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The Russian President has signed new legislation that forces telephone carriers and internet providers to store the private communications of their customers and turn them over to the government on request. Communication providers may have to spend more than $30 billion to implement the new laws.
The communication companies will have to keep a record of their users’ calls, text messages, photos, and internet activity for six months, and store ‘metadata’ for three years, according to the International Business Times. And messaging services that use digital encryption, such as WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram, could face fines of thousands of pounds if they continue to operate in Russia without handing over their encryption key to the government. “Even the Soviet Union did not have such an overwhelmingly repressive legislation,” Russian politician and businessman Gennady Gudkov told the Los Angeles Times.
The communication companies will have to keep a record of their users’ calls, text messages, photos, and internet activity for six months, and store ‘metadata’ for three years, according to the International Business Times. And messaging services that use digital encryption, such as WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram, could face fines of thousands of pounds if they continue to operate in Russia without handing over their encryption key to the government. “Even the Soviet Union did not have such an overwhelmingly repressive legislation,” Russian politician and businessman Gennady Gudkov told the Los Angeles Times.