Russian security service ‘wants to ban Skype, Gmail’
MOSCOW — The Russian security service is proposing to ban Skype, Hotmail, and Gmail as their “uncontrolled use” may threaten Russia's security, a service official said during a government meeting on Friday.
Context & Ripple Effects
The proposal surfaced at a government meeting in Moscow on Friday, with an FSB official framing Skype, Hotmail and Gmail as security threats because their use is 'uncontrolled' — meaning encrypted or offshore-hosted traffic the service cannot inspect. The BBC's pickup of the AFP report the same day shows how quickly the story traveled beyond Russian media.
Timing matters for the named companies: Skype had just closed its combination with Qik earlier in 2011, pushed video calling onto all four major US carriers, and only months before delayed its IPO into the second half of the year — making Russia, one of its largest markets, a regulatory overhang it did not need while courting public investors. Hotmail, for its part, was still rolling out new features such as throwaway e-mail accounts, betting on consumer growth rather than market exits.
First-order effects
- Russian users of Skype, Gmail and Hotmail face potential loss of access if the security service's proposal becomes law, since all three route communications through infrastructure outside state oversight.
- Skype's expansion plans in a top market come under threat at the worst possible moment commercially — mid-IPO delay, post-Qik integration, and a fresh chief executive still proving out the growth story.
Second-order effects
- Other foreign web services operating in Russia now have to price in the precedent that a single security-service official can put their market access on the table, pushing them toward localization talks with Moscow.
- Domestic alternatives and Russian telecom operators stand to inherit displaced traffic and corporate accounts should the ban proceed, shifting messaging and e-mail revenue toward state-friendlier providers.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, control of communications infrastructure becomes an explicit instrument of security policy: foreign consumer platforms get treated as sovereignty exposures to be swapped for inspectable domestic ones, a template extendable to any service whose encryption the state cannot reach.
The trend: Governments are recasting uncontrolled foreign communications platforms from conveniences into national-security liabilities, trading user access for inspectability.