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Russia

Yes, The Russians Have NSA-Style Internet Spying Too

And it's about to get worse in the country that has granted temporary asylum to Edward Snowden.

Who you gonna call?
Who you gonna call?
Vladislav Novii, Elena Chernenko and Roman Rozhkov

MOSCOW — Who says the NSA is the only one spying on its citizens? The FSB, the Russian successor to the Soviet KGB, already has access to all online traffic that passes through the nation’s Internet service providers. And now, the spy agency may soon begin to implement a controversial directive issued by the Ministry of Communications that would require Internet providers to record and save all digital traffic for at least 12 hours, and give the FSB direct access to the database of those records.

The information that would be recorded includes telephone numbers, IP addresses, the names of users, and email addresses of social network users. Digital network operators say that the project violates the Russian constitution, because it allows for the collection of data without a court decision.

(The collection of data of citizens is of particular interest in Russia after President Vladimir Putin granted temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, the former consultant for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) )

In a letter to the Ministry of Communication, one of Russia’s Internet providers specified that “the directive violates rights guaranteed in the Russian constitution,” which protects the right to privacy, specifying that each person has the right to private correspondence in their letters, telephone conversations and other types of direct communication. Recording, using or disseminating the information in that correspondence without the consent of the parties is not allowed.

The letter also says the new requirements violate Russia’s current laws regulating Internet service providers, because the law does not establish a requirement for operators to purchase and use specialized technology for investigative purposes.

The directive in question, which which was first put forward last spring, still has to be approved and registered by the Ministry of Justice, though that is not expected to be a problem. It is expected to take effect at the beginning of 2014.

Google Talk and Skype locations

Under the new regulations, Internet providers would be required to attach special equipment to their networks that the Secret Services would be able to control. Internet traffic would flow through the special device, allowing the FSB to record all data that goes through it and store it for at least 12 hours. In addition to the data mentioned above, the Internet service providers would be expected to provide the physical location for people using Internet telephone services like Google Talk and Skype.

According to Yuli Tai, a partner at the Bartolius law firm, the directive not only violates the Russian constitution, but also many laws involving the criminal code and privacy. “It is already enough that law enforcement agencies have the legal and technological ability to access Internet users’ information,” Tai says. “The unlimited expansion of those abilities leads to a violation of the rights of both ordinary citizens and the subjects of investigations.”

It is also not clear who will pay for the materials and construction of a system to record so much digital traffic. By law, these costs have to be assumed by the government agency, not the service providers. If the government does not specify the source of financing for the project, it will be impossible for Internet service providers to comply with the directive by the July 1 deadline.

According to a Russian government source, Internet service providers have traditionally been expected to pay for the investigative equipment and set-ups, even though by law the government should be responsible for the costs. Some estimates put the price tag at around $100 million per year, though others say it is far less. Our source in the government acknowledges that it could be a prohibitive cost for some small companies. For example, in the United States the government compensates technology companies for expenses related to digital “wiretapping.”

Russia has had a law in place since 2008 that allows the FSB to access all Internet traffic. According to the security director at one Russian Internet company, the new directive will not actually lead to more information being sent to the security services. The main difference, he said, was that now Internet providers are required to store the data for 12 hours, whereas previously they were just expected to transmit everything directly to the FSB.

The Ministry of Communication’s press office said that questions about the law’s financing are premature. The FSB and the Ministry of Finance could not be reached for comment.

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LGBTQ Plus

Bravo! Brava! Opera's Overdue Embrace Of Trans Performers And Storylines

Opera has played with ideas of gender since its earliest days. Now the first openly trans performers are taking to the stage, and operas explicitly exploring trans identities are beginning to emerge.

A photograph of Lucia Lucas singing with a lance, dressed in a black gown.

September 2022: Lucia Lucas performing at the opera

Lucia Lucas/Facebook
Von Manuel Brug

BERLIN — The figure of the nurse Arnalta is almost as old as opera itself. In Claudio Monteverdi’s saucy Roman sex comedy The Coronation of Poppaea, this motherly confidante spurs the eponymous heroine on to ever more lustful encounters, singing her advice in the voice of a tenor. The tradition of a man playing an older woman in a comic role can be traced all the way back to the comedies of the ancient world, which Renaissance-era writers looked to for inspiration.

The Popes in Baroque Rome decreed that, supposedly for religious reasons, women should not sing on stage. But they still enjoyed the spectacular performances of castratos, supporting them as patrons and sometimes even acting as librettists. The tradition continues today in the form of celebrated countertenors, and some male sopranos perform in female costume.

“I don’t know what I am, or what I’m doing.” This is how the pageboy Cherubino expresses his confusion at the flood of hormones he is experiencing in his aria in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro – one of the most popular operas of all time, full of amorous adventures and sexual misunderstandings. Cherubino cannot and does not want to choose between a countess, a lady’s maid, and a gardener’s daughter. He sometimes wears women’s clothing himself, and in modern productions the music teacher even chases after the young man.

The role of Cherubino, the lustful teenager caught between childhood and manhood, someone who appears trapped in the "wrong
body, is traditionally performed by a woman, usually a mezzosoprano. The audience is used to this convention, also seen in Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier or Siegfried Matthus’s Cornet Christoph Rilke’s Song of Love and Death, first performed in 1984.

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