LinkedIn was blocked by the Russian state after refusing to cooperate with state data-collection.
Russia And LinkedIn Collide
The Russian state has a policy that every social networking site must use a national server to store its data rather than a private one. The goal is obvious – the massive amount of private data collected by all social networks should be readily accessible by the Russian state. A site that refuses to cooperate with the authorities faces fines and a blocking within the country. That’s exactly what happened to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is blocked by the Russian state for refusing to store their data on the national servers. The punishment for this is the blocking of the site within the country. As of now, the site remains inaccessible within the country’s network. Citizens can access it only through proxies.
This is completely legal. The controversial decision to force social networks to share data with Putin’s government was taken in 2014 and enforced in September 2015. The owners of LinkedIn probably didn’t want to spend the time and money in switching their servers just to give the government a new way to spy on its citizens.
Social Media and The Nations Of The World
The social media industry has become too powerful for its own good and nations are starting to change their laws to take advantage of the new technology. The Russian blocking of LinkedIn may seem like a bad violation of freedom within the Internet, but it’s commonplace for countries to abuse social networks.
For example, every time there’s some incriminating evidence against the Turkish government, social network sites get blocked within the country. The most recent cases reported by our team were the blocking of YouTube, WhatsApp, and Skype and the blocking of data-sharing services like Google Drive and Dropbox after a leak of information about Turkey’s troll army.
Shady social network policies and private data-collection aren’t reserved to Russia and Turkey. Many states overstep the boundaries of privacy. Another two examples are the USA and China:
- 700 Million Android Phones Pre-Installed With Chinese Backdoor
- NSA Suspected in a Large Attack with Advanced ProjectSauron Malware
This is why data-collection is inherently dangerous. The usual goal of social networks is to gather information for ad-targeting, but as you can see, that information is also valuable for government surveillance. As the history books show, governments aren’t always friendly to their citizens.
