Putin boosts internet-blocking spending as system may extend to occupied Ukraine

Filed 2h ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

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Amazing Plan

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Russian authorities plan to spend nearly 60 billion rubles, about $706 million, over three years to run the system that filters and blocks online content, nearly double the figure projected two years ago, according to Forbes' review of the draft federal budget. The money funds the General Radio Frequency Center under communications regulator Roskomnadzor.

The system, known as ASBI, uses equipment installed in telecom networks under the 2019 'sovereign Runet' law to filter traffic, block VPNs, and slow targeted resources. Industry figures cited rising global chip and memory prices, driven partly by AI demand, as a factor pushing costs up, alongside the need to equip regional nodes that still lack the hardware.

An industry association president suggested the filtering equipment could also be installed in occupied regions of Ukraine and made 'smarter' with AI, though he noted that would require more funding.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A government that can't afford to fix its own potholes somehow finds seven hundred million dollars to make sure nobody reads the wrong website. Doubling the censorship budget while oil revenue slides is a strange set of priorities to put side by side, unless keeping the lights off is the actual point. Watch for that hardware showing up wherever the front line sits still long enough.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: Amazing Plan · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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