Ukraine Arrests VPN Operator Facilitating Access to Russian Internet (circleid.com) 122
penciling_in writes: Ukrainian authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man in Khmelnytskyi for running an illegal VPN service that allowed users to bypass Ukrainian sanctions and access the Russian internet (Runet). The VPN, active since Russia's invasion, enabled Russian sympathizers and people in occupied territories to reach blocked Russian government sites, social media, and news.
Handling over 100GB of data daily and linking to 48 million Russian IP addresses, the VPN may have been exploited by Russian intelligence. Ukrainian cyber police, in collaboration with the National Security Service, seized servers and equipment in multiple locations. The suspect faces charges under Part 5 of Article 361 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which could lead to a 15-year prison sentence. Investigations are ongoing into further connections and funding sources. The case highlights the growing role of VPNs in the ongoing cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia.
Handling over 100GB of data daily and linking to 48 million Russian IP addresses, the VPN may have been exploited by Russian intelligence. Ukrainian cyber police, in collaboration with the National Security Service, seized servers and equipment in multiple locations. The suspect faces charges under Part 5 of Article 361 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which could lead to a 15-year prison sentence. Investigations are ongoing into further connections and funding sources. The case highlights the growing role of VPNs in the ongoing cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia.
A long way since tapping undersea cables (Score:1)
We've certainly come a long way since the Zimmerman telegram [wikipedia.org] — and even the full-scale war takes "only" hundreds of thousands, rather than millions deaths...
That's progress, no?..
Odd (Score:3)
I'd have expected them to track the users to find potential spies and collaborators.
You can always let people just trying to keep in touch with relatives off with a slap on the wrist, but finding out who is selling you out is valuable intelligence, especially if you can co-opt their communications to learn what the enemy is doing or to feed them false info.
But maybe they've been doing that and it was no longer a net benefit.
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I mean honestly, I think it's about "Stopping Russian propaganda" at this point more than stopping spies. And by that I mean, things are not looking good for Ukraine's prospects in this war, and as much as possible those at the top want to keep a lid on people being angry about that fact.
There's a lot of news sites (and specific journalists? I don't read Ukranian, google translate is dubious) on the list [ukurier.gov.ua], not so many social media sites and the like.
Re:Odd (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't need to worry much about Russian and propaganda inside Ukraine; they know which cities are falling to Russian advances. Stopping Russian VPN links from Ukraine doesn't stop Russian propaganda internationally.
As far as how they're doing... It seems that when Russia is doing too well, suddenly Western restrictions are relaxed or more money flows. I assume the goal is to grind Russia down as much as possible using Ukrainian blood to lubricate the process.
At this point, Russia will not be permitted to win in any real way. If Ukraine gets in real trouble, the distance restrictions on strikes with Western weapons will drop and Russia just can't defend against that.
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It started because Putin and his pet oligarchs had drained Russia to the point of collapse and needed a fresh wealth injection. Ukraine was right there, prosperous. The NATO stuff is just more domestic propaganda - like the "we are saving them from Nazis" crap - to justify the genocidal conquest attempt.
Putin's politically cornered. To fail in Ukraine is the end for him, he is too invested.
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You don't have to be an ultra-nationalist to want to remove everything a foreign invader put in place as part of their cultural and ethnic replacement campaign, especially those things that make it difficult to become more integrated with countries that aren't trying to invade you and offer opportunities for economic prosperity.
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They're easy to shut down if you know about them.
China's war on VPNs is a bit of a cat and mouse game. New ones pop up, under the radar, they get popular, they get noticed, they get squashed.
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I think you're overestimating the use of signint to find VPNs and underestimating the use of humint to find them. "Oh hey, here's people talking about a new way to 'climb the wall', sign up for it, get the connection information and we'll ban it"
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VPNs represent a single point of failure, too centralized. We need to create something decentralized. No doubt it will have to utilize steganography and one time pads. Ultimately we have to ditch the server/client nature of the internet and develop a workable ad-hoc, true P2P system that is robust and highly resistant
Or we can go totally retro and leave obscure messages in the Sunday classifieds. It's slow, but effective
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Ironically, I think VPNs are way less targetable than distributed systems like tor.
Tor was destroyable because everyone using it had to agree on how to set things up. Everyone using it had to work with the same entry nodes, and routing protocols, and it became extremely easy to seek and destroy for China.
VPNs can pop up easily, mask themselves as normal HTTPS servers, and be replaced when one is caught-and-killed.
Their centralized nature also makes them decentralized in a way.
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Lord Haw-Haw for digital age (Score:2)
Lord Haw-Haw was a nickname applied to William Joyce and several other people who broadcast Nazi propaganda to the United Kingdom from Germany during the Second World War. The broadcasts opened with "Germany calling, Germany calling," spoken in an affected upper-class English accent. - Hung for his crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Help! (Score:1)
Do you help me?
nop@iki.fi
Just like EVERYONE would (Score:5, Insightful)
No country would knowingly allow enemy intelligence to maintain communication channels with spies and/or saboteurs behind the front-lines. Doubly so during an actual shooting war...
Re:Just like EVERYONE would (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no proof of that, just mere speculation.
Ukraine is in an existential war with a genocidal invader. They have every right to block the russian internet.
This isn't a war of choice for them, they are using every tool they can to limit the russians from gathering intelligence information. Of course the russians would use this for intelligence gathering.
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The United States is in a Thucydides' trap with China. Are US authorities preventing American citizens from accessing Chinese websites?
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What do you think an existential war is?
In WW2 the UK had a unity government and suspended elections. Because it was an existential war.
Wars like Iraq and Afghanistan have given people brainworms for not being able to distinguish the difference between a war of choice and a war where your very existence is on the line.
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Started out as a war of choice for the Ukrainians as for eight years they massacred civilians in the breakaway oblasts of the Donbass. After ignoring eight years of warnings it became a war of survival pretty much overnight. People who were paying attention weren't surprised, but the western Press Corpse (spelling intentional) certainly pretended to be.
LOL. Tell me more russian lies and propaganda.
Even better show me a photo of Donestk as it is today and the russian "liberated" towns of Ukraine. After all, if they've been massacring civilians they'd be indiscriminately bombing and shelling it into a husk, wouldn't they?
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wow... "717999" ... didn't know any propaganda operations ran for that long... usually an account is used to spread propaganda for a limited time and then killed off... good on them. Hope they got an Order of Lenin medal for this one ;)
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So you're one of the many who, as I said above, were "people not paying attention". For 8 years the only news one saw about Ukraine in the international press were 1) the truly epic levels of corruption, 2) the outsized influence of the ultra-right wing on Ukrainian politics, and 3) the attempted ethnic cleansing of the Russian-speaking people in the Donbass. Most Americans don't pay any attention to the international press though, so when the official story changed around 2020 most believed it to just be
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
"They have every right to do whatever they want in Ukraine, but I thought the basis of Americans waving around Ukrainian flags was that Ukraine was somehow a democracy that aspired to our values."
We would do the same thing, and oh yeah, we have unconditional warrantless citizen spying programs in this country right now. This is actually less fascist than what we do every day.
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We also imprisoned citizens during WWII based upon their ancestry. We also have had plenty of instances during peacetime where communciations with certain countries were forbidden, first amendment be damned. When national security is involved then pleading about one's civil rights becomes moot.
Has there ever been a case in history where a spy was exonerated in a court because the actions were considered free speech?
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No, it does not. What do you think, the beloved FDR [wikimedia.org] would do, had someone attempted to run a direct cable across Pacific from San Francisco to Tokyo, for example? A VPN, though much cheaper and easier to set up, is the same thing..
Heck, even a much milder act of setting up a rebroadcast of Axis Sally [wikipedia.org] and/or Tokyo Rose [history.com] over the US proper would've been shut down immediately — and rightly so.
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How do you think the Americans handled civilians collaborating with the English during the War of Independence? A little slap on the wrist, a wagging finger and a reprimand to please not do it again?
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Are US authorities preventing American citizens from accessing Chinese websites?
The US is not at war with China. The US has been in a conflict with Al-Quaeda since after 9/11. Websites that were within reach of US diplomatic influence were shut off, webmasters extradited and imprisoned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] On their side, Ukraine (and the UN) have done what they could with their diplomacy and influence to extradite and imprison the wanted war criminals behind www.government.ru, but yet have not managed, so Ukraine have to resort to blocking.
I thought the basis of Americans waving around Ukrainian flags was that Ukraine was somehow a democracy that aspired to our values.
Ukraine aspires to EU values, ha
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So seeing only one side of an issue is a good thing? Getting all of your news through the official filter will keep you informed of what is actually happening in the world?
I can see why you post as AC, I wouldn't want stupidity like that in my posting history either.
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Russkies learned how to use VPN when The Government decided to block Telegram.
Blocking russkies, genocidal or not, from Ukrainian internets might require blocking more than just Russian Internet.
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What I do not believe is it will have any effect on Russian intelligence gathering. However much it is fashionable to think Russian military are complete morons, the war is still not over.
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What I do not believe is it will have any effect on Russian intelligence gathering
It'll have no effect?
What?
It'll have a deterrent effect, it will make it harder for services like this to exist without risking the attention of the security services.
It will make it harder for the russians to recruit, it'll make it harder for the russians to carry out information warfare operations, it'll increase the costs for the russians where before they might be able to contact someone directly they may have to risk an on the ground asset.
Of course it won't completely stop it, only an idiot would thin
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Except, of course, the bucks russkies will have to spend on said VPN. The bucks may not be noticeable at all to them, or it may bankrupt them a little, or it may bankrupt them to the point they will have to surrender. This is what you mean by not a binary mindset, yes?
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
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In hindsight, it doesn't seem like a good trade.
Of course it was good. Over 70,000 Russians are now dead [bbc.com]. And these are just the ones we know about. More than likely that figure is over 100,000 with all those who were vaporized, buried in mass graves [rferl.org], or cremated so the muscovite midget doesn't have to pay the families for their dead relative. So many Russians are dying every week that Russia is running out of cemeteries [newsweek.com] to bury them in.
But at least Zelenskyy has a yacht.
Kindly show us his yacht. Not som
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No media outlet has accurate numbers for the casualties.
The numbers stated above came from the article I linked to. Those are verified numbers based on openly available sources such as new new gravestones, posting on social media, and announcements in newspapers. That was the entire point of the article. To verify the dead. But again, those are just the ones known about. Anyone turned into kibble after being blown up, burned to ash, thrown into a mass grave, or cremated, aren't known. When one consid
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Similar articles using satellite photos of graveyards in Ukraine create estimates of over 250,000 dead, and likely many more. Of course western media don't link to those. This war, like all wars, has not been good to either side. It has been shockingly observant of civilians though. In 32 months of war there are fewer civilian deaths on both sides than in the first month of the Gaza conflict. It's the only war in recent memory where the military death toll is dramatically higher than the civilian one.
Re:Just like EVERYONE would (Score:4, Informative)
It has been shockingly observant of civilians though
Bullshit. Russia has deliberately targeted civilians from day one. Does Bucha [wikipedia.org] or Izium [wikipedia.org] not ring a bell? Or the Mariupol theater [bbc.co.uk] which was explicitly marked as a shelter for civilians which Russia bombed? The maternity hospitals [apnews.com] Russia has bombed. The children hospitals [cnn.com] Russia has bombed. The hundreds of deliberate attacks on hospitals [npr.org] by Russia. The deliberate attacks on markets [cnn.com] and stores [cnn.com]. This bit from the BBC from August of 2023 [bbc.com], indicates over 10,000 civilians had been killed by Russia at that time. That number is certainly far higher.
The only reason the number of Ukrainian civilians is slightly lower than in Gaza is because Israel is doing its own version of the Warsw ghetto and committing genocide by not allowing civilians to leave. Ukraine has been making strenuous efforts to move people away from the war, but Russia continues to deliberately target civilians. And this does not include the thousands of civilians forcibly ejected and sent to Russia as part of Russia's own version of genocide to wipe out Ukrainian identity, including children who will now be forced to grow up in Russia under fake parents because they were stolen by Russian authorities.
Of course western media don't link to those.
Fine. Then show the graves, because for years I've been posting satellite images of the mass graves of dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine which people like you keep calling fake or nothing to speak of. Show your links of these pictures. Guaranteed the vast majority will be from dead Russians and the massive number of civilians they've killed. The last official count of Ukrainian dead soldiers was over 30,000. The last official count from Russia was less than 10,000, and that was in 2023. Clearly, with Russia's daily meat assaults, their dead are orders of magnitude more so 100,000 is not out of the question. Most likely more. Do you think there's anything left to count of the dead Russians inside this tank [censor.net]? Or the Russians in these tanks [youtube.com]? What about all the sailors who are at the bottom of the Black Sea from Ukraine sinking the Moskva and other ships? Russia is losing so many troops every day, they're running out of cemeteries [newsweek.com] to bury them.
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:3)
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no, but it often triggers some anonymous coward foaming at the mouth, which has some comical angle. each according to his/her abilities, thanks for contributing.
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
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I actually had a prepared reasoned post, but since you're either a russian or a conspiracy sort I can just dismiss you.
so you actually tried to prove those baseless claims and realized you don't really have a solid argument for them? that's cool, kudos for the brain effort. if it where honest, that is, it doesn't really mesh well with then weaseling out by throwing some more absurd claims and ad-hominem. godspeed, i guess.
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How many war crimes do you want me to list? Because I can list so many that it adds up to genocidal intent. It's not like there's a lack of evidence that I'm sure you're totally aware of, right? I'm sure you won't sealion demanding ever more and more dismissing anything and everything, right?.
By the way, the literal act alone of forcible transfer of Ukrainian children into russia and russifying them is defined genocide under the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. (article
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Because I can list so many that it adds up to genocidal intent.
if it were so easy you would have already done it, but it doesn't and you don't get to redefine "genocide" arbirtarily.
By the way, the literal act alone of forcible transfer of Ukrainian children into russia and russifying them is defined genocide under the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. (article II e)
so a "by the way" comment is your whole argument, from a supposedly huge list? let's go with that, then, the children issue.
here's an interesting look into it, by the unhrc:
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/de... [ohchr.org]
97. The Commission has identified three main situations in which Russian authorities
have transferred Ukrainian children from one area they controlled in Ukraine to another or to
the Russian Federation. Transfers affected children who lost parents or temporarily lost
contact with them during hostilities; who were separated following the detention of a parent
at a filtration point; and children in institutions. It has reviewed incidents concerning the
transfer of 164 children aged from four to 18 years from the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson
regions.
and
99. In a separate situation, large numbers of children from areas that came under Russian
Federation control in Kharkiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions travelled temporarily with
parental consent to vacation camps in Crimea or in the Russian Federation. Parents and
children stated that, when these areas returned to Ukrainian Government control, Russian
authorities required the parents or the legal guardians to travel in person to pick up their
children. This involved long and complicated travel and security risks. Not all parents have
therefore been able to do so, which led to prolonged or even indefinite family separations
there are also (more informal) reports by ai and hrw about "russification" in education in russian occupied territories. while that's a much more contentious issue (those are cultural
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
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https://static.wikia.nocookie.... [nocookie.net]
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
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putin is imo a war criminal indeed, although those arrest warrants are clearly politically motivated and won't go anywhere. the alleged evidence is "secret" and the icc is just discrediting itself with such a bogus high profile warrant.
but so are e.g. biden and netanyahu, and you really need to realize the distinction between "war crime" and the particular crime of "genocide". words have meaning, you know? putin's warrant isn't for genocide. biden and netanyahu could merit an explicit warrant for genocide,
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Yes, yes.. it's all a conspiracy and politically motivated. And now you're back to Israel again. LOL, you can't resist it can you?
Trying to minimise and deny war crimes. Let alone the fact russia has committed genocide by the literal definition of it. Go on, deny and minimise some more. Your tinfoil hat is slipping.
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And now you're back to Israel again. LOL, you can't resist it can you?
well, just so you get a clue, since you keep throwing around the word "genocide" and apparently have no idea what it means.
here, educate yourself. it's free, and doesn't hurt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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If they're trying to commit a genocide they're remarkably incompetent at it. Fewer civilians have been killed, by both sides, in 31 months than the US did just in Fallujah.
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ok, i think we're finally getting somewhere. tell me what part of ...
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such
... you're having problems with?
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Why do you think the ICC has an arrest warrant for Putin for that?
I'm not going to play your silly game.
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Why do you think the ICC has an arrest warrant for Putin for that?
i guess because he did not get a letter like this from a bunch of russian senators when he was wondering wether to issue an arrest warrant for netanyahu for war crimes, as requested by prosecutors of 5 countries:
"Khan was sent a letter signed by 12 Republican U.S. senators[a] threatening him and other UN jurists and their families with personal consequences if the ICC were to seek an international arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu or other members of the Israeli government. The letter cited the American
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And now we're back on the loony conspiracy theories.
I have no idea why you are obsessed with Israel, you keep trying to get me to defend them and keep trying to change the subject to them for some bizarre reason. It's weird.
And for some other reason you keep defending russian war crimes, trying to minimise them and literally deny the reality of international law. As it is an act of genocide. Once again, as I mentioned previously under article II(e). (it's why the ICC has an arrest warrant for Putin)
I'm be
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And now we're back on the loony conspiracy theories.
what now? this is straight from the wikipedia, go check the sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I have no idea why you are obsessed with Israel, you keep trying to get me to defend them and keep trying to change the subject to them for some bizarre reason. It's weird.
i am not doing any of that. on every account i have explicitly told you to spot the difference between what is a genocide and what is not. all to dispute your claim that what's going on in ukraine is a genocide, which is nonsense you haven't yet substantiated (obviously) after a dozen of comments.
i will confess one thing, though: i'm curious why you systematically evade the question when that comparision is
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Why isn't there an ICC arrest warrant for Bush and Cheney? Because the ICC has been beaten into submission by the US.
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of course, here's a horse in ascii art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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well, since you seem to have run out of arguments, and stopped to acknowledge or challenge mine, i'm just showing you what genocide loks like so you can tell the difference. i'm sure you're getting it, beneath your sphinx pose.
here, have some more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
who knows, maybe you even enjoy this?
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Why is there an ICC arrest warrant for Putin? Because the ICC has been beaten into submission by the US.
I figured that first sentence was obvious, I guess some people need things spelled out completely.
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
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Those are Russian negotiating points, there's a difference. Russia will not allow NATO the ability to easily invade and gut the country, which was NATO's openly declared goal for the last 70 years.
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Those are Russian negotiating points, there's a difference. Russia will not allow NATO the ability to easily invade and gut the country, which was NATO's openly declared goal for the last 70 years.
Oh really? Go on then, quote the "NATO's openly declared goal to easily invade and gut the country" then. After all, it should be on the NATO website. [nato.int] It was openly declared after all.
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Sad when printing easily accessible historical information gets one rated -1 Troll, but that's where we are now I guess.
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There's no proof of that, just mere speculation.
Of course there is. It is the nature of this conflict that there are tens of thousand of spies on both sides. The historical link between Ukraine and Russia, and the significant expression of the pro-Russian party in Ukraine just before the war, makes for a pool of several millions of pro-Russians right now in Ukraine. Many of them, but not all, have moved to live behind the Russian lines. Spies get arrested and it makes headlines.
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Any yet every country with a war taking place on their own soil has suspended civil rights in some way. The action of merely fighting back against invading soldiers is a violation of many countries' rules (you forgot to read them their rights first maybe). If you get to the point where actual martial law is in effect in places, then forget about any of your civil laws or rights because they've been put on hold.
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Just because a country is at war, it doesn't absolve a persons' right to free speech
Again, freedom of speech is no guarantee of freedom from consequences. Remember the whole, "Loose lips sink ships"? You were free to talk about what you knew of U.S. military facilities. You were also subject to arrest and execution.
Stop the bullshit about free speech. There is nothing absolute except death and taxes.
On classified information (Score:2)
Though you happen to be on my side for once, your particular argument is so dumb, it hurts.
No, you were not free to publicize classified information — it was provided to you on condition, you'll not talk about it. Those, who obtained it accidentally/socially, could legally speak of it, although those "loose lips" posters asked them not to.
Inte
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It's not like Ukrainians have rights any more, they're now effectively an unelected dictatorship. Their president's term expired in May and their Parliament's in August and there is no plan to hold new elections. People are kidnapped on the streets and press ganged into the military with no legal recourse. People are imprisoned for publishing bad news from the front. Soldiers and mercenary scum loot and rape at will, especially but not exclusively people of Russian descent. The elite of Kiev seem to be
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You can't possibly be that naive. Ukraine isn't trying to "ban" another country as if it's a cancel culture thing because they don't like Russia.. It's a national security threat.
It's a shooting war. You seem to think your access to resources in the enemy country takes precedence over National Security, you're deluding yourself. He has freedom of speech in his home country just fine. He'll also have a lawyer, and a democratic court of law to defend himself against the charges and the ability to publicly
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
Iraqi and Iranian websites were blocked in the US during OIF?
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
If people in both countries can access Reddit in addition to multiple other social media sites, then this idea of blocking a narrow set of .ru domains to obstruct spies cannot pass the sniff test. What an idiotic post. Being pro-Ukraine is one thing, assuming Slashdotters will fall for such moronic argument is quite another.
BTW, did the US block access to any official Iraqi websites in 2003? More recently, Iran has been implicated in assassination plots against Trump. Has the US government blocked any Irani
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Not really. The Ukrainians just arrested the guy, in Russia he would have "fallen out" a window.
Re: So, just like Putin would? (Score:3, Insightful)
Russian Censorship done for the purpose of keeping their people ignorant = BAD!
Ukrainian Censorship done for the purpose of defending against Russia = GOOD!!!
Fixed that for you, tovarich.
Re: Real Americans oppose this. Resist. (Score:1)
Everything is very simple in your privileged little imaginary world, isn't it?
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Re: Real Americans oppose this. Resist. (Score:2)
Since that is a Russian snowflake, yes I do. But there will just be another snowflake hidden inside of it...