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Cellphones Government

Phones and PCs Sold In Russia Will Have To Come Pre-installed With Russian Apps (zdnet.com) 75

Posted by EditorDavid from the locally-made dept.
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: The Russian Parliament is debating a bill that will force all electronic equipment sold in Russia — such as smartphones, computers, and smart TVs — to ship pre-installed with apps from Russian tech firms. According to lawmakers, "the bill will protect the interests of Russian Internet companies and will reduce the abuse by large foreign companies, working in the field of information technology."

If the bill is approved, the Russian government will publish a list of electronic devices that will need to comply with this new law. Smartphones, tablets, computers, servers, and smart TVs are expected to be on the list. Devices that don't run a complex OS or custom software will be exempt. The government will also publish, per each device type, a list of Russian software that equipment vendors will need to include on devices sold in Russia.
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Phones and PCs Sold In Russia Will Have To Come Pre-installed With Russian Apps More

Phones and PCs Sold In Russia Will Have To Come Pre-installed With Russian Apps

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  • Ahahaha. (Score:3)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @05:39PM (#59400782)
    I'd sure hate to be writing a tweet about what a cocksuckee Putin is on a Russian phone using the Tweetski app... something tells me someone might notice it even with a burner twitter account.

    • And you don't think that the NSA isn't slurping your every word? This is likely the reason why Huawei/etc have been banned-- tougher to sniff.

      There is a difference between the action taken after the sniffing is done, and the data is sifted. In Russia, data can kill you.

      So get the tweetski app. And install Signal or it's Signalski equivalent.

      • Re: Ahahaha. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Lije Baley ( 88936 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @10:14PM (#59401514)

        Yeah but insulting the dear leader in Russia will get you prison, while doing it in the U.S. will get you a guest appearance on Colbert.

        • Yeah but insulting the dear leader in Russia will get you prison, while doing it in the U.S. will get you a guest appearance on Colbert.

          Don't worry, the president is currently doing everything he can to "fix" that.

        • Had that been the case, Russian prisons would hold many more millions of citizens given that a lot of Russians are quite vocal in their dislike of Putin - and who can blame them? Yet Russia isn't Turkey, where insulting "turkishness" even while living in another country with free speech will be prosecuted.

          There is a shitload of things that is wrong with Russia in general and Putin specifically, but let's not exaggerate.

          • My anecdotal Russian friend says he can't even stand to go back and visit there anymore because Putin or at least his propaganda machine has all of his old friends so thoroughly mesmerized. Also, I have heard that Russian dictators have ways of keeping the prison populations in check.

            • The anecdotal Russian friend is most likely right, although it is not much different than the Trump appeal to the rednecks - conservative people are like that. The part about keeping the prison populations in check hass far less merit.

      • At least here, there are "more" obstacles to preventing users from completely flashing new boot loaders and modem firmwares onto their handsets to remove all those baked in spyware vectors.

        In Russia, they can mandate by fiat that if you don't have the state approved firmwares (enforcable by the carriers, who can ping for compliance at tower handoff), you get the "special treatment."

  • This sort of thing has been happening in China [bbc.co.uk] and will happen in other countries. The big question is when something like this will be mandated in Western democracies - probably under some false pretext about paedophiles or something.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )

      The big question is when something like this will be mandated in Western democracies - probably under some false pretext about paedophiles or something.

      My guess is terrorists, that is all they are saying is using built in encryption on various cell phone apps in the US.

      As if that is the only way to hide illegal activities, I am sure the 'bad guys' have moved on to something else.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stikves ( 127823 )

      It is already happening:
      https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]

      It probably won't be long before governments want full control of the "Internet". They were very comfortable with tapping into GSM (Stingray), but was caught a bit off guard when encryption became common place.

    • You mean like hate speech? By the way is this not part of the Patriot act?
    • Due to the growing rate of terrorist children and the risk they pose to our way of life, we must... blah blah blah.

  • How would they enforce this on ESXi, which is already pretty minimal? Put an agent on every single VM?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      >Devices that don't run a complex OS or custom software will be exempt.

      • Or Banned ;)

        • Re:VMware (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @07:29PM (#59401070)

          This isn't US or China. There's ultimately very little that Russian Federation can do about things being done on local level. Just look at the Putins marathon "Q&A" sessions. Half of it is standard press conference items, just in long form. But the other half is best described as "citizenry coming to Moscow to beg federal government to punish their local authority for not giving a single fuck about Russian Federal law and Federal authority".

          So no, it will not be banned. Not just because this law doesn't allow for this, but because Russian Feds couldn't enforce such a ban even if it was in place. Local governments would just ignore them and do what they think is best. Or, more likely, what they'll be bribed to do.

          Welcome to Russia. It's strange at best and fucking bizarre on average.

          • Interesting ;) thxs

    • don't most servers ship with no os?

      • At the small business side of things, sometimes OSs get preinstalled.

        Mostly I think I see it where people order their hardware direct and check some box or answer some question that they're running VMware or something and it gets pre-installed.

        I can't remember the last time I saw Windows preinstalled.

  • In Soviet Russia ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @05:52PM (#59400814) Journal
    In Soviet Russia government installs Apps.

    In Soviet American Apps (Twitter/facebook) install Government.

  • phones in usa come with usa apps (Score:3, Insightful)

    by maybe111 ( 4811467 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @06:05PM (#59400862)

    phones in usa come with usa apps that cant be uninstalled.... glad to see that russia is finally catching up (20 years later)

    • phones in usa come with usa apps that cant be uninstalled

      This is the stupidest comment I've seen on Slashdot in a while. The US dominates software development worldwide, especially when it comes to the operating systems and other fundamental software. Windows, iOS, and Android are all the products of US companies. People worldwide want these products and pay good money for these products for a reason, including Russian citizens.

      What we're talking about are arbitrary laws forcing your citizens to use... exactly what software are they even talking about? Utiliti

    • Re:phones in usa come with usa apps (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fred911 ( 83970 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @07:12PM (#59401006) Journal

      ''phones in usa come with usa apps that cant be uninstalled''

      This is actually a very valid point. I can't count how many times I've had friends ask me to clean their Android devices of all the garbage that they have installed, only to find that the operator they bought the phone from has apps installed that can't be removed.

      Recently I've seen some android devices that basically have spyware built into the ROM, that no matter what you disable when they see network they phone home and install ad or malware.

      So yea, US operators install unnecessary bloatware in the ROMS for phones they sell clients and elimination requires the device be rooted and a clean rom installed.

      • The difference is that the govt is not requiring their installation.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Well duh.

          The Russian oligarchs live in fear that that the Russian government will confiscate their money and put them in jail. American politicians live in fear that the American corporations will stop bribing them with political contributions and refuse to give them lucrative board seats.

          Thus, in Putin's Russia, politicians install BKOHTAKTE . In US Dollar's America, Facebook install politicians.

          (Slashdot still makes you just through hoops to use Cyrillic, or any Unicode. So please excuse the eyesore ab

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • You can install those using adb while the phone is hooked up to a laptop or desktop. I did this with an absolutely awful S7 Edge (Verizon) that had the most manufacturer/carrier bloat I've ever seen on a device. I told my brother he should reconsider buying Samsung after that and he agreed.

  • "According to lawmakers, "the bill will protect the interests of the Kremlin.""

  • I'm confused now! /sarcasm

  • No different then the United States (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @06:26PM (#59400908)
    Unless you are a major Android geek and roll your own software for your phone, this is identical to the situation in the United States. The only difference is that in "the land of the free" the mandatory software selection is outsourced to big corporate interests.

    It's still a surveillance state, it's just privatized.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fred911 ( 83970 )

        ''Clipper chip. It could happen again along with key escrow.''

          That's as probable as seeing another Clinton in office. Besides, PGP eliminated that threat years ago and Signal works for those that don't care to use PGP.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • If she throws in her bid at the last minute, she will have her ass handed to her in the primaries.

            She is as unelectable as ever, and this time around the superdelagates wont be able to secure her the nomination.

            Last election, public polling showed her to be vastly less popular than Sanders in every metric except with the demographic that actually mattered-- the superdelegate pool. This election the rules for superdelegates have been changed to prevent this kind of shenanigan, because the DNC was called out

    • Unless you are a major Android geek and roll your own software for your phone, this is identical to the situation in the United States.

      It's possible that anything could be subtly hidden in my Moto phone, but as I did not buy it from a carrier, the only bundled apps besides the usual Google stuff are Motorola-related, and they are restricted to things which are actually useful. To wit, FM Radio, Help (Diags), Moto Actions, and Moto Display. And I don't need to roll my own software, I can just install LineageOS. Moto provides bootloader unlocking (from day one in this case) and my phone is a supported platform for Lineage. And I don't have t

      • "build it yourself" lineageOS is also an option. The source tree is fully available. Thus, if you really wanted, a full audit is possible.

  • apple will pull out? or add app store russia

    • Russia is a TINY COUNTRY economically, barely the size of Italy in GDP. How many developers outside of their official hacking corp are there?

      • Russia is tiny by consumer market, but they have lots of developers for worldwide market. Who knows about apple, but here is some data from android:
        https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
        About 3% of google store apps are made in Russia, which is enough to put this country in top10.

  • So what happens in Russia if you get your preinstalled bloatware computer and immediately install Linux on it? Will they come and get you?

  • you buy spying devices for the government!

  • Russian Gov Apps (Score:5, Funny)

    by meerling ( 1487879 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @07:17PM (#59401030)
    Putin's Eye - Gives the government full access to all your data and messages.

    Putin's Helping Hand - Turns your device into a net bot for whatever computer espionage group has Putin's favor that week.

    Putin Wallpaper - A mandatory selection of Putin wallpapers for the phone, specializing in his topless shots that are guaranteed not airbrushed (totally airbrushed)

    Ukraine Sovereignty Poll - Should Ukrain remain on it's own, or become part of Russia? (Only "join russia" button actually works.)

    Putin-Coin - A new Crypto(but Putin has the masterkey)currency sponsored by Putin. Can easily be exchanged for Rubles at a Putin Favorable rate.

    So, does anyone else have ideas on what Apps Russia will demand?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re 'So, does anyone else have ideas on what Apps" could be on offer in Russia?

      1. CIA app. Sends random low and mid ranking Russian gov and mil staff a message from the CIA offering $100000 in cash to spy for the USA.
      One meeting in person to give the unique "spy" email account. Do some extra work for the USA and the CIA backed cash is approved.
      No US passport will be granted. One cash payment in Russia only. No support for any escape plan is offered.

      2. MI6 app. Sends random low and mid rankin

  • ... because Russia is a sovereign country and gets to do what it wants to do.

  • Anyone actually paid attention to the bloatware that infests every single phone and PC sold over here? And it's Not government mandated!

    Seriously.
    Can we get a Windows PC, or even Android-based phone that ISN'T infested?

    Even a "fresh install" is not free of bloatware.

    Russia is doing it, too? And the Government is mandating it?

    Those Evil bastards!

  • ... electronics own you.

  • I've already got a pile of unneeded and unremovable apps on my S7, kindly provided by Samsung and AT&T.
  • ...app installs YOU!

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