The evidence seems to clearly show that Microsoft Russia is colluding with the Russian government to sustain a fraudulent case against the environmental group.
I hope the NYT report results in pressure on Microsoft, Redmond to stop ignoring what their Russian subsidiary is doing. They need to put an end to Microsoft participation in the "the persecution of civil society activists."
I hope that's sarcasm. The potential downside of messing with Russian police is orders of magnitude higher than the upside from trying to protect some random client, especially if this incident was initiated by some high official.
But I guess the computer sophistication required to do this is currently beyond the abilities of the targeted people.
It is important to note that the group are not undergoing a technological attack. The government forces are utilizing their ability to investigate software piracy to physically enter the targeted groups' spaces and seize their computers. It is clear that running Ubuntu is not going to prevent them from being able to do this, since they had no issues seizing computers that had legitimate versions of Windows on them.
While it is fine to suggest that they should "be ready to discard their computers if needed", most non-profit groups that I have come across do not have the financial resources to purchase new computers if all of their existing ones are taken.
And then the police will take you down to the station and you'll fall down a flight of stairs until you kindly give up your password. There are no technological solutions to a lack of civil rights.
why MSFT operating systems, they can just go and catch everyone with jail broken Apple ipods. and seize all computers, including linux and unix boxes stating that they were used for jailbreaking.
These days there's no reason why people should be pirating Microsoft software anyway, since free software is much better. This applies especially to non-profit organizations or charities, where spending money on software licenses is wasteful of scarce financial resources.
Probably the best strategy for charities and non-profits in this situation is:
a) Encrypt your data. In Linux systems like Ubuntu it's really easy to encrypt your home directory or create an encrypted disk. You don't have to be an expert.
b) Back up your data in "the cloud" or on servers located outside of your country. This makes it harder (but I assume not impossible) for data to be seized arbitrarily.
c) Do as much as possible out in the open anyway (published somewhere on the web) so that there is little or no "secret sauce" to be seized, except perhaps private emails. For charities being as transparent about your operations as possible makes good sense in terms of reassuring donors that their money is being well spent.
There is a company in Russia that sells "legalization packs" for OpenOffice which include a printed license for OpenOffice, a tech support certificate, stickers for PC, and accounting papers, so that companies have something to show to authorities.
That is all good advice, but we should remember that Baikal Environmental Wave, which is the main focus of the article, did have genuine Microsoft software, including receipts, boxes, and stickers on their computers.
Yet their computers were seized for five months and meanwhile Microsoft denied to help them prove that the software was genuine.
What is upsetting is that Microsoft is helping the authorities when the targets of these anti-piracy raids clearly is on organizations and journalists that peacefully oppose the Russian authorities in some way. They may run only legitimate software but still a raid is carried out.
'Mr. Kurt-Adzhiyev said he now realized that the authorities were not so much interested in convictions as in harassing opponents.'
Yes, which means that the raid and confiscation of computers, etc, isn't really about copyright enforcement but about grabbing data, making data unavailable for use, or otherwise as the article suggests causing general hindrance. Verifying the legitimacy of Microsoft software, as far as I'm aware, is a fairly trivial matter of checking serial numbers, so this isn't something which would require computers to be seized for significant periods of time, or necessarily even moved from their desks.
That Microsoft declined to facilitate the checking of serial numbers after claims of piracy is reprehensible, and all the more reason not to use their software in the first place.
There is also another aspect worth mentioning. A lot of effort world-wide goes into Global Warming Alarmism instead of fighting against real environmental atrocities. I understand why the financial industry and the green-industrial complex are doing this, but a lot of people concerned about the environment get GW bullshit fed to them and spend their energy on a wild goose chase while real environmental criminals have a free hand.
While I lived there, the police did something similar -- seized computers, copied confidential emails, returned the computers half a year later -- to a support group for women raped by the police. I'd laugh at the irony if it weren't so awful.
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[ 378 ms ] story [ 2198 ms ] threadI hope the NYT report results in pressure on Microsoft, Redmond to stop ignoring what their Russian subsidiary is doing. They need to put an end to Microsoft participation in the "the persecution of civil society activists."
Treat the workstation as a dumb terminal and be ready to discard it if needed.
But I guess the computer sophistication required to do this is currently beyond the abilities of the targeted people.
E.g. what do you mean you've got this software for free? That's piracy, isn't it?
It is important to note that the group are not undergoing a technological attack. The government forces are utilizing their ability to investigate software piracy to physically enter the targeted groups' spaces and seize their computers. It is clear that running Ubuntu is not going to prevent them from being able to do this, since they had no issues seizing computers that had legitimate versions of Windows on them.
While it is fine to suggest that they should "be ready to discard their computers if needed", most non-profit groups that I have come across do not have the financial resources to purchase new computers if all of their existing ones are taken.
Probably the best strategy for charities and non-profits in this situation is:
a) Encrypt your data. In Linux systems like Ubuntu it's really easy to encrypt your home directory or create an encrypted disk. You don't have to be an expert.
b) Back up your data in "the cloud" or on servers located outside of your country. This makes it harder (but I assume not impossible) for data to be seized arbitrarily.
c) Do as much as possible out in the open anyway (published somewhere on the web) so that there is little or no "secret sauce" to be seized, except perhaps private emails. For charities being as transparent about your operations as possible makes good sense in terms of reassuring donors that their money is being well spent.
Yet their computers were seized for five months and meanwhile Microsoft denied to help them prove that the software was genuine.
What is upsetting is that Microsoft is helping the authorities when the targets of these anti-piracy raids clearly is on organizations and journalists that peacefully oppose the Russian authorities in some way. They may run only legitimate software but still a raid is carried out.
'Mr. Kurt-Adzhiyev said he now realized that the authorities were not so much interested in convictions as in harassing opponents.'
That Microsoft declined to facilitate the checking of serial numbers after claims of piracy is reprehensible, and all the more reason not to use their software in the first place.
That's just how Russia is.