News of the week: corporate ad blocker in Chrome, FSB and Yandex encryption keys, connection becomes more expensive

In the new issue of the digest read:

• VPN service HideMy.name was able to achieve in court the cancellation of the lock;
• a full-fledged ad blocker in Chrome will be available only to corporate users;
• eSim data will be stored on the territory of the Russian Federation;
• Yandex did not provide the FSB with encryption keys;
• communication in Russia becomes more expensive due to the cancellation of roaming;
• MIPT team wins Amazon final;
• Apple removes objectionable clips from the network;
• Krasnodar provider refuses to install equipment for the “Law of Spring”.

VPN service in court secured cancellation of blocking by Roskomnadzor

At the beginning of the week, the VPN service HideMy.name, the site of which Roskomnadzor has been blocking for about a year, was able to achieve the lifting of the blocking in the court of Mari El . The service was blocked in July last year by a decision of the district court of Yoshkar-Ola. The regional prosecutor became the author of the blocking suit, and Roskomnadzor was the defendant.
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On May 23, the service, together with lawyers of Roskomvoboda and the Center for Digital Rights, challenged the court decision. This time the judge overturned the blocking decision.

“Our precedent proves that today, any site or business in RuNet can be blocked for almost a year on an artificial pretext. At the same time, it will be possible to remove the blocking only after a few circles of the bureaucratic hell, ”said Markus Saar, head of HideMy.name.

Fully disable ads in Chrome can only corporate users

In January, Google decided to change its browser's APIs, which are not compatible with most third-party ad blockers and a number of extensions. As it turned out, the innovation makes it impossible to use the webRequest API. This is usually done to block content on the fly, right at the time of page loading.

Google will block ads in its browser, but only for paid Chrome corporate users . Corporate customers will be able to develop and install their own extensions for this browser, which means that third-party extensions will work for them.

All other users will have to switch to a less efficient, rules-based declarativeNetRequest API system. One of the developers of well-known advertising blockers said that if the changes are accepted, its extensions will no longer be able to work normally. Developers of other anti-advertising extensions and plug-ins expressed a similar opinion.

Officials will oblige gadget makers with eSim to store data on the territory of the Russian Federation

Companies that ship their devices with eSim support to Russia will be forced to host servers in the country . Servers will store subscriber profiles and cryptographic keys. According to representatives of the working group, which includes employees of the Ministry of Communications, the Federal Security Service and telecom operators, otherwise it will be impossible to guarantee the safety of personal data of subscribers.

True, virtual card testing has not yet revealed any security problems, as stated by opponents of regulatory measures.

As for the eSIM technology itself, it allows the subscriber to simultaneously use several operator profiles at once, and the subscriber can switch between them independently. You can switch from one operator to another at any time. Thus, there is no need to install an ordinary physical SIM card of a certain company. In the Russian Federation, devices such as Apple's iPhone XR, XS and XS Max, as well as, for example, Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, are compatible with eSIM. Develop their own solutions for eSIM Gemalto, Idemia, Ericsson, GigSky, Samsung, Nokia HPE, Huawei, China Telecom, etc.

"Yandex" did not give the FSB encryption keys

Representatives of the FSB announced that a few months ago they sent a request to the company “Yandex” to issue encryption keys , which corresponds to the norms of the “Law of Spring”. The FSB reported that it usually gives about 10 days to issue the keys, and Yandex, after several months, did not follow the instructions of the special services.

The ministry believes that the Center for Operational and Technical Events of the FSB has the right to require keys from any service or site that is included in the register of ARI. Yandex has several services in this registry at once. Nevertheless, the company stated that the FSB interprets the provisions of the “Spring Law” too broadly. It turns out that when issuing encryption keys, law enforcers will be able to access not only the Yandex user account on a particular service from which the keys are received, but also on all other services of this company.

A spokesman for Yandex’s press service told RBC that the company “works in full compliance with current legislation” and refused to answer questions about whether Yandex received a request from the FSB to provide encryption keys and did not transfer them.

Communication has become more expensive in Russia

Due to the cancellation of roaming in Russia, communications began to rise in price . The minimum package tariff since December last year has increased in price by 7 rubles, up to 262 rubles per month. Rosstat, however, speaks of even greater growth. Market players claim that the cost of communication is increasing due to the cancellation of roaming. A few more reasons are the increase in VAT and the need to adapt the “Spring Law”, for which funds are needed.

The average cost of the minimum packet tariff for mobile communications in the Russian Federation from December 2018 to May 2019 increased by 3%, from 255 rubles to 262 rubles. The last time the price increase was recorded after analyzing the tariffs of operators from October 2016 to August 2017.

Raised registered in all regions of Russia. Roaming in Russia was finally canceled on May 27, when Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree, which became the point in this matter. In the future, it is planned to cancel roaming between the member countries of the EAEU.

MIPT team reached the final of the Amazon contest

Amazon later this week published a short list of the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge 3 . Of the 375 applications submitted, the Alexa Prize committee selected 10 finalists, including the FTI team. Each team will receive a research grant of $ 250,000. In addition, the winners will have access to the Extended Topical Chat dataset and support from Alexa developers.

The competition is a competition for students, which is devoted to the development of technologies of conversational artificial intelligence. The main goal of the competition is to create a bot that can communicate with people on various topics, including entertainment, sports, politics, technology and fashion. Development of the prototypes proposed by the teams will begin in September, the winner will be announced in May 2020.

The MIPT team is called DREAM and it includes graduate students of the Phystech and iPavlov project staff from the laboratory of neural systems and in-depth training at MIPT: Dilara Baymurzina, Nikolai Bushkov, Idris Yusupov, Dmitry Karpov, The An An Le and team captain, Yuri Kuratov.

Apple is trying to delay the spread of the video with a negative reaction to the stand

Apple is trying to prevent the distribution of the video with the negative reaction of viewers who heard the price of the stand for Mac Pro, voiced by the speaker from the stage. The cost of the stand is $ 999, and after the price was announced, a puzzled rumble of voices was heard in the hall. The reaction caused a slight hitch in the presentation and the speaker proceeded to the next slides.

A few hours after the video with the presentation hit the network, those copies where the reaction to what was happening were captured disappeared from YouTube. Nevertheless, the full record of the presentation was published on the company's website, so Apple is clearly not trying to remove absolutely all videos.

The provider from Krasnodar refused to install the equipment according to the “Spring law”

A small provider from the city of Yeisk, Krasnodar Territory, refused to purchase and install equipment according to the “Spring Law” , which was not certified. Roskomnadzor sued the company. Representatives of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media have already stated that there is a gap in the legislation, promising to eliminate the “legislative lacuna”.

The company filed a response lawsuit, arguing that their point of view is that there is simply no certified equipment on the market right now. “We are being offered to invest in storage systems, which may be later certified, but we found ourselves in a similar situation with the implementation of SORM-2 and SORM-3 requirements. We spent the money, and the SORM-3 equipment is still not certified, ”explains the director of the company.