Russian legislators to promote safer internet practices
Russia’s Federation Council has addressed the Telecom Ministry, proposing to create a governmental website which would gather all recommendations and tools against cyber threats
Sep 18, 2013
Itar-Tass news agency reported this initiative, which was later confirmed by senator Ruslan Gattarov, who believes that, apart from other data, this website should host anti-virus software.
The lawmaker admitted that he was inspired by South Korea, which has a number government-run web resources helping citizens deal with online threats. Creation of such a website should not take a long time or cost a lot of money: "It’s not expensive or complicated, it has to be simple, public and without any sort of passwords," he said. The senator hopes that developers, primarily, Russian, will be able to provide anti-viral solutions free of charge – I’m not really sure what would possess them to do so, however; other internet companies, including those united by the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, will also be invited. So, we’ll see how that goes – hopefully Russian officials will manage to improve online security for Russian internet users – after all, the most vulnerable security hole is located between the keyboard and the chair. It’s often easier to trick the user into revealing sought-after information than to hack a computer system with no reliance on social engineering of any kind.
Then there’s a different kind of security. It’s no secret that these days kids are quite active online – even more so than offline, sometimes. Well, it’s always good. As I’ve said, kids are exposed to bad habits and tend to pick them up – yes, smoking and drinking due to peer pressure is as prevalent online as it is offline, as a recent research showed. So are cyber-bullying and other forms of negative interaction between peers. Well, a few American schools decided that there is something they can do about it – so they started monitoring every single message posted online by each of their students through a specialized service Geo Listening. Glendale News-Press, a local Californian newspaper, reported the story:
"After collecting information from students' posts on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, Geo Listening will provide Glendale school officials with a daily report that categorizes posts by their frequency and how they relate to cyber-bullying, harm, hate, despair, substance abuse, vandalism and truancy.
Glendale Unified, which piloted the service at Hoover, Glendale and Crescenta Valley high schools last year, will pay the company $40,500 to monitor posts made by about 13,000 middle school and high school students at eight Glendale schools."
Naturally, they’ve received some backlash for this sort of invasive practice. An interesting note – the school district implemented the practice last year, but only announced it at the beginning of this school year – when it’s pretty much too late to do anything, like pull out of those schools. It’s pretty messy, the whole situation – on one hand, Geo Listening allegedly gathers only those messages which are already publicly available – i.e. there’s no real intrusion – on the other hand, the sheer existence of this system is questionable. So what do you think? Is large-scale snooping on school-kids a good way to keep them out of trouble or is it gross violation of privacy?
The lawmaker admitted that he was inspired by South Korea, which has a number government-run web resources helping citizens deal with online threats. Creation of such a website should not take a long time or cost a lot of money: "It’s not expensive or complicated, it has to be simple, public and without any sort of passwords," he said. The senator hopes that developers, primarily, Russian, will be able to provide anti-viral solutions free of charge – I’m not really sure what would possess them to do so, however; other internet companies, including those united by the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, will also be invited. So, we’ll see how that goes – hopefully Russian officials will manage to improve online security for Russian internet users – after all, the most vulnerable security hole is located between the keyboard and the chair. It’s often easier to trick the user into revealing sought-after information than to hack a computer system with no reliance on social engineering of any kind.
Then there’s a different kind of security. It’s no secret that these days kids are quite active online – even more so than offline, sometimes. Well, it’s always good. As I’ve said, kids are exposed to bad habits and tend to pick them up – yes, smoking and drinking due to peer pressure is as prevalent online as it is offline, as a recent research showed. So are cyber-bullying and other forms of negative interaction between peers. Well, a few American schools decided that there is something they can do about it – so they started monitoring every single message posted online by each of their students through a specialized service Geo Listening. Glendale News-Press, a local Californian newspaper, reported the story:
"After collecting information from students' posts on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, Geo Listening will provide Glendale school officials with a daily report that categorizes posts by their frequency and how they relate to cyber-bullying, harm, hate, despair, substance abuse, vandalism and truancy.
Glendale Unified, which piloted the service at Hoover, Glendale and Crescenta Valley high schools last year, will pay the company $40,500 to monitor posts made by about 13,000 middle school and high school students at eight Glendale schools."
Naturally, they’ve received some backlash for this sort of invasive practice. An interesting note – the school district implemented the practice last year, but only announced it at the beginning of this school year – when it’s pretty much too late to do anything, like pull out of those schools. It’s pretty messy, the whole situation – on one hand, Geo Listening allegedly gathers only those messages which are already publicly available – i.e. there’s no real intrusion – on the other hand, the sheer existence of this system is questionable. So what do you think? Is large-scale snooping on school-kids a good way to keep them out of trouble or is it gross violation of privacy?