posobilov, “What can we do if a client is military all over?” Posobilov replied, “We can’t be the ones making things up. You should be the ones.” Similarly, on another occasion defendant Fishenko directed a Russian procurement company that, when the company provided false end user information, to “make it up pretty, correctly, and make sure it looks good.” On yet another occasion, Posobilov instructed a Russian procurement company to “make sure that” the end use certificate indicated “fishing boats, and not fishing/anti-submarine ones … Then we’ll be able to start working.”

Among the items that the defendants are alleged to have smuggled include analog-to-digital converters, digital signal processors, micro-controllers, static random access memory chips, and field programmable gate arrays. None of these items are in themselves illegal to own or sell. However, their export is strictly controlled by the Department of Commerce in light of their application in such equipment as radar and sonar, weapons targeting systems and detonation triggers. As part of their case against APEX, Justice cites an FBI-acquired letter from the FSB to an APEX-affiliate stating that received “microchips were faulty, and demanded that the defendants supply replacement parts.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the middle of an ongoing crackdown against opposition leaders and democracy activists in the country. Among the tools Putin uses is the FSB, which has recently been empowered through a series of amendments to the Russian constitution to take action against almost anything it deems to be a threat to the state, including pro-democracy protestors. The FSB linkage, paired with Russia’s continuing support of and export of arms to the Syrian government, highlights the importance of shutting down this ring’s exports. (HT: Colin Freeze)

Several thousand people in Georgia rallied against the incumbent government of Prime Minister Mikhail Saakashvili this weekend after videos from government-run prisons depicted appalling torture of inmates. Pushed out on September 18 by the opposition leader, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the videos document savage beatings and sexual assault against prisoners by guards who were seemingly enjoying themselves (warning — graphic depiction of sexual assault):

PRISONER: “Please don’t video tape it. I will do everything you ask for!”

GUARD: “What will you do?”

PRISONER: “Please stop!”

GUARD: “It is already videotaped. Did it hurt? Did it hurt a lot? Did your ass hurt?” …

Prisoner is chained to cell bars, wears a head protection, so he can’t hurt his head hitting it on the cell bars. This time there is no guard in the cell itself. The guard asks the same question over and over again. The prisoner was raped with a broom and is abased by the guard.

Given the scale of the protests and the upcoming election on October 1, the scandal — dubbed Georgia’s Abu Ghraib — appears primed to shake up the Georgian political scene. The videos, together with past reports of prisoner abuse, appear to implicate several officials high-up in the Saakashvili government. Moreover, they cement the broader perception of lost democracy and reversion to one-party rule in Georgia, as the government’s respect for human rights has been in decline in recent years, despite the fact that Saakashvili rose to power as part of a democratic uprising:

Georgia’s human rights record remained uneven in 2011. The government used excessive force to disperse anti-government protests in Tbilisi, the capital, in May, and prosecuted dozens in misdemeanor trials without full respect for due process rights. The authorities failed to effectively investigate these events and past instances of excessive use of force. Other concerns include restrictions on freedom of association and media, as well as forced evictions of internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in state-owned temporary housing.

The evidence of torture and authoritarian backsliding in Georgia presents a serious problem for American neoconservatives, who have embraced Georgia as a democratic bulwark against Russia and potential NATO ally after the latter’s 2008 invasion of the small, post-Soviet republic. The Romney campaign has pledged to confront Russia on Georgia-related issues. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said this month that he “admired the remarkable progress made by Georgia under [Saakashvili's] leadership,” adding that the Georgian President was a personal friend and a “friend of the United States.” He also wrote that “the partnership between the United States and Georgia rests not on individuals alone, but on our shared commitment to a set of mutual interests and universal values, including democracy, rule of law, and human rights.”

Mitt Romney’s speech to the Republican National Convention on Thursday night was riddled with misleading claims and critical omissions. In no section was this more true than Romney’s discussion of foreign policy. The GOP presidential nominee devoted only 202 words to national security and while his speech completely ignored the war in Afghanistan and any homage to American servicemembers, it contained a shocking number of misstatements and false and baseless attacks on President Obama:

1. Obama and America: “I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour. President Obama began with an apology tour. America, he said, had dictated to other nations. No Mr. President, America has freed other nations from dictators.”

THE FACTS: The notion that Obama went on an “apology tour” has been repeatedly and conclusively debunked, though it remains a staple of Romney’s post-truth campaign. The “dictated” line is likely of a similar provenance, but there’s an irony to the second half of that sentence — Obama has “freed other nations from dictators,” as he helped form and lead an international coalition that toppled Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Romney’s position on the Libya intervention, by contrast, was something of an incoherent muddle.

2. Iran: “Every American was relieved the day President Obama gave the order, and Seal Team Six took out Osama bin Laden. But on another front, every American is less secure today because he has failed to slow Iran’s nuclear threat. In his first TV interview as president, he said we should talk to Iran. We’re still talking, and Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning.”

THE FACTS: There’s a reason the President decided to talk to Iran — the Obama administration is quite aware of the consequences of a nuclear weapons-equipped Iran, if its leaders decide to go that route, and has determined that diplomacy presents the “best and most permanent” means of resolving the crisis. Moreover, the diplomatic approach has produced concrete dividends. While Iran hasn’t capitulated, signalling that America was willing to talk to Iran helped build international support for significantly stepped-up sanctions. Contra Romney, the new sanctions imposed by Obama’s coalition have unequivocally slowed Iran’s nuclear progress by limiting its ability to acquire critical materiel, according to the U.N. and the Pentagon. Perhaps that’s why, when they’re not hinting at starting a devastating war, Romney advisers and surrogates have been unable to differentiate their candidate’s policy from the status quo.

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Reuters reports that Russia’s human rights “ombudsman,” Vladimir Lukin, said that prison sentences a Russian court handed down to three women from the punk band Pussy Riot were “excessive” and warned that the whole fiasco surrounding the trial is damaging Russian society.

The women, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were convicted of hooliganism after performing an anti-President Vladimir Putin song on the altar of Moscow’s main cathedral and sentenced to two years in a prison colony. Lukin isn’t happy with the result:

“It is a misdemeanour that in a normal, civilised European state is handled in administrative rather than criminal proceedings. That’s why I think the ruling on those women is excessive,” he told a news conference when asked about the case. [...]

He said he hoped an appeals court would “more carefully consider all the aspects of this case” and that as ombudsman he had the right to challenge the verdict once it entered into force if he believed human rights had been violated.

“If the sentence remains the same … I will analyse this thoroughly,” he said.

Lukin said the situation is indicative of what is happening throughout Russia:

“It is regrettable that a poisonous substance of intolerance and brutality is spreading in our society. Recently it has become typical and even fashionable not to discuss problems but to lash about at one another,” Lukin said.

“The instinct for dialogue is fading and the fighting instinct is coming into the foreground. This is very dangerous.”

Putin has cracked down hard on dissent, approving new laws restricting public assembly and approving raids on anti-Putin activists’ homes. Russian Wikipedia recently went dark to protest increasing censorship and indeed, the Pussy Riot affair is by no means an isolated one.

A Russian court sentenced three members of the feminist, anti-Putin punk band Pussy Riot on Friday to two years in jail for performing an anti-Putin song at a cathedral. The specific charge was “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” but the trial was widely seen as motivated by the anti-government sentiment in the song. Here’s the song in question (translated lyrics on the YouTube page):

The charged religious, political, and gendered context of the incident has generated a global outcry against the Putin regime’s suppression of free speech. In light of that, it’s worth remembering this isn’t an isolated incident. Another group of dissident Russians is facing massive prison time simply for participating in a legal anti-Putin rally:

With the eyes of Russia-watchers trained on Pussy Riot, the feminist punk performance-art group whose now-famous trio is bracing for a verdict over their iconoclastic performance at a Moscow cathedral, the plight of Artyom Savyolov has drawn little attention.

Savyolov and at least 11 other young Russians could face stiff prison sentences for taking part in a sanctioned antigovernment protest in Moscow that erupted into clashes between police and demonstrators.

More than 400 people were detained at the May 6 rally, which took place on the eve of the inauguration of Vladimir Putin for a third term as president.

Sixteen of the demonstrators remain in custody and at least 12 of them, including Savyolov, have been charged with calling for mass disorder and assaulting police officers. They could each face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The persecution of Pussy Riot and Savyolov’s group is par for the course in modern Russia. The Putin government routinely jails dissident journalists and activists as part of a broader campaign to undermine Russian democracy. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, to give the last word to convicted Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich:

I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. The whole world now sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, the world sees Russia differently than the way Putin tries to present it at his daily international meetings. Clearly, none of the steps Putin promised to take toward instituting the rule of law has been taken. And his statement that this court will be objective and hand down a fair verdict is yet another deception of the entire country and the international community. That is all. Thank you.