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Google and Apple, Under Pressure From Russia, Remove Voting App (nytimes.com) 60

Posted by msmash from the when-in-moscow dept.
Apple and Google removed an app meant to coordinate protest voting in this weekend's Russian elections from the country on Friday, a blow to the opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin and a display of Silicon Valley's limits when it comes to resisting crackdowns on dissent around the world. From a report: The decisions came after Russian authorities, which claim the app is illegal, threatened to prosecute local employees of Apple and Google -- a sharp escalation in the Kremlin's campaign to rein in the country's largely uncensored internet. A person familiar with Google's decision said the authorities had named specific individuals who would face prosecution, prompting it to remove the app.

The person declined to be identified for fear of angering the Russian government. Google has more than 100 employees in the country. Apple did not respond to phone calls, emails or text messages seeking comment. The app was created and promoted by allies of the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, who were hoping to use it to consolidate the opposition vote in each of Russia's 225 electoral districts. It disappeared from the two technology platforms just as voting got underway in the three-day parliamentary election, in which Mr. Putin's United Russia party -- in a carefully stage-managed system -- holds a commanding advantage.

Mr. Navalny's team reacted with outrage to the decision, suggesting the companies had made a damaging concession to the Russians. "Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship," an aide to Mr. Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, said on Twitter. "Russia's authoritarian government and propaganda will be thrilled." The decisions also drew harsh condemnation from free-speech activists in the West. "The companies are in a really difficult position but they have put themselves there," David Kaye, a former United Nations official responsible for investigating freedom of expression issues, said in an interview. "They are de facto carrying out an element of Russian repression. Whether it's justifiable or not, it's complicity and the companies need to explain it."
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Google and Apple, Under Pressure From Russia, Remove Voting App More

Google and Apple, Under Pressure From Russia, Remove Voting App

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  • Try UPI [upi.com]. Or The Verge [theverge.com]

    Too bad the stupid cunts who edit this site aren't bright enough to give alternates to paywalls.

    • Nope, no paywall. You're just lazy. Works perfectly for me and millions of others.

      • Maybe if you would go read news articles more you'd actually have a clue. I hit the NYT enough times during the month to not have any more free views. Meanwhile people who get their news from Twitter, TikTok, or Fox, yeah you're likely to be able to read if for free.

    • I don't know which of the things I'm doing stops the paywall from working.
      It must be either using uBlock Origin or not allowing cookies. I see the article just fine.

  • Is it fear? Or just a minor vaccination? (Score:3)

    by shanen ( 462549 ) on Friday September 17, 2021 @04:56PM (#61805659) Homepage Journal

    What interests me in this story is the why Putin is bothering. Seems to me the app would actually be an exploitable tool that Putin's goons could use to find and track the troublemakers. You'll have a hard time convinced me it is secure against hackers, but even it if was, what's to stop Putin's goons from signing up as users?

    Is Putin actually worried about an imminent threat? Or is he just trying to vaccinate the Internet against future problems that could actually threaten him?

    • Sir Vlad Putin is becoming paranoid.
      Being reigning too much as of ... always.
      The longer you reign, the more imminent the fall. He knows this.

      Ask Stalin.

      The smartest thing he could actually do is relax his iron hand and go with the flow, being president, being prime minister, etc.

      We'lll see.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Seems to me the app would actually be an exploitable tool that Putin's goons could use to find and track the troublemakers. You'll have a hard time convinced me it is secure against hackers, but even it if was, what's to stop Putin's goons from signing up as users?

      From what I can read, the app just tells you "picks", i.e. suggestions on how to vote strategically to the candidate with the highest chance of making Putin lose in each given voting district.

      I therefore assume there's nothing to exploit, no benefit to Putin's goons from signing up as users. The best they could do is try to find the identities of anyone who *downloaded* the app, if they have access to that from Google's logs, but I bet they'd find that quite difficult.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      An even better question, why do they need an app to not vote for Putin?

      • Re:Is it fear? Or just a minor vaccination? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Friday September 17, 2021 @06:11PM (#61805849)

        An even better question, why do they need an app to not vote for Putin?

        I'm just guessing, but perhaps it's to create a voting block large enough to unseat Putin. Randomized voting will fracture any potentially large enough block into enough pieces to guarantee Putin a win. By focusing voters towards a single candidate, at least one of them can get enough voters to pose a threat.

        That being said, does voting in Russia even matter? Doesn't Putin rig all of the elections, anyway?

        • One of Putin's tricks is to put several candidates with the same name as the opposition one, so that nobody knows which is the real one. Not even the Texan Republicans have thought of that one!

          But for all that, we have to understand that most Rusians genuinely like Putin. He made Russia great again.

          • Of course they like him, you're asking which means you might be the FSB! Everybody knows, a popular politician has 90%+ support, it is human nature not to disagree or argue or be contrarian. Especially Russians, they're never contrarian. Right?

        • "Smart Voting, an idea that Navalny came up with in 2018, is an online service designed to promote candidates that have the best chance to defeat those backed by the Kremlin and the United Russia party. It doesnâ(TM)t promote any particular opposition party. Smart Voting has been used twice in regional elections in the past two years, and has proven quite effective. In 2019, it helped opposition candidates win 20 of 45 seats on the Moscow city council, and regional elections last year saw United Russia
        • You guessed right, although these are parliamentary elections, not presidential. The state is not allowing Navalny or anyone from his team to register a party, so now their tactic is to support the most promising candidates from any existing parties other than Putin's United Russia. As a result United Russia will lose at least some seats, even despite voting fraud etc. Not a big loss for Putin himself, but a sign of change, which may spark further developments and a change in political climate. Putin's gove

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DMJC ( 682799 )
      The Russians are just sick of foreign interference. A lot of the world is sick of foreign interference.

      • The Russians are just sick of foreign interference.

        By some Navalny guy. Who would ever believe a guy named Aleksei was Russia?!

        Though I do think he'd have been wiser to stay in Germany.

        • In this case interference is that they pretend that the app isn't a blatant violation of election procedure. Agitation ban at the time close to election is something those foreigners themselves setup via their Yeltsin/Putin regime, their actions only promote the idea that no legitimate government can exist in Russia at all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          Seems to be the last sincere reply. Pressed for time, so just a generic response.

          My revised hypothesis is that Putin is just testing how to deal with Apple and the google. But the missing part of the story is whether Putin's law allowed for him to request access to those logs of who had downloaded the app. That's some juicy metadata.

          But even without the metadata, I'm now wondering if network sniffing couldn't detect the traffic related to the app. If nothing else, the timing of the usage should be an exploi

  • Good (Score:1, Troll)

    by Aighearach ( 97333 )

    Russia is not a Democracy. They're not having an "election" as we understand the word in the west. It is more like a periodic confidence vote where the local authorities are permitted to show their support for Count Puttipoot the Barechested. With an associated public festival that includes "vote" "casting," Cossacks whipping dissidents, human sacrifices, and other various celebrations.

    All an app like that does is get good people killed. If they're not in the middle of a civil war or whatever, there is noth

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 )
      Shut up you fucking pussy. There are people there trying to do something to keep a chance at democracy. People like you who think they shouldn't have the chance should just get a ticket to Russia and suck some politburo dick.

  • Choosing to use closed platforms put us here (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Friday September 17, 2021 @04:59PM (#61805675)

    When people chose to accept their apps from the Apple App store and Google Play, they effectively made the decision to accept this. Companies, at least limited liability companies, are constructs of government and so the play things of government.

    We need to demand ownership of our own devices. There are alternatives like LineageOS and Fdroid; alternative communicators like Signal that are more secure if not perfect. Unless we teach our friends to use them and also teach them the risks of mobile devices, like tracking, this type of thing is just going to spread.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      I'm not sure what version of Android you are using, but the stock version on my phone (a Pixel 3a XL) allows sideloading apps. I think it also allows alternative app stores, although I haven't tried that myself.

      • I'm not sure what version of Android you are using, but the stock version on my phone (a Pixel 3a XL) allows sideloading apps. I think it also allows alternative app stores, although I haven't tried that myself.

        Yes, you can use F-Droid [f-droid.org] on a stock Android phone - it's well worth it; I tend to search there first even if the phone I'm using has Play. However, some of the apps are more limited when you don't have root on your phone. It's a better situation than Apple where you need a developer account to "sideload" (is that word even a real thing?) but it's less than perfect and the whole situation leaves Google with plenty of ability to remote-control your phone.

        • I only install apps from F-Droid, and I don't miss any useful functionality.

          It amazes me that people are even willing to have ads in a flashlight app! It's like... 5 lines of actual code, the rest is boilerplate.

          And they accept ads in a calculator, and even let their calculator read their phone ID and contact list. And it's a crap calculator to boot!

  • Just what does "...consolidate the opposition vote..." mean?

    • They're not allowed to have popular parties. Any opposition politician that is popular isn't allowed to run. They don't care which European-style liberal they vote for, they just want to all vote for the same one so they can pretend somebody is counting their votes. But anything they do to organize in that way gets them arrested. So they tried to use an app, and of course, it got shut down.

    • Here goes my moderation to this thread. Oh well f*ck it.

      There is no consolidation. Navalny's app told its supporters to vote for the communists. The actual numbers on the list proposed by the app are like 70% communist candidates a few from other small "system" parties which play the game by Putin's rules and a grand total of like 2 independents. Actual lists on google docs. Exhibit A: National [google.com] Exhibit B: Regional [google.com]

      The decision has been condemned by the remaining opposition figures in Russia. You need to

  • apple needed to trun on side loading

  • if they say help us lock an phone will they??
    and if so will they do the same for the FBI that they will for russia or china?

  • It might sound like a setback, but I think Putin blocking this app and making it world news is better for Navaldy than that the app was allowed and nobody would have heard about it. Everybody is once again made aware about Putin being an evil dictator.

  • Why bother being a dictator when you can have so much more socially acceptable title?

  • The two words that will be absent from every mainstream media commentary on this.

  • Shitlibs are still whining about the utterly debunked "Russian interference" in the 2016 election, then want to openly interfere (again [time.com]) with Russia's elections. After the Democrats have committed the greatest election frauds in the history of the US by massively and blatantly rigging their primary elections.

  • Next up, Russia threaten to imprison local Apple employees unless they add certain hashes to their picture scanning.

  • the company folds to government demands, full-stop. their platitudes of standing up to government demands? just empty words. once CSAM scanning is implemented and enabled, it won’t be long before a repressive government (or even the RIAA/MPAA) will come knocking with demands. apple would much rather capitulate then lose a large market like, say, china.

  • ... money driven.

    US should never again give democracy lessons.

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