Alexander Andreyechkin, head of Information and Special Communications Protection Center of Federal Security Service (FSB), said that uncontrollable use of Skype, Gmail, and Hotmail ‘can lead to a massive threat to Russia's security” and urged to ban these services, RIA Novosti reported [ru]. On the same day, anonymous Kremlin representative stated [ru] that such proposition was Andreyechkin's ‘personal opinion' and ‘didn't reflect government Internet policy.'

The law obliges a range of e-commerce sites, video and music services and webmail providers to keep a host of data on customers. This includes users' full names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and passwords. The data must be handed over to the authorities if demanded. Police, the fraud office, customs, tax and social security bodies will all have the right of access.

After a year of using mixed tactics to combat the spread of child pornography online, politicians from the governing coalition in Germany have agreed that deleting child porn sites works better than simply blocking them.

The description of the tender is a long and openly published document [ru], so what exactly the system should look for is not a secret. The number and the nature of goals that the search robot should achieve are surprising. It goes ways beyond incitement of national hatred or appeals to violence. In includes not only terrorism, appeals to actions that threaten constitutional order, materials that disclose classified security information, propaganda of drugs and pornography, but also false information about federal and regional officials, as well as content that threatens the freedom and secrecy of choice during elections. Another interesting goal is to discover content with hidden embedded components that seek to influence subconsciousness. If it’s not enough, the program would monitor not only textual, but also visual content (photos and videos).