A senior Russian official stated the federal government is contemplating blocking the video conferencing service Google Meet after transient disruptions within the nation late final week.
Andrei Svintsov, the deputy chairman of the State Duma’s IT committee, stated Western apps deemed a menace to nationwide safety might finally be banned.
“Functions that may spy on our residents and ship info to Western intelligence providers could be blocked,” Svintsov told native media whereas commenting on the current Google Meet outages, including that the service has not been banned but.
The monitoring service Downdetector registered greater than 2,300 complaints on Friday about Meet’s efficiency, with customers reporting frozen calls, lacking video and audio, and the app shutting down. Entry was later restored. Google didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Russia’s web regulator Roskomnadzor denied it had restricted Meet. Svintsov steered the failures could have been brought on by an inflow of customers after Russia restricted calls on WhatsApp and Telegram earlier this month.
Unbiased journalists and digital rights consultants said a ban on Meet was possible because the Kremlin strikes to advertise Max, a state-backed messaging app developed by VKontakte founder Pavel Durov’s successor workforce and modeled on China’s WeChat. Beginning in September, Max will likely be pre-installed on all new smartphones offered in Russia.
Earlier this month, Moscow blocked voice and video calls on WhatsApp and Telegram, accusing the U.S.-based apps of enabling fraud, sabotage and terrorism. Authorities stated the providers may very well be restored if the businesses complied with calls for to share knowledge with Russian legislation enforcement.
WhatsApp, which is owned by the tech big Meta, referred to as the choice to limit calls in its app an try to strip Russians of safe communications and push them towards “much less safe providers to allow authorities surveillance.”
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