> TLS protects the data against snooping

I see that the tacit assumption in this thread is that the FSB can't defeat simple consumer encryption.

The certificates in Russian citizens' browsers allow the Russian government to intercept their communications. This is just one of hundreds of weaknesses to that belief.

> The certificates in Russian citizens' browsers allow the Russian government to intercept their communications.

There are no government certs in Russian citizens' browsers at the moment. Furthermore, government mandated hardware, that ISPs have to install, is not installed in a configuration permitting any kind of MITM, it only sees mirrored traffic.

I guess everbody wants to know now how those certificates are included in Russian citizens browsers. Care to enlighten us?

And while you are at it you could also tell us how this regulation

> make it more difficult for the US to spy on Russian citizens

???

Sure.

> everbody wants to know now how those certificates are included in Russian citizens browsers.

Included in the builds.

> And while you are at it you could also tell us how this regulation make it more difficult for the US to spy on Russian citizens

The traffic will stay inside of infrastructure controlled by the Russian government through its domestic ISPs, rather than exiting the country to ingestion nodes disclosed by Snowden to be used to surveil on internet traffic.

> Included in the builds.

Russian citizens download and install specially crafted builds instead of the officials ones? Are they forced, or do they they trust those FSB builds more?

> The traffic will stay inside of infrastructure controlled by the Russian government through its domestic ISPs, rather than exiting the country.

I guess we are not talking about the same, because the the regulation doesn't dictate this. It "just" says, that there has to be a copy of the data in Russia. The server can still be outside of Russia.

It would not be unreasonable to assume that the FSB (or perhaps rather the SVR?) has compromised a CA that's included in all the builds.

It would. That's what certificate pinning is for. If they did that and (ab)used it, they'd be found out in no time.

This whole conversation is just not going anywhere. The Russian government can't snoop your tls data if it leaves the country, end of story. That's the reason for this law and the article to begin with!

As if, someone with such access would probably know better than to burn it by indiscriminately using it against connections with pinned certs.

You aren't claiming that they couldn't compromise a CA, are you? That's pretty much the only thing that would make such an assumption unreasonable.

Edit: I'll just stop here. Suffice to say we should talk this over another time, not in hacker news comments :)