suppressing *******.

Putin ramps up Internet censorship, citing Google and Snowden to ensure public support

"On March 13, a half-dozen highly trafficked opposition blogs and indie media outlets were suddenly blocked within Russia. The websites — including the highly respected Ekho Moskvy radio station and the blog of popular nationalist opposition politician, Alexei Navalny — received no notice of the impeding cutoff.

There was no court order, no trial, not even a public hearing. But there’s no doubt the move was official: Roskomnadzor, Russia’s mass media and telecommunications regulator, very publicly announced it in a directive to Russian ISPs, explaining that access to these websites must be blocked for extremism and for encouraging people to attend unsanctioned protests — in this case, against Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

This new formal power to unilaterally block access to any website comes via a brand new Internet censorship law that went into effect on February 1, 2014. It’s called the “Law of Lugovoi” — named after its author, State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi, a scary ex-FSB officer-turned-Duma deputy who is better known as the prime suspect in the 2007 polonium assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in London.

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http://pando.com/2014/03/20/putin-ramps-up-internet-censorship-citing-google-and-snowden-to-ensure-public-support/