Facebook, Gmail and Twitter have been warned they must comply with controversial internet legislation signed by Vladimir Putin, a senior Russian official has said, raising fears that Western social networks could be blocked from the country.

Vladimir Putin

The three internet giants have been given until January to register with Russia’s communications watchdog and establish servers inside Russia or face “administrative sanctions,” Maxim Ksenov, the deputy head of the Roskomnadzor agency said in an interview with Izvestia.

“These three resources must make a decision on locating their data centers in Russia in accordance with the law on bloggers,” Mr. Ksenov said. “They are preparing to do so and want to fulfil the law.”

Google and Twitter both declined to speak about the move, while Facebook failed to respond to requests for comment.

The “bloggers laws” refer to a package of internet legislation that critics have described as an effort to crack down on online dissent and pave the way for blocking social networks in the country.

The laws, which entered into force on August 1, forces any blogger with more than 3,000 daily readers to register with the media watchdog, whole Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail must register as “organisers of information distribution.”

Companies registered on the list are obliged to retain records of user activity for six months on servers in Russia so the authorities can access it.

Several Russian firms, including Yandex and Vkontakte, a Russian version of Facebook, have already registered, Mr Ksenov said.

With the Kremlin maintaining a tight grip on television and other media platforms, social networks have become a key tool of opposition to the Russian government.

Dissenting groups have made extensive use of the internet to criticise the government and organise protests, including the spate of anti-Putin rallies that gripped Moscow in 2011 and 2012.

But lawyers have warned that non-compliance with the new laws would leave companies open to blacklisting, and ultimately the blocking of their services in Russia.

“If sites are not registered, Roskomnadzor has the right to issue a second request that must be fulfilled in 15 days. If it is not, the agency can add that platform to a blacklist, blocking it for Russian users,” Sergey Kopylov, the head of the legal department for the national domain regulator, told Izvestia.

Roskomnadzor did not respond to requests for comment.

The warning came as the lower house of the Russian parliament approved a bill restricting foreign ownership of media outlets, in a move widely seen as an effort to stifle press freedom.

Deputies in the State Duma voted 430-2 to restric foreign ownership to 20 percent, citing the need to protect Russia from an “information war” being waged by the West.

The law will hit several major news outlets, including the Russian edition of Forbes magazine and Vedomosti, the country’s leading business daily.

The bill must be approved by the upper house and signed into law by Mr Putin before it becomes law.

• When 1,200 university students calmly staged a sit-in outside Hong Kong’s government offices on Friday (Sept. 26) to call for greater democracy, no one foresaw the chain of events that transformed the city into a battlefield wreathed with tear gas just 48 hours later.
• But as the police desperately and aggressively tried to disperse the protestors, they only succeeded in inflaming a public already angry at Beijing’s creeping interference in their lives.
• The first mistake came when officers pepper-sprayed students in front of the television cameras. In one video clip that went viral, an elderly lady who had come to observe the protest was swivelled around by a police man who then sprayed her in the face.
• Soon, thousands of people flocked to the government compound to watch what was going on, chanting to the police: “Don’t harm the students!”
• Many of the tens of thousands who occupied downtown Hong Kong through Sunday and Monday said they had come after seeing the violence of the police on television.
• Stephanie Wong, a 36-year-old who joined a huge crowd outside Hong Kong Police Headquarters after finishing work yesterday (MON) afternoon said: “People are outraged at the way police behaved and a lot of us are here in solidarity today with the students who were subjected to that.”
• As they were faced with ever more protestors, however, the police simply doubled down their strategy, hoping to disperse the crowds quickly by firing tear gas.
• “The police force management realise they got it badly wrong. Their aim was to clear the centre of Hong Kong before the working week began on Monday at all costs but they miscalculated the resistance they would come up against,” one police source told The Telegraph.
• “By going in so forcefully with tear gas and pepper spray, they have just brought more and more people out on the streets.”
• He added: “A lot of the officers who were there on Sunday had already been on duty for 30 hours when trouble broke out and there were no reserves to take their places on Monday. So it was a gamble that backfired and now they are swamped by protestors.”
• On Monday, police officers manning checkpoints around the protest areas were visibly exhausted, with some dozing against barriers in the afternoon sun before being prodded awake by their commanders. Hong Kong has 25,000 police officers to respond to the protests, and may shortly run out of manpower.
• The police, however, insisted it had only used “appropriate and necessary force” and “only the minimum necessary”. A spokesman denied that any rubber or plastic bullets had been fired, contrary to rumours.
• Both Hong Kong and Beijing have labelled the protests as illegal and it is unclear how much longer the authorities will tolerate such an embarrassing situation, especially ahead of China’s National Day on Wednesday.
• In the Global Times, a nationalistic state-run newspaper, an editorial blasted the protests as the work of “anti-China forces.” (from a Sept. 29 Daily Telegraph article)

From BBC News:

What is Hong Kong's relationship with China?
Hong Kong, a former British colony, was handed back to China in 1997 following a 1984 agreement between China and Britain.

China agreed to govern Hong Kong under the principle of "one country, two systems", where the city would enjoy "a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs" for 50 years.

As a result, Hong Kong has its own legal system, and rights including freedom of assembly and free speech are protected.

Its leader, the chief executive, is currently elected by a 1,200-member election committee. A majority of the representatives are viewed as pro-Beijing.

Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, says that "the ultimate aim" is to elect the chief executive "by universal suffrage".

So what has changed?
The Chinese government has promised direct elections for chief executive by 2017.

But in August 2014 China's top legislative committee ruled that voters will only have a choice from a list of two or three candidates selected by a nominating committee.

This committee would be formed "in accordance with" Hong Kong's largely pro-Beijing election committee. Any candidate would have to secure the support of more than 50% of the nominating committee before being able to run in the election.

Democracy activists believe China will use the committee to screen out candidates it disapproves of.

What does China say?
China has defended its ruling on election candidacy. Li Fei, the deputy secretary general of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, said that openly nominating candidates would create a "chaotic society" and that any chief executive must "love the country."

China has condemned the pro-democracy protests and called the unofficial referendum a "farce."

In its June 2014 white paper, China said some had a "confused and lopsided" understanding of the "one country, two systems" model.

It stressed that while Hong Kong has a "high degree of autonomy", it is "not full autonomy". China still has "comprehensive jurisdiction".

VENEZUELA

Chikungunya is a viral disease transmitted by mosquito bites that has been present in Africa and Asia for decades but only recently spread to the Americas. Though there is no cure for the disease, its symptoms can be alleviated with medication. The disease has killed at least 113 people this year in the Caribbean region, according to the Pan American Health Organization, with the islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe hardest hit.

Health authorities from Mr. Maduro's government and independent epidemiologists agree the disease arrived in Venezuela several months ago. The two sides, though, are at odds about practically everything else about the disease.

In this polarized country, some leading epidemiologists said they believed Chikungunya was spreading so fast that a health emergency needed to be declared. The government has rejected that idea and accused its critics of trying to score political points. (from a Sept. 22 WSJ article)

RUSSIA

• Russia's parliament sped up measures to tighten control over foreign Internet companies such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook, raising concerns over state pressure on social networks that have become one of the country's few remaining spaces for dissent.
• The Duma, Russia's lower chamber of parliament, passed a bill Wednesday that would move up the deadline of a law requiring foreign Internet companies to store the personal data of users from Russia within the country's borders. The deadline, moved to Jan. 1, 2015, from Sept. 1, 2016, would create a near-impossible challenge for U.S.-based firms that have millions of Russian users but generally store data on servers outside the country.
• Russian authorities have presented the personal-data law as a necessary security measure to protect against foreign threats and U.S. spying. But rights advocates say the Kremlin is pursuing the measure as part of a broader drive to curtail freedom of information and intensify scrutiny of Internet activity.
• The accelerated effort comes amid Moscow's increasing distrust of the Internet and a hardening of anti-Western policies. Authorities are separately proceeding with legislation to limit foreign firms to 20% ownership of Russian media outlets, a move that risks curbing press freedoms in a country already dominated by state-controlled media.
• The bill that would move up the personal-data law's implementation passed Wednesday after its second reading, making the new deadline all but certain to come into effect. The Duma must vote once more before sending the bill to Russia's upper chamber of parliament and the Kremlin for approval. The remaining steps are largely a formality. The bill is likely to become law in weeks.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the new personal-data measures into law in July. This month, though, Russian lawmakers proposed speeding up their enactment, citing ever-present hacking threats and an "information war" being waged against Russia by foreign powers over the crisis in Ukraine.
• Russian lawmakers acknowledge that it would be near impossible for companies such as Google to build their own data-storage centers in Russia in just over three months.
• Karen Kazaryan, chief analyst at the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, a Russian trade body, described the law as impossible to implement in its current form. He said it would be difficult for global Internet companies to track which personal data is coming from Russia.
• "Foreign companies will continue to exercise a wait-and-see approach to this law because it is unenforceable," Mr. Kazaryan said. He predicted foreign Internet firms would buy some server space in Russia to save face but avoid moving any main storage facilities. (from a Sept. 24 WSJ article)