Surveillance

It turns out the People’s Republic of China government is a collection of pikers compared to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pair of bills Monday, one of which will require all consumer electronic devices sold in the country to be pre-installed with Russian software, while the other will register individual journalists as foreign agents.

Government spyware pre-installed on Russian citizens’ devices, so Russia’s modern-day KGB successor can track where Russian citizens are, with whom they’re communicating, what they’re doing, down to the last detail.

Government spyware that will not only identify who is a journalist (Russia’s definition of “journalist”), but register them as foreign agents—right alongside diplomats, diplomat staff, foreign-declared agents of a diplomat staff, but without any of the protections of those diplomats and staffs.

PRC President Xi Jinping seems yet to have lots to learn from the Russians.

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