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Censorship Google Government Microsoft Apple

Russia Demands LinkedIn App Takedown, Apple and Google Comply (fortune.com) 110

Posted by msmash from the yes-sir-my-sir dept.
Russia has forced Apple and Google to remove the LinkedIn mobile app from their Russian application markets, the latest chapter in a months-long campaign against the professional networking site. From a report on Fortune: A recently-passed Russian law requires that any company holding data on Russians house that data within Russia. Russia began blocking LinkedIn's website last November under that law, which some critics argue is an indirect form of censorship. The removal of the LinkedIn app from Apples App Store and Google's Play shows the willingness of major internet gatekeepers to comply with individual nations' data-control laws, on both the web and mobile devices.
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Russia Demands LinkedIn App Takedown, Apple and Google Comply More

Russia Demands LinkedIn App Takedown, Apple and Google Comply

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  • In soviet Russia (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Post firsts you

  • Lessons re-learned (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, 2017 @10:26AM (#53633555)

    Just another reason Free Software is still relevant in the era of the app store.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Right, with Free Software, you can write a competitor to linkedin, and STILL be forced to comply with the same goddamned restrictions that proprietary, walled-garden software is forced to comply with!

      The problem is not that they've somehow "locked up your data in a proprietary container." The problem is that the Russian government has declared that anybody offering a service like LinkedIn MUST store data for Russian accounts in a place where Russia has legal jurisdiction. Free software does NOTHING to cha

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

        I think he's refering to a distributed model, where every user would be able to either host their own data storage or pick their own host.
        Kind of like the distributed Facebook competitor "Diaspora". Remember that project? Me neither.

      • Can't individual users download the apps themselves? You need Google's permission to install an app now?

    • Just another reason Free Software is still relevant in the era of the app store.

      This is a problem of data, not of code.

  • Censorship/User's privacy protection? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Yeah. I don't like Putin in the least. That said, I'm more and more uneasy seeing how "our" and "their" leaders are resembling more and more each other -- and this with the consent (no: with loud acclamation!) of the majority (btw. as Putin or Erdogan have).

    Fucking scary, if you ask me.

    • The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well, Trump has been getting paid by laundering Russian money since then 90s with Bayrock Group financing him after US companies wouldn't touch his idiotic business practices - like being the only money losing casino in Atlantic City for years.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ct... [twimg.com]

  • Imagine a world where that's even possible (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If anyone is so overwhelmingly attracted to the idea of allowing a company like Apple or Google to control the "application market" that they see, then they deserve to not have many applications, and for their computer to be significantly less capable than everyone else's. The whole point of turning all your selection power over to some company, is to personally have less power. So this works out great.

    Meanwhile, in Real Life, the market simply is the market. Nobody can remove someone else's product from it

    • If anyone is so overwhelmingly attracted to the idea of allowing a company like Apple or Google to control the "application market" that they see, then they deserve to not have many applications, and for their computer to be significantly less capable than everyone else's. The whole point of turning all your selection power over to some company, is to personally have less power. So this works out great.

      Meanwhile, in Real Life, the market simply is the market. Nobody can remove someone else's product from it. Imagine how amazingly absurd that would be. The only way to get to that level of absurdity, would be to buy a computer where someone else controls what software you're allowed to use.

      ...and thus the iPhone was born!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      iOS users, never fear. Through the power of open Web APIs, you can still connect to LinkedIn without a native app. Just connect to https://www.linkedin.com./ [www.linkedin.com]

      Unless, of course, you're in a jurisdiction where NETWORK CONNECTIONS TO LINKEDIN SERVERS ARE BLOCKED, in which case even if you use the AMAZING side-loading or web access workarounds, you will STILL be unable to connect to the service.

      But Android users will DEFINITELY be happy that they can load a native app that connects to nothing. I'm sure they'l

  • So? (Score:3)

    by c ( 8461 ) <beauregardcp@gmail.com> on Monday January 09, 2017 @10:41AM (#53633685)

    If Russia has any clue, the LinkedIn domains are already blacklisted. Removing the apps shouldn't be much more than adding insult to injury.

    And since Android users could sideload it, it's practically ineffective unless Apple owns a much larger chunk of the Russian market than they did last time I looked.

  • The removal of the LinkedIn app from Apples App Store and Google's Play shows the willingness of major internet gatekeepers to comply with individual nations' data-control laws, on both the web and mobile devices.

    Since exactly when have any company on earth managed to ignore the existing laws in countries where they operate?

    • Have you heard of Uber?

      Kidding aside, historically it came down to if you had a legal presence in a place then you needed to comply with the laws of the place. Now things are much more muddled.

      • No it's not muddled, if you have legal presence in a place you have to comply with the laws of the place. The reason Uber manages to dodge some of the bullets fired at them is because they have no legal presence in the place, it's the drivers that do and thus they are the ones getting into trouble. Both Apple and Google want to have physical and thus legal presence in Russia so there is no Uber-like situation here.

        And judging by how things went for Kim DotCom, TPB and so forth, Uber might soon find themselv

    • Uber
      • And they are currently fighting how many lawsuits and outright bans from various countries? From the looks of it both Apple and Google want to take part of the Russian market so of course they have to obey the local laws there.
  • I would imagine both their apps and the website pull the data from no Russian servers. So is linkedin.com blocked in Russia?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Yes, it is. [techcrunch.com]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
        So all Apple/Google did was pull apps that are essentially useless because they wouldn't be able to communicate with the servers to pull data anyway?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          Maybe. China and NYT went through this recently and although nyt.com was blocked the apps still worked, so China told Apple to remove them. It's possible the apps still worked, creating a bypass to the blocked site. In theory Russia should be able to look and see what servers the apps use for content and block those but I guess this is just easier.
  • Cue all the paid Russian/Trump trolls who will now post and tell us that this is somehow a good thing.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I can get paid for liking Russua, Putin and Trump? Where do i sign up?

  • Can we talk? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Monday January 09, 2017 @10:52AM (#53633815)

    I don't give a goddam rat's ass about LinkedIn.

    It's a spammy piece of shit that's been hacked over and over again and it's useless a tits on a boar.

    It's business model is just like the fucking dating sites.

    --

    Russian is a sovereign country and can do whatever the shit they want.

    I'm in another sovereign country and I convinced management that LinkedIn is crappy.

    It's banned.

    • Yeah, there's not much to this story. If LinkedIn doesn't want to store data on Russians inside Russia, then they can't operate there. Fine. This is the exact same reason why our company has a server in South Africa. It's not about free speech or whatever else, if the country wants you to store data on their citizens inside their country, then you can either comply or not give access to that country. I don't see how anyone should have a problem with that. If you can switch around the story and insert

  • So? (Score:2)

    by KalvinB ( 205500 )

    Do we get to push our laws into foreign countries?

    If so, can foreign countries start enforcing their laws in our country?

    Their house, their business. Our house, our business.

    Push products they do want and maybe they'll change the mind on products they don't.

    And seriously, would you want your private information stored on a server in a foreign country? Seems like a no brainer for Russia.

    • Do we get to push our laws into foreign countries?
      Yes, all the time. We arrested Manual Noriega who was the dictator of his own country from drug trafficking in his own country.
      We arrested a Russian citizen for break the U.S. DMCA in a way required by Russian law (when he landed in the United states for a conference).
      We try to force our laws to be enforced all over the world all the time.

      If so, can foreign countries start enforcing their laws in our country?
      Believe me they try. That is in some ways the poi

    • > seriously, would you want your private information stored on a server in a foreign country?

      YES PLEASE.

      Seriously, would you, as a citizen of the Free Internet, rather have your private information stored on a server in Russia or in a foreign country?

      Thought so.

  • But apple will not help the FBI! trump needs to put tim cook in his place.

  • Why are they so impatient?
    Just a few more weeks and every database in the US will be hosted in Russia.

  • Is all the data in Google Play and Apple app store about Russians stored on servers in Russia?

  • Russia is doing the right thing for their citizens here. App owner refused to store citizen data in country, app gets blocked. That's how it SHOULD be. Otherwise, your citizen's data is available to others without going through your country's due process. Worse, if it's stored in the US (where I live) there is no due process if the data isn't stored in your home.

    • You would be right if it was a plan to protect the citizens’ privacy.

      However the plan is to put Russia(n government) in a preferential position to violate said privacy.

  • Like many of you, I was wondering "OK, so why don't they just spin up a few AWS or Azure instances in Russia to make their government happy?"

    Then I realized that AWS doesn't have a hosting center in Russia. Neither does Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.

    All of a sudden, it looks like they would have to make a custom one off server farm to appease Russia. It probably isn't worth the effort for them to do so.

  • Had it been American authorities, Apple would've put up a heroic fight [nytimes.com]. But helping Russian (and Chinese [latimes.com]) efforts to keep tabs on their citizens and enable dragnets by foreign governments — well, that's just complying with local laws [slashdot.org], nothing to see here.

    • If Apple had the data in an accessible form, they likely wouldn't have been able to fight, and would have lost a lot of support.

      You're comparing data locality to circumventing security and forcing a company (i.e., people) to do work to that end (and to severely damage their brand as a result).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        I'm comparing resisting the perfectly reasonable request from the US government to help it access data on one cell phone used by a dead terrorist, with agreeing to aid mass-surveillance by the Russian and Chinese governments.

  • If all they are trying to do is keep their citizen's data within their own country and out of foreign hands, I don't see the problem. We bitch when China hacks our credit cards, so finding legal loopholes to do the same thing when companies have no business to personal info isn't so different, regardless of how "righteous" you think yours is.

  • They've got a law that states companies holding data on their citizens must keep that data within their own borders. This is great, and they have good reason to have such a law. The icing on the cake is that they're actually trying to enforce the law.

    LinkedIn, the world's largest spam network, being the current whipping boy is a bonus. I doubt LinkedIn has much of a Russian userbase, so if it comes down to it LinkedIn can just never comply with Russia's laws and Russia can't do shit beyond try to block t

  • Here is a scenario. Let's say I was a Russian who came to the US for a few days, visited the Apple Store on my phone, downloaded all the banned apps, including LinkedIn, and then flew back there.

    Once I was back, how would either the Apple Store - or the Play Store - not having the app online - be of any use? Particularly if I disable the app store once I am back?

  • Where is the link to this story? :P

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