Ukraine’s digital government officials, as well as some technology expats in the US, are urging Apple and Google to remove Russia from their appliance stores, as well as security company Cloudflare, to stop Pravda protection and Russian military propaganda sites from public support. and hacker. However, civil liberties groups and U.S. authorities argue that the three California businesses allow ordinary Russians to access independent news sources and communicate with activists and charities opposed to the Ukraine conflict.
“It is important for technology companies to maintain those channels,” said Natalia Krapiva, a lawyer at the Access Now digital rights group. “Appliance stores are a great opportunity for people to learn what’s going on.” Asked about the ongoing search in Russia of Cloudflare, one of the world’s best-known providers of cybersecurity services, a State Department spokesman said, “It is important to maintain the flow of information to the Russian people as much as possible.” The spokesman agreed to speak only on the status of the widget because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Although hundreds of Western companies have pulled out in Russia, well beyond what the newly-imposed sanctions require, some major technological developments are essential for the acquisition of tools of communication and strong opposition to more hands. In the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine and enacted new punitive laws that hit major news sites offline, Russians have flocked to app stores, technical experts say. Higher records, according to Similarweb analytics company, include virtual private networks for connectivity across borders and such messaging applications as Telegram, WhatsApp and Threema, all of which are important ways of sharing news not approved.
Russian use of private “bridge” links that spread browser links over Tor, a widget program, also increased shortly after the war, Tor said. News outlets are the easiest way to get around censorship, because Russian government officials do not manage to access their communication with smartphones. However, technology companies have made agreements to avoid employee arrest or other compensation, such as a complete hack of stores. Both Google and Apple deleted anti-prison activist Alexei Navalny’s app under major threats in September, and Apple did not restore it, although Google did. Apple is also promoting government-approved applications such as VKontakte social networking platform, which is similar to Facebook but is more informative.
Apple declined to comment on this matter; Google did not respond to a request for comment. Cloudflare balance function appears more pronounced. On Tuesday, it was securing sites such as TopWar.ru, a news site with headlines such as “US forced China to join Russia” and [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] “Erdogan, who represents the Russian people, returned the debt to Russia.” But the company also protects independent media that would otherwise be overwhelmed by an increasing number of job-related attacks, which sites bombarded with traffic jams that kept them out of reach.
“It may be that the only thing the Russian government and Ukrainian activists agree on is that US technology companies should get out of Russia, and more importantly,” Cloudflare director Mathew Prince told The Washington Post. He declined to comment on the specific customers the company was protecting. Russia has already directed state-owned real estate companies to switch to Russian infrastructure providers, and Cloudflare expands the division by enabling encryption keys for customer information security in Russia, Belarus and even Ukraine, if is that your data centers have taken over.
