Russia Snoopers Charter
When Theresa introduced Snoopers Charter in the UK, I immediately pointed out that Russia and China would use this as political cover for their versions of Snoopers.
Sure enough Putin has done that and it has all the same 'extra-territoriality' and 'strip-encryption' clauses in it too.
Putin is very predictable, and this situation is very predictable.
Putin will pay ISPs for the data. So at first his FSB will pull data for Russians in Russia, and the Russian ISPs they'll be cool with that, they have legal coverage and get rewarded for it. It's like a revenue stream, if anything they want to sell more data and get more revenue.
But Putin will expand his horizons outside of Russia, just as GCHQ has been using UK companies to spy on friends and foes around the world, so he'll do the same.
There are lots of companies in the UK and Russia, some more Russian, some more British, but it won't matter. Both have cover from Theresa and Putins Snoopers Charters and both see their customers private data as a revenue stream.
So Putin will likely go after the data of Russians in Britain first, e.g. the Oligarchs in London, as a means of getting companies use to the process of selling their data. And eventually his FSB boys will be regularly slurping down data on Britains in Britain.
Now we need to protect ourselves from this, and that means strong end to end encryption. As I see it there is one obstacle to this, and she's the front running for taking power without the people voting for her as PM.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
