Digital Gulag in Russia

https://apnews.com/article/russia-crackdown-surveillance-censorship-war-ukraine-internet-dab3663774feb666d6d0025bcd082fba

"Rights advocates say that Russia under President Vladimir Putin has harnessed digital technology to track, censor and control the population, building what some call a “cyber gulag” — a dark reference to the labor camps that held political prisoners in Soviet times.


It’s new territory, even for a nation with a long history of spying on its citizens.

“The Kremlin has indeed become the beneficiary of digitalization and is using all opportunities for state propaganda, for surveilling people, for de-anonymizing internet users,” said Sarkis Darbinyan, head of legal practice at Roskomsvoboda, a Russian internet freedom group the Kremlin deems a “foreign agent.”"

 

The surveillance state in USSR and now the Mordorussian Federation is a whole another level. Don't make it seem it's comparable.

 

I believe there's a meaningful distinction. In the U.S., surveillance is generally carried out within a legal framework designed to protect citizens—primarily to prevent terrorism, cyber threats, and serious crime.
It’s far from perfect, and some say deserves scrutiny, but the intent is largely rooted in national security, especially in the wake of 9/11.
That's very different from state surveillance used as a tool of political repression or to control the population, as we've seen in more authoritarian regimes.

 

The U.S. system, for all its flaws, still operates with layers of oversight—however imperfect—including judicial review and public watchdogs.

Yes, the Snowden revelations exposed overreach and sparked needed debate. But they also showed that abuses can be brought to light and curtailed. The risk of data misuse is real and vigilance is necessary, but I still believe the core intent remains national security—not political suppression or mass control as in authoritarian regimes.

 

A Soviet reality, the one putin is resurrecting, is one where every class, sports team, or a tourist group can be presumed to have a KGB snitch in it. No exaggeration. My father was traveling with a student basketball team to a communist-camp country (IIRC Chechoslovakia). His roommate got in trouble for some trivial misdeed (like bringing a camera with him to sell for profit - which is a crime of "speculation"). So my father was summoned to the University’s "division 1" (a KGB front - again, every organization had one) - and in the process discovered that they already knew more about his roommates going-ons than he did. Also, ask Lerner what "it's not a phone conversation" means.

I'm irritated when people bring Western flaws into a discussion of the Northern Murderland. Don't try to imply it's a "normal" country. Nazi Germany was not normal, and neither is russia.

 

It is not “normal” for the US to spy on its citizens either. Ignoring this double standard only serves to legitimize the current system. We should have higher standards than “at least we are not as bad as Russia”.

 

Citizens that have nothing to hide, in US have fewer reasons to fear the system, but citizens and residents that are plotting against the US, such as Jihadists, or operatives of cartels,
criminals need to be captured before they do more harm.
Especially terrorist slipper cells and their supporters. Also, people that plan mass shootings at schools or other crimes, agitators that are operatives of other hostile regimes, etc.

 

This is plainly true, yet doesn't mean "the system" isn't contrary to ideals of freedom.

 

No, it's not "normal". Still, even the fact that the society understands that makes the difference with kgbland one of kind, not degree. I concede the need for efforts to keep it this way.

 

"Look at this vaguely comparable bad thing the cursed West is doing" is literally a go-to response of the Kremlin a d adjacent propaganda to literally anything, meant to shut down the discussion of their crimes. You may not have intended it like that, but your contribution to this thread was structurally identical. Down to a sarcastic "speaking of nations with a long history of spying on its citizens". Sorry, but this is how it sounds.

 

It is more than vaguely comparable. Nobody is justifying it. In fact, people are pointing to other instances in the world that are being wrongly justified as good. No doubt that the acceptance of the US system has allowed Russia more freedom to implement their own.

 

This is, in a word, adorable. KGBland needing US example to implement surveillance? Lolwut? USSR was a surveillance and propaganda state first and foremost; need I remind you what putin's employment history is?

Sometimes I think US left-wing antiglobalists are more invested in American exceptionalism than jingoistic neocons or MAGAheads. No, sweetie, US didn't invent every means of oppression around the world. We're dealing with it since Ivan the Terrible's Oprichina, at the very least.

 

I didn’t make any of those assertions.

 

Ok, let's look at an assertion you made. To wit:

No doubt, this assertion is false. Regardless of what you mean by "acceptance" (by whom?).

 

Society. The surveillance state has been normalized, in part, because of the US leading the effort post 9/11. This has allowed other countries to adopt a similar system for “national security”. Russia used to be heavily criticized for their system, but now they only get criticized when they increase their efforts because we have accepted the new baseline.

Does that make sense sweetheart?