Google and Apple blinked after threats from Russian agents

[kpete]

Last edited Sat Mar 12, 2022, 03:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Putin’s pre-war moves against U.S. tech giants laid groundwork for crackdown on free expression

Russian agents came to the home of Google’s top executive in Moscow to deliver a frightening ultimatum last September: take down an app that had drawn the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin within 24 hours or be taken to prison.

Google quickly moved the woman to a hotel where she checked in under an assumed name and might be protected by the presence of other guests and hotel security, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The same agents — believed by company officials to be from Russia’s FSB, a successor to the KGB intelligence service — then showed up at her room to tell her the clock was still ticking.

Within hours, an app designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple, whose main representative in Moscow faced a similarly harrowing sequence. Titans of American technology had been brought to their knees by some of the most primitive intimidation tactics in the Kremlin playbook.

More (behind paywall):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/12/russia-putin-google-apple-navalny/

Link to tweet

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[dalton99a]

1. Kick

[SCantiGOP]

2. I was going to say that the pic looked like

the ones you see of a serial killer, but then I remembered……..he is a serial killer. But his death toll won’t be measured in the dozens.

[ananda]

3. He has really creepy soulless eyes.

...

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

6. Yes, his soulless eyes remind me of someone ...

Stephen Miller

[Maraya1969]

4. Did these people get out safely? I remember my father talking about how when some athletic team

was there to play against the Russians and how Putin's people kept knocking on their doors all night to keep them awake.

Now that I think of it Putin was not in charge then as it was many years ago. So the Russian playbook has always been corrupt. Hopefully when they finally get rid of Putin they may be able to get their own Zelensky and life will be better for the Russian people.

It reminds me of Scientologists following people around.

[Chainfire]

5. Of course the employees blinked.

I have had some really good jobs in my life, with wonderful bosses, but I wouldn't have wanted to take a vacation in the Gulag Archipelago for any of them. That is the cost of doing business in a country with a "supreme leader" it may seem like a good chance to make some coin, but in the end, you will always be their subject. It is the cost of doing business. As soon as some kind of normal relations are established, the companies will flood back in, because money talks and bullshit walks...

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. Pooty and his thugs hate freedom