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Software Government Hardware Technology

Russia Bans Sale of Gadgets Without Russian-Made Software (bbc.com) 78

Posted by BeauHD from the locally-sourced dept.
Russia has passed a law banning the sale of certain devices that are not pre-installed with Russian software. The BBC reports: The law will come into force in July 2020 and cover smartphones, computers and smart televisions. Proponents of the legislation say it is aimed at promoting Russian technology and making it easier for people in the country to use the gadgets they buy. But there are concerns about surveillance and fears that firms could pull out of the Russian market. The law will not mean devices from other countries cannot be sold with their normal software - but Russian "alternatives" will also have to be installed. The legislation was passed by Russia's lower house of parliament on Thursday. A complete list of the gadgets affected and the Russian-made software that needs to be pre-installed will be determined by the government.
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Russia Bans Sale of Gadgets Without Russian-Made Software More

Russia Bans Sale of Gadgets Without Russian-Made Software

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  • Seems like a good enough reason (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gojira Shipi-Taro ( 465802 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @07:49PM (#59441082) Homepage

    To just abandon Russia as a market. Their economy is smaller than that of Texas FFS, why bother accomodating such nonsense?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 )

      To just abandon Russia as a market. Their economy is smaller than that of Texas FFS, why bother accomodating such nonsense?

      When Russia engages in protectionism it's nonsense but when the US does it it's wisdom, right?

      I look forward to when "buy local" means "from anywhere on Earth". Because that'll mean we have extraplanetary colonies to play the "us & them" game with. We all grow stronger together, folks. Protectionism is bad, no matter if the country's leader has blonde hair or orange. And yes, I know that there's a difference between sensible import/export policies and protectionism.

      • Both of you are barking up the wrong tree.

        The draft law specifies alternatives, not REPLACEMENTS.

        There are similar drafts doing the rounds at committee stage in France, Germany, Israel and many other places.

        First of all. As long as these are alternatives and not government mandated spyware like in some Chinese regions, there is nothing wrong with that.

        Second, if your national alphabet is NOT latin - if it is Hebrew, Armenian, Cyrillic, etc there is nothing unreasonable in making these a requirement.

      • I think what they we're getting at was that most businesses would say "okay, we just won't sell our product in russia then."
        I mean why would any hardware manufacturer even bother with ensuring all their products cater to russia? That just sounds like a development nightmare just for what? A couple extra million a year...if that? That's not including the cost of developing and maintaining this garbage for them.
    • Because we'd lose our influence there. Better to have a seat at the table and be able to have a say in events than to leave entirely and let bad outcomes happen.

      • Because we'd lose our influence there. Better to have a seat at the table and be able to have a say in events than to leave entirely and let bad outcomes happen.

        Translation: "bad outcomes" = "we lose money".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        You seem to believe that staying carries the power to prevent bad outcomes. It does little more than slow them down a pinch, at best, so better to not be there and not share the blame over something you couldn't control. The moral high ground is a public reason to do so, but even as a practical matter, the "good old days" aren't going to last very long and then you're stuck with the bill.

        Remember, this money you're trying to play for, you're only going to ever chip off a sliver, and those with an interest i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Doesn't Canada have something similar? Everything has to be available in French, all phones have to have a French language pack installed.

  • What this means (Score:3)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @08:00PM (#59441114) Homepage Journal

    All Internet connected devices like routers will need Russian software so snooping software can be installed. Very clever. Eventually this will be coming to a country near you too.

    • All Internet connected devices like routers will need Russian software so snooping software can be installed. Very clever. Eventually this will be coming to a country near you too.

      Unless you're jaded, and believe it is likely to have already occurred in your country.

      Remember, ubiquitous government surveillance was trivialized as tinfoil-hattery until the Snowden revelations.

    • Snooping? I thought this was so they could surreptitiously insert alternative texts in to things like Wikipedia and foreign news outlets.

    • Most of such equipment has USA software on it (Android, Windows, MacOS), so that country is already privileged with access to huge amounts of information on people worldwide.
      Russia is, in a way, merely trying to equalize the situation.

    • I agree its all about having access to information.

  • NP. (Score:2)

    by msauve ( 701917 )
    "Russia Bans Sale of Gadgets..."

    No problem. People can just sell widgets, gizmos and doo-dads.
  • You see, they are not that smart, they control internet but still cannot bypass all devices security. It will definitely fuel grey market of unlocked and clean devices , but in general they are getting full control over everything
    • The country operated on a black market for everything from bare necessities for decades until the 90s. Unlike many other countries in the ex-USSR, Russians maintain their Soviet mentality. That being said, with Russia being an autocratic state they can instruct cell phone companies to prevent activation of IMEIs of newer foreign phones... or even report those who attempt activation. Just like they raided small businesses and destroyed tons of "foreign cheese" in 2016-17

    • Re:Welcome back (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @09:09PM (#59441268) Journal

      It never really left. You know the people that had power and money during the USSR? Guess what.... they still have the power now. You think Putin was a nobody during the USSR and only came into his own after the fall of communism? Cronyism has been rampant in that country, and still is. When you have these large networks of people in power, they will consolidate and maintain that power. They pretty much operate above the government, because it doesn't really matter what rules they are supposed to be playing by (communism, Russian Federation, etc) - they can exert power directly without requiring laws to back them up.

      • What you saying implies that Russian gov was basically redone in US's image. Of course Russian gov went downhill since Stalin came in power but remaking it in an image of even more backwards country was a mistake.
  • Cool now they can work on that Crinkled Star OS with North Korea.
  • They don't require to replace the bundled software, just to provide home-made alternatives to some of it.
    • Well, good luck with that on closed devices that require proprietary drivers for the hardware baked into the OS

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by I-93 ( 6401752 )
        What OS, what hardware? Did anybody read the FA? It is about smartphones, smartTVs. To provide local alternatives to Mail, News, Navigation, Social etc., but again not removing Gmail and whatever is regularly preinstalled there.

    • The BBC article is a big vague, it just talks about "software" but does not say what that means, it also says "applications" so I guess it does not mean operating systems. So: web browsers, word processors, mail clients, .... I see no harm in these being installed - I assume that if there is not a Russian made alternative available then that is OK.

      Also not mentioned is: will the user be able to uninstall Russian made software ? If so: then why the fuss ? If they cannot then why not, what is the real purpose

  • By adding US government approved software to Huawei devices to be sold in the US such devices wouldn't be banned. This would be mimicking Russia. A Win-Win for US customers, the US government, Huawei and maybe the Chinese government. Some of this may already being done from other hardware manufacturers.
    • Huawei said it would break a leg to overcome perceived issues a while back. Yet they have stayed silent and have not open-sourced anything, after their software was found to be off the shelf bloatware. So my guess is they have agreed to surrender the American market altogether. Everyone knows router configuration tables/aka registry are usually never checksummed and usually locked. The game was up when people decided to do backups, then reverse engineer those backups. I am waiting for a superior product to

      • I am waiting for a superior product to appear.

        Can you not just use the existing superior American product which they must have copied to produce theirs? Or does conservative Slashdot groupthink run into issues when confronted by reality?

  • That seems like an easy work around for this issue.

  • Good reason for proper sandboxing (Score:3)

    by misnohmer ( 1636461 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @09:30PM (#59441314)

    Comply with the law use by installing the software, but allow users to see and control exactly what each app does and what it sees, including the ability to feed the app any data user wants (such as location) - make sure you make it easy to use, so for location you should be able to easily just click "for this app, replay last year's locations from date x/y/z", or "for this app, generate a random set of locations assuming I'm driving around aimlessly".

    • How do you mod up. The phrase operating system has been kidnapped and redefined to 'whatever we will allow you to do'. There is a Canadian outfit called Copperhead that gives back to users permissions and options, and dud information to wholesale information theft / privicide. Pihole, privacy badger and Shutup10 indicate the scope of pervasive harvesting of user data.

  • This will last about as long as the... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Glasswire ( 302197 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @09:41PM (#59441340) Homepage

    .. wives and offspring of powerful oligarchs find they can't buy iPhones and can't bear the humiliation of using some bad Russian stack smartphone.

  • The calls for boycotting the Russian market assume that the Chinese, South Korean, & Japanese device manufacturers feel the same way about Russia as Real Americans(TM) do.

    • There is little if any hardware covered by this that WOULD be of American manufacture.

      I just would tend to consider the Russian economy to be of too little value to justify the work and money involved in complying with this law.

      It's barely a statistical error to these companies.

  • What does "russian software" mean? Should the installed software be in russian language, so people can understand it? Or ist it required the software be written in Russia (=made in Russia)? First seems more logical to me.

    • And "written in Russia" can mean a lot of things too. Must all the used libraries be written in Russia? Or just the visible parts like the user interface and APIs?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        You don't need an explanation, comrade. Just install everything on the list that runs on the phone's OS. *pats your head* What could possibly go wrong?

        I don't expect that the definition of "Russian software" will be any more coherent than "whatever the Russian authorities want it to be".

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by qaz123 ( 2841887 )
      made in Russia

  • Can't wait to try out a new OS written from the ground up in Russia, to replace the evil open source linux and its friends, written partly by foreigners. Can't take THAT much to get a mobile phone working without any open source software.

  • I've never owned a Russian gadget. I don't even know what one looks like. I live in a bubble.

  • How very China of Russia. Install our voluntary apps by act of law.

  • I don't know much history, but it seems like this kind of behavior is what keeps Russia a pariah of Western Civilization. The Russian element they embraced what lies beyond Russia's borders brought us Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and
    the city of Saint Petersburg.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      Oh they embrace what lies beyond Russia's borders -- in the "Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish" sense of the word. Crimea was just a test run.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by balbeir ( 557475 )
        They won't get far before they run out of money given the size of their economy. It's about the size of Spain's.

  • Certainly on Android preinstalled apps don't need to be system apps, and this that aren't can be installed. Does the law insist that these be system apps? Or can they just be put on the device in a way that end end users can easily remove them?

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