Russian State TV Journalist Plagiarizes Nationalist Website

A reporter for Russia’s leading television channel admitted lifting huge chunks of a nationalist report about the Sochi Olympics’ opening ceremony for use in her own report, which aired over the weekend. Irada Zeinalova said she quoted a report by Kremlin-bashing web resource Sputnik & Pogrom without attribution for a broadcast on Channel One. The report “found such true and subtle words about the Olympics that you could wish for nothing better,” Zeinalova said in a Facebook post that later was deleted. She apologized for unattributed quoting and said she “faced the music” with channel management, which has not commented publicly about the scandal. Sputnik & Pogrom’s report, published Saturday, praised the ceremony for a pro-Western slant and avoidance of rampant conservatism that is at the core of the Kremlin’s current domestic policy. Both the website and the presenter touted the event, in particular, for presenting “aristocratic Russians” to the world, as opposed to kitschy stereotypes about balalaikas and “aggressive drunken soldiers.” Sputnik & Pogrom directly accused Channel One of plagiarism on Monday, but said no legal action was planned because the channel de-facto helped spread their ideas.

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140211/187397607/Russian-State-TV-Journalist-Plagiarizes-Nationalist-Website.html

Russia's Top Satellite Company Drops Liberal Dozhd TV Channel

Russia’s major satellite provider stopped broadcasting Dozhd independent television channel Monday after the network became embroiled into a controversy over an opinion poll about World War II. Tricolor TV, Russia’s biggest satellite TV provider, said a week ago that its board of directors had unanimously decided to exclude the liberal Dozhd channel from all its packages because of its editorial policy. “9:47 a.m., Dozhd channel disappeared from Tricolor,” the station’s owner Alexander Vinokurov wrote on his Twitter account Monday. Dozhd, which translates as “rain” in Russian, sparked outrage among officials by briefly publishing a poll last month that asked whether the Soviet Union should have surrendered the besieged city of Leningrad – now St. Petersburg – to the Nazis in an attempt to avoid hundreds of thousands of deaths. The poll was published on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the lifting of the devastating 900-day Siege of Leningrad in 1944. The resulting debate prompted some other major satellite providers to drop the station from its packages. Dozhd apologized for the poll, but said it was being used as a pretext to shut down the channel, known for its whistleblowing reports and criticism of the Kremlin. Last week, the station’s management said that the satellite providers’ decision to stop broadcasting Dozhd would mean significant losses, cutting down its audience by about 80-85 percent.

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140210/187385648/Russias-Top-Satellite-Company-Drops-Liberal-Dozhd-TV-Channel-.html

Belarusian Police Hold Man Over Porn on TV

Belarusian investigators said on Monday that an employee of a Belarusian music TV channel has been detained for allegedly airing pornographic footage on the channel after quarreling with his girlfriend.  On Saturday afternoon, the BelMuzTV channel aired several music videos by the Belarusian rock band Lyapis Trubetskoi, which is unofficially banned on local television, followed by ten minutes of pornographic footage. The TV employee responsible then fled the building, according to investigators. “The suspect, an employee of the channel [was] born in 1985, was detained in [the city of] Mogilev, and has been brought to Minsk… He is already being interrogated,” a source in Belarus’ law enforcement agencies told RIA Novosti on Monday. A spokesperson for the Belarusian investigative committee said that the suspect blamed his actions on being depressed after arguing with his girlfriend, suggesting that his actions were not politically motivated. A criminal case has been opened into the public showing of pornography. The man faces up to four years in prison if charged and convicted.

http://en.ria.ru/crime/20130415/180645401/Belarusian-Police-Hold-Man-Over-Porn-on-TV.html

Microsoft, Skype Disclose Law Enforcement Request Stats

US tech giant Microsoft disclosed that it and its main video chat service Skype received more than 75,000 requests last year from government law enforcement agencies in the United States and other countries to provide customer user data. Microsoft and Skype had received in 2012 a total of 75,378 “criminal law enforcement requests” for customer information, which potentially impacted 137,424 accounts. Approximately 80 percent of the information provided to governmental agencies was “non-content data,” which includes only information like usernames, e-mail addresses, gender, geographic location, IP addresses, and dates and times of online traffic. Only 2.1 percent—1,558 requests—resulted in the disclosure of customer content, Microsoft said. In particular, judging by the statistics, in 2012 Microsoft received no requests from Russia, while Skype received from Russia two requests concerning five accounts, but in no case did Russian requests result in the disclosure of content.

http://en.ria.ru/world/20130322/180170370/Microsoft-Discloses-Law-Enforcement-Requests-for-User-Data.html
http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/reporting/transparency/

Experts: Russian Secret Services Monitor Skype Communications

Russia's special services are now able to listen to private Skype chats and track users' locations. Intelligence services have for years have been monitoring Skype communications, several participants in the Russian information security industry have told Russian newspaper Vedomosti. According to security experts, access to correspondence and Skype conversations within the Russian intelligence community does not always go through the court system – it is often obtained on a “simple request.” After Microsoft acquired Skype in May 2011, it updated its software with a technology allowing “legitimate wiretapping,” an expert told the publication. Since then, any user account can be switched to a special mode in which the encryption keys that were previously generated on a user’s mobile device or computer would be generated on Skype’s server. With access to the server, anyone can listen to the conversation or read the correspondence, including short messages sent to mobile phones. Microsoft provides the opportunity to use this technology to security services all around the world, including Russia, the expert explained.

http://en.ria.ru/papers/20130314/180007226/Russian-Press-at-a-Glance-Thursday-March-14-2013.html
http://rt.com/news/skype-wiretapping-intelligence-agencies-237/

UPDATE:
Skype denies providing access to communications to Russian secret services
http://www.lenta.ru/news/2013/03/14/reject/

Chechen Court Bans "Innocence of Muslims"

A district court in Chechnya, acting upon a petition from the Chechen Ministry for ethnic policy and mass media, found the film Innocence of Muslims "extremist." This means the film is automatically banned throughout Russia. It is not immediately clear whether the judgment will result in blocking all of YouTube (which hosts the video) in Russia. In Chechnya and some other Russian regions YouTube has already been blocked.

http://www.lenta.ru/news/2012/09/28/innocence/

UPDATE:
Prosecutor: Chechen court decision is not final
http://www.lenta.ru/news/2012/09/28/temporary/

Chechnya Blocks YouTube

A number of internet service providers in Chechnya have blocked access to the video sharing site YouTube over an anti-Islamic film that has sparked riots across the Middle East and North Africa. The Chechen prosecutor’s office earlier instructed all providers operating in the North Caucasus republic to block access to YouTube. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov warned that if “companies ignore the ruling they will be held liable.” Last week prosecutors in several Russian regions asked internet service providers to block sites offering access to the video. The Russian prosecutor general’s office has declared it extremist and is now seeking a court ruling to ban the video in Russia. A Moscow court will consider the case on October 1.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20120924/176200651.html

Russia May Ban YouTube over "Innocence of Muslims"

Russian authorities are moving to have the film “Innocence of Muslims” banned for extremism after it set off a wave of violence in the Middle East that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya. “The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office will appeal to court for the acknowledgement of this film as extremist in order to prevent its online distribution in Russia,” spokeswoman Marina Gridneva told Interfax. Authorities also have filed paperwork with the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, which said it was already contacting Internet service providers to warn them that the film may violate the law. Nikolay Nikiforov, the Minister of Communications and Mass Media, stated in his Twitter feed that under a newly adopted law (informally known as the "Internet censorship law") YouTube may be blocked in Russia for hosting the film.

http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2012/09/17/russia-moves-to-ban-anti-islam-film/
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2025242

Uzbek Court Confiscates Russian Mobile Operator Assets

The Tashkent Criminal Court in Uzbekistan has imposed suspended sentences or fines on four managers of LLC Uzdunrobita, the Uzbekistan-based subsidiary of leading Russian cellular provider Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), and confiscated the subsidiary's property in favor of the state. The defendants were accused of "organizing a criminal group with the purpose of extracting uncontrolled profits." Earlier the Uzbek tax authorities claimed some $900 mln of back taxes from the MTS subsidiary and cancelled its licenses. Michael Hecker, MTS's vice president for strategy, called the license-related court session a "20-minute show" that represented a "clear violation of the basic rights to a fair trial and due process." "We invested over $1 billion into the company. We believe somewhere in this area is also the equity value of the company. And it becomes very clear that all the fabricated amounts that we are due to pay according to those statements of the Uzbek authorities -- that they equal, more or less, the equity value, because then [the government] will just simply expropriate the company," Hecker said. "They will basically say, 'We'll take the company and that's it.'"

http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=361230
http://www.lenta.ru/news/2012/09/17/mts/
http://www.rferl.org/content/uzbek-branch-of-russian-mts-shut-down/24675789.html

Google Accuses Kazakhstan of Creating “Fractured Internet”

Google decided to redirect all visitors of its Kazakhstan site, google.kz, to a page in Kazakh at google.com, after the Kazakh Ministry of Communications and Information issued an order requiring all .kz domain names to operate on physical servers within Kazakhstan. “We find ourselves in a difficult situation: creating borders on the web raises important questions for us not only about network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression. If we were to operate google.kz only via servers located inside Kazakhstan, we would be helping to create a fractured Internet. So we have decided to redirect users that visit google.kz to google.com in Kazakh. Unfortunately, this means that Kazakhstani users will experience a reduction in search quality as results will no longer be customized for Kazakhstan,” Google's senior vice president Bill Coughran commented in a blog post.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/229738/google_redirects_kazakh_search_traffic.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/changes-to-open-internet-in-kazakhstan.html


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Russia’s VimpelCom May Buy Wind and Orascom Telecom

Russia’s second-largest mobile operator, VimpelCom Ltd., may sign a deal with Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris to purchase Italy's No.3 mobile operator, Wind, and 51 percent of Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holding. The acquisition would mark a major expansion into Asia, Europe, and North Africa. This deal would be beneficial to Vimpelcom in becoming a truly international player with a diversified geographical exposure, said a UniCredit Securities analyst.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE67B02G20100812