MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has ordered some of the country’s major internet companies to give it continuous access to their systems, The Bell investigative website reported late on Tuesday, citing three sources at the firms.

With respect to , Roskomnadzor made a move on 29th December 2019 and submitted their case for blocking access to our services in Russia to a court in Moscow.

Russia has run a successful test of a country-wide alternative to the global internet, according to BBC News.Iran’s National Information Network is run by a state-owned media company that allows users to access the internet but polices all content on the network and limits external information.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption The net independence plan is seen as a way for Russia's government to get more control over online life Russia has successfully tested a country-wide alternative to the global internet, its government has announced.It blocks access to many foreign internet services, which in turn has helped several domestic tech giants establish themselves.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed legislation requiring all smartphones, computers and smart TV sets sold in the country to come pre-installed with Russian software.

Russia might make this law effective in the country by July 2020.To explain the motive of drafting and applying such law in Russia, the lawmakers and members of legislation have explained that the idea is to promote the widespread use of Russian software and endorse the technology.

We used this authoritative blocklist that contains more than 130,000 domains to perform an in-depth investigation into the Russian government’s censorship policy by collecting measurement data from residential, data center and infrastructural vantage points.

Putin told the Russian Language Council on Tuesday, according to RIA.The Kremlin announced £20million plans for its Russian alternative to Wikipedia in September to be completed by 2022.Putin's announcement follows on the heels of new internet regulations which went into effect on Monday, allowing Russia to isolate its web from the rest of the world.

In an exclusive two-hour interview in Moscow to mark the publication of his memoirs, Permanent Record, Snowden said dire warnings that his disclosures would cause harm had not come to pass, and even former critics now conceded “we live in a better, freer and safer world” because of his revelations.

For the purpose, it will use 3,60,000 tablets which run on the Russian operating system---Aurora.The smartphone maker kickstarted a pilot programme where it will use a Russian operating system to replace Android.

Hong Kong authorities have also attempted to clamp down on Telegram group members, which protestors say is taking cues from the ways China polices the Internet.

Led by senators Andrey Klishas and Alexander Bashkin, the lawmakers have also proposed requiring email services to block messages containing information banned in Russia within 24 hours of being notified by the state authorities.“The adoption of this legislation will significantly reduce the number of false terrorist messages distributed through email services, create the legal conditions for bringing criminals to justice, and reduce the economic damage from such communications,” claims the draft law’s explanatory note.

We’ve had a national digital freakout this week over whether the popular FaceApp app is a Russian plot to steal the visages and other personal data of American citizens for nefarious purposes. And it’s scaring a lot of Americans.

Hackers have breached SyTech, a contractor for FSB, Russia's national intelligence service, from where they stole information about internal projects the company was working on behalf of the agency -- including one for deanonymizing Tor traffic.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called for a federal investigation into FaceApp, saying the Russian-operated mobile application "could pose national security and privacy risks for millions of US citizens.". This has raised privacy concerns, as Americans are uploading photographs and device-related data to a service operated by a company based in Russia.

As a result, if tools with the ability to circumvent the blacklist don’t play ball by respecting its contents, they also face being blocked by ISPs. This proposal came to head earlier this year when telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor wrote to several major VPN providers – NordVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, IPVanish, VPN Unlimited, VyprVPN, Kaspersky Secure Connection, HideMyAss!, Hola VPN, and OpenVPN – demanding compliance .

The other providers contacted by Roskomnadzor include popular services like OpenVPN, NordVPN, four others with VPN in their names, IPVanish, TorGuard and Hide My Ass. Most were explicit in their refusal to comply with the regulator's demands, assuring their users that they weren't interested in perpetuating the Russian government's censorship.

“They are not the only government to use information control on the internet as a weapon against a population, but they are one of the most aggressive.” In November 2018, Russian website Sputnik published a news story about the Kerch incident with Ukraine, which resulted in the arrest by Russia of 24 Ukrainian soldiers, blaming the incident on Russian negligence or hostility, Mr Williams said.

The moves by Russia to increase control over its own citizens and to filter incoming content into the country look like attempts to prevent the same thing happening to their own society.

In April, Twitter was also penalized $47 for similar violations as the two social media platforms continue to resist the 2015 law that forbids the storing of personal data of Russian citizens on servers abroad.

Russian lawmakers on Thursday approved a controversial bill to cut off the country’s internet traffic from foreign servers and block popular messaging app, Telegram. Telegram is insanely popular in Russia, where its encrypted technology makes it possible for people to communicate without government snooping, and for protest organizers to operate with impunity.

Russia passes bill to allow internet to be cut off from foreign servers. Critics say implementing the measures would be expensive and give vast censorship powers to the government’s new traffic monitoring centre.

“One of the speakers at the rally claimed that the Kremlin wanted to press a button and switch the Internet off,” he told the Russian wire agency Interfax.

Some bigger providers, such as PIA, had their websites blocked in Russia Thus, VPN is the most popular way to fight growing internet censorship in Russia and other restricted countries.

The Roskomnadzor, Russia’s government censorship agency, has issued formal notices to ten non-Russian VPN providers demanding that they “hook up” to the Roskomnadzor’s list of banned sites and start complying with said blocks within 30 business days.

The Russian government has passed a new censorship law that allows it to target individuals and websites for such nondescript crimes as spreading “fake news” and “disrespecting” state symbols of figures – including Vladimir Putin.

These protests were similar to those seen in summer 2017 after Russia revealed plans to add VPN websites to their website blacklist All in all, BBC reports that over 15,000 Russians marched on Moscow.

Major disruption The draft law, called the Digital Economy National Program, requires Russia's ISPs to ensure that it can operate in the event of foreign powers acting to isolate the country online.

Russian authorities and major internet providers are planning to disconnect the country from the internet as part of a planned experiment, Russian news agency RosBiznesKonsalting (RBK) reported last week.

"I had to do some digging to understand that the Kremlin requires remote access to systems that handle financial transactions." The researcher says that after his initial finding, he later found the same "[email protected]" account on over 2,000 other MongoDB databases that had been left exposed online, all belonging to local and foreign businesses operating in Russia.