Putin Stokes Paranoia About the Web

[Blue_Tires]

President Vladimir Putin of Russia may fear that the Internet is a CIA project, but unfortunately he is not alone.

According to a recently released study about how the Russian public views the Internet, his views are widely shared by large portions the Russian population.

In fact, our research concludes that the Russian public’s distrust of Western sources and dissident information on the Internet creates a “perceptual filter” that bolsters Putin’s foreign and domestic policies.

A deep distrust of the Internet—domestic and foreign

Based on a survey of 1,600 individuals (see details below), almost half of all Russians believe that information on the Internet should be be censored. Likewise, two out of five Russians distrust foreign media and nearly half of Russians believe foreign news websites need to be censored.

These attitudes are partly driven by the fact that 42 percent of Russians believe the Internet is being used by foreign countries against Russia.

In contrast, Central Russian TV news, heavily dominated and controlled by the Russian government, is a primary source of information for 84 percent of Russians and trusted by 90 percent of all Russians.

Put together these attitudes about a malicious foreign influence over the Internet and perceived threats to political stability from domestic anti-government blogs and websites and you have a toxic mix.

http://www.newsweek.com/putin-stokes-paranoia-about-web-307663

In case anyone is wondering, Vlad has deftly used Snowden's propaganda value to his own end by framing his defection as an "escape" from America's overly oppressive internet restrictions...Not only that, but Vlad has repeatedly increased internet restrictions in his country under the guise of "protecting" the citizenry from the evil NSA...

[Electric Monk]

1. Well, it was created by DARPA...

[jakeXT]

2. No need for Facebook to get your blood, UK and US do it when you are born

The government has your baby's DNA

(CNN) -- When Annie Brown's daughter, Isabel, was a month old, her pediatrician asked Brown and her husband to sit down because he had some bad news to tell them: Isabel carried a gene that put her at risk for cystic fibrosis.

While grateful to have the information -- Isabel received further testing and she doesn't have the disease -- the Mankato, Minnesota, couple wondered how the doctor knew about Isabel's genes in the first place. After all, they'd never consented to genetic testing.

It's simple, the pediatrician answered: Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it's often done without the parents' consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center.

In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies' DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/04/baby.dna.government/

DNA database created from babies' blood samples
Millions of newborn babies have had their DNA stored by hospitals without the proper consent of their parents, it has been revealed.

Blood samples taken in heel-prick tests to screen for serious conditions are being held for years by some hospitals and can be subsequently accessed by the police to identify people involved in crimes.

The samples can also be used by coroners and medical researchers for a variety of purposes prompting concerns that a national DNA database is being created by the backdoor.

Blood spot screening is carried out on babies aged between five and eight days old in order to test for a variety of serious conditions such as sickle cell and cystic fibrosis.

Government guidelines advise hospitals to store the samples for five years before destroying them, but some are hanging onto them indefinitely.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/7756320/DNA-database-created-from-babies-blood-samples.html

[Igel]

5. DARPAnet was created by DARPA.

The Internet was largely created by CERN. DARPAnet was one net.

The "inter-" part is really important here. Various organizations created networks. The Internet was a series of protocols that allowed them to be tied together. Some of the theory and implementation was government (US and other), some was private, some was just university funding because the researchers doing the innovating were faculty. But when we say "Internet" that's not really what we mean.

We mean the World-Wide Web and the HTTP protocols, which was created with a bit of government money backing some researchers. Some of that was US government money. Some came off of grants because physicists needed a way of moving around a lot of data from network to network for data processing and results sharing. To be honest, some wasn't even public money but private, because researchers didn't have to be feeding at the public trough to do research that produced a lot of data. It was a nice bit of collaborative work.

However none of it was Soviet or Eastern European, because they were out of the loop at the time. It wasn't until a decade later that they even produced their first OS instead of buying or (more likely) reverse engineering/pirating a Western-produced one. Stalin and then Khrushchev's denigration of cybernetics as a bourgeois science was hard to shake.

A nice perceptual filter is to leave out all the parts that don't suit the narrative. Which is exactly what most of the Russian populatin's facing: If the internets are true, then much of what they believed to substantiate their self-worth was a lie, and much of which is true goes to their shame. Better to believe a lie and simply block out the part that's humiliating.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. In Putin's Russia, internet searches you.

[uppityperson]

4. Oh man, I read this as "Palin strokes paranoia about the web"

wondering wtf she was going on about now

[randome]

6. Not all their paranoia, not all their hatred can bring Obama down.

These are strange times we live in.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

[Cha]

7. In contrast, Central Russian TV news, heavily dominated and controlled by the Russian government,

is a primary source of information for 84 percent of Russians and trusted by 90 percent of all Russians."

IOW.. Russian Control Good.. "Internet should be Censored" Got it, you hypocritical homophobic ****.

Bless their hearts they sound like fox truthers.



William