[Infowarrior] - Skype singled out as threat to Russia's security

[Richard Forno]

Skype singled out as threat to Russia's security
Fri Jul 24, 2009 11:49am EDT

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56N41I20090724?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&rpc=22&sp=true


By Simon Shuster and Anastasia Teterevleva

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's most powerful business lobby moved to  
clamp down on Skype and its peers this week, telling lawmakers that  
the Internet phone services are a threat to Russian businesses and to  
national security.

In partnership with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's political party,  
the lobby created a working group to draft legal safeguards against  
what they said were the risks of Skype and other Voice over Internet  
Protocol (VoIP) telephone services.

VoIP software has used the Internet to let hundreds of millions of  
people talk long-distance for free, or at far cheaper rates than  
traditional service providers can offer.

At a meeting of the lobby this week, telecom executives portrayed the  
most popular VoIP programs like Skype and Icq as encroaching foreign  
entities that the government must control.

"Without government restrictions, IP telephony causes certain concerns  
about security," the lobby's press release said. "Most of the service  
operators working in Russia, such as Skype and Icq, are foreign. It is  
therefore necessary to protect the native companies in this sector and  
so forth."

Skype was not immediately available for comment.

In a presentation posted on the lobby's Web site, Vice President of  
TTK, a telecoms unit of state-owned Russian Railways, Vitaly Kotov,  
called on regulators to stop VoIP services from causing "a likely and  
uncontrolled fall in profits for the core telecom operators."

Valery Ermakov, deputy head of Russia's No.3 mobile phone firm  
MegaFon, drove the point home with a picture of two hands in  
handcuffs, the caption running, "protect investments and fight VoIP  
services."

Delegates at the meeting also warned that it has been impossible for  
police to spy on VoIP conversations, Vedomosti business daily reported  
on Friday.

The lobby, called the Russian Union of Industrialists and  
Entrepreneurs, forecast that 40 percent of calls could be made through  
VoIP services by 2012.

As an alternative to Skype and its peers, the telecom executives  
proposed creating VoIP services inside their own firms, which would  
then make them safely available to the Russian public.

"MegaFon is interested in this market. We're interested in providing  
analogous services. We don't support limiting competition, but we want  
the market to be civilized," Ermakov said.

TTK's press service said on Friday that it will take until September  
for the relevant legal amendments to be drafted by the special  
committee, whose members include top telecoms executives and lawmakers  
from Putin's United Russia party.

(Editing by Rupert Winchester)