Apple Acquires Music Analytics and Artist Discovery Service Asaii ByNitish Singh-October 15, 2018.125 Figure 1 Image Courtesy of Pixabay Apple acquired a music service company Asaii, which had been shut down on October 14. The news was confirmed by Cameron Baradar, one of the first investors of the newly acquired company. For upcoming artist recommendations, Apple will look to implement the service to its Apple Music App. ByBill Toulas-November 11, 2019.126 Installing domestic applications on all smartphones, the Russian government and lawmakers wish. Officially, they justify that on the grounds of fostering local business against competition. People are afraid that backdoor planting of this program would behave like spyware and generally violate their privacy. The Russian parliament has proposed new legislation that would allow for the pre-installation of special software tools on devices such as Pcs smartphones laptops tablets and more. As the Duma said, the initiative is intended to help domestic technology firms develop their services for Russian users and maintain a competitive advantage over foreign entities, such as those coming from the United States. However, the country’s people are afraid this would introduce another risk to their privacy. Only ten days ago we revisited the topic of Russia’s sovereign internet law and how the new legislation has entered its final stages. Now the government will have to put in the resources to develop the infrastructure which isolates the internet of the country from the global network. It will be difficult to say the least technologically to enforce all the required traffic reroutes and blocks, but the essence is that Russia wants to control everything and internet communications have a central and critical role in their regulatory space. Maybe the government has again addressed the technological challenges with their experts and maybe they have agreed that the ambitious plans for a decentralized internet are after all not feasible. Perhaps this left them with alternative options like planting spyware on all the electronic devices that are used in the country. The last time we saw the initiative of a regime to make backdoor installation compulsory by law was in July when the Kazakh government forced Isps to facilitate the implementation of a “security certificate” for their clients. The plan didn’t work out when people expressed their strong opposition to the initiative but the oppressive regime was worth trying for. Although we can’t say that Russia is planning to do the same and since we don’t know they’re going to use spyware for sure we’re worried about how the story combines with the Putin government’s general approach so far.

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Apple Acquires Music Analytics and Artist Discovery Service Asaii ByNitish Singh-October 15, 2018.125 Figure 1 Image Courtesy of Pixabay Apple acquired a music service company Asaii, which had been shut down on October 14. The news was confirmed by Cameron Baradar, one of the first investors of the newly acquired company. For upcoming artist recommendations, Apple will look to implement the service to its Apple Music App. ByBill Toulas-November 11, 2019.126 Installing domestic applications on all smartphones, the Russian government and lawmakers wish. Officially, they justify that on the grounds of fostering local business against competition. People are afraid that backdoor planting of this program would behave like spyware and generally violate their privacy. The Russian parliament has proposed new legislation that would allow for the pre-installation of special software tools on devices such as Pcs smartphones laptops tablets and more. As the Duma said, the initiative is intended to help domestic technology firms develop their services for Russian users and maintain a competitive advantage over foreign entities, such as those coming from the United States. However, the country’s people are afraid this would introduce another risk to their privacy. Only ten days ago we revisited the topic of Russia’s sovereign internet law and how the new legislation has entered its final stages. Now the government will have to put in the resources to develop the infrastructure which isolates the internet of the country from the global network. It will be difficult to say the least technologically to enforce all the required traffic reroutes and blocks, but the essence is that Russia wants to control everything and internet communications have a central and critical role in their regulatory space. Maybe the government has again addressed the technological challenges with their experts and maybe they have agreed that the ambitious plans for a decentralized internet are after all not feasible. Perhaps this left them with alternative options like planting spyware on all the electronic devices that are used in the country. The last time we saw the initiative of a regime to make backdoor installation compulsory by law was in July when the Kazakh government forced Isps to facilitate the implementation of a “security certificate” for their clients. The plan didn’t work out when people expressed their strong opposition to the initiative but the oppressive regime was worth trying for. Although we can’t say that Russia is planning to do the same and since we don’t know they’re going to use spyware for sure we’re worried about how the story combines with the Putin government’s general approach so far.