Iran Bans Purchase of Foreign Satellite Data

Re-inventing the wheel :

"According to the bill, a copy of which has been sent to all ministries, organizations, state and revolutionary institutions, the purchase of information from foreign sources is deemed against the law. Specialists of the Defense Ministry have currently succeeded in initiating a project for obtaining satellite information online. For the first time in Iran, it is now possible to produce topographic maps, on a scale of 1/10,000, of a specific area for municipal and developmental projects, with the satellite images of very high resolution."

Guess they don't want others to know which locations of their country are still unknown to themselves, but with the bill definitely implemented as a national security measure, and to improve the nation's self-esteem, drop a line if they ever get close to producing such high-resolution image of their Natanz facility on their own.

Russia's Lawful Interception of Internet Communications

Don't fool yourself, they've been doing it for the time being, now they're legalizing it -- working for anything like the EFF in Russia means having the bugs in your place bugged. Citing Cyber-Terrorism Threat, Russia Explores Internet Controls :

"An estimated 20 percent of the Russian population now has access to the Internet. Whereas the Putin administration exerts tight control over the major domestic broadcast and print media, it does not currently restrict the content of Internet sites on a wide scale. Web sites such as Gazeta.ru and Lenta.ru provide many of the articles and commentary that would normally otherwise appear in an opposition press. Several wealthy Russians living in political exile, including Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, own Russian-language websites that publicize their anti-Putin views to Russian audiences. In August 2006, Russian right-wing extremists used the Internet to coordinate a bomb attack against illegal migrants from Asia."

Give me an excuse for data retention? No, give me another one besides the infamous "if you don't have anything to hide then why worry"? We all have things to hide, and things we don't want others to know, that's still called my privacy, and since when does this became a terrorist activity, or someone's just piggybacking on the overall paranoia created by the thought to be acting as government watchdog, media -- don't be a reporter, be a journalist! Winning the public support in different countries largely relies on the local attitudes towards the key buzzwords - terrorists are using the Net as a "safe heaven", and child pornographers are operating online, while people are unemployed and primitive deceases which should been dealth with years are a second economic priority, next to your first one - fighting your (political campaign) demons, or the (upcoming budget allocation) demons you put so much efforts into making me believe in. Start from the basics, why retain everyone's data, and intercept everyone's communications while forgetting that information is all about interpretation? How come you're assuming -- if you're even considering it -- that such a neatly centralized databases of private information would be protected from insiders, even outsiders which will inevitably be tempted to having access to such a database? A country's intelligence is the government's tool for protecting the national security or beyond, but over-empowering the watchers is so shortsighted, you'd better break through your black'n'white world only and start considering all other colours as equal. Don't slip on your values.

If you sacrifice privacy for security, you don't deserve both of them, and the utopian idea of having a 100% successful law enforcement as the panacea of dealing of crime reminds of a quote I recently find myself repeating very often - make sure what you wish for, so it doesn't actually happen.