Blogging is important in Russia. More important than in many other countries. For one that is, because this is such a large country and the Internet and Blogs provide a cheap way to communicate, get together and read each others opinions and comments of whats daily life of the Russian youngsters (16-30). Many young Russians have their own Live Journal site, where they write about themselves, the things they do or what they have seen. Their readers are not only their friends, but also a lot of other Live Journal users and the general audience. If something special happens (may it be a storm or another Beslan), the news spread fast via emails and links. Many of the photos or videos you can find on my blog, were found on a Russian Live Journal before and sent to me by Russian friends (most of them run their own Live Journals).

A recently struck deal between Six Apart, the company who runs the Livejournals and SUP, an Russian Internet company, owned by Aleksandr Mamut, a Russian “oligarch,” and Andrew Paulson, an American entrepreneur, outrages the Russian blogsphere. Blogs are being closed down by their owners, others move to foreign free blog services and many fear control, censorship and even worse, that their personal data will be handed to the Russian security services (such as the feared FSB).

Russian blogging is also important, because the new generation Russians still have the old Soviet times in mind. Some of them were growing up in these times, others were to young to remember, but they still feel the vibe from their parents. It doesn’t matter, wether freedom of speech or freedom of the press are true or surpressed in Russia these days. It matters that the youth and young generation has a free tool, easy to use, which enables THEM to talk and to write about their views of the current Russia. This is much more important to them than TV or any other media. I doubt the government and especially the FSB understands the importance of this media at the time being. I also doubt they screen these journals, but it may as well be possible that these organizations run some “Echelon” type filters and robots to screen the RUNET (as they call the Russian Internet here) for relevant content and keywords. A regime critic blogger or extrememist (out of either political corner) may get on their radar. In any case the FSB (former KGB) and other government organizations have some of the best hackers of the world and I am sure, they’d not need an oligarch to give them the personal data of a blogger. What is dangerous though, is the self implied censorship these Oligarchs are putting on their media, no matter, if they are pro or contra Putin. It seems to me that with this deal, the Russian Internet lost a bit more of its freedom, but I am sure the bloggers will find alternatives to Live Journal. They are young, ambitious and they are long infected with the blogging virus, that’s all what counts.

Read more about the Russian Blog Wars and some translated opinions on Havards: Global Voices Online. Thank you for looking into this and providing us Expats and foreign readers with translations. A special thanks to Veronica Khokhlova for her great work there.

My turkish friend and fellow Moscow expat Dinc is writing about a “hug me” flashmob, which took place Oct 3rd on Arbat. I saw the video of the Australian guy who invented this on Youtube recently. Shit! Nobody invited me. I would have gone for a hug of one of these nice ladies …

Photo: www.Mosnews.com

When I got up today, I witnesses this seasons first snow. I love the snow and when I looked out of the window shortly after 9AM, I must looked like little boy with a respectful and happy smile on the face. Nevertheless the next 6 weeks will be a dirty and gray time with lots of snow-rain and depressing moods. It will be followed by another long and strong Russian winter. This will be my 4th winter in Russia and hey, I am still here. Looking foward to see you again “General Winter”, as the Russians often call him.

The FIRST snow this year.

No, this is not the line for the ticket sales of the Madonna concert, which recently happened here in Moscow and caused Moscovites the same stress, than usually only high level government guests do (with closed roads, the militia protecting the streets and her hotel etc). This line is not for the Rolling Stones or a soccer game either. Its simply the massive craziness of the daily rushour. I had a business meeting at 9 AM today and I needed to put myself into this position. This photo was taken from the escalator and I have been standing in this sweaty stinky crowd for about 15 minutes, being pushed around violently by some older ladies and Caucasian construction workers with garlic smell out of their mouths. Not enough, I took a 15 minute metro ride from Profsoyusnaya to Oktyabrskaya in a totally overfilled train with the same people before and when I took this picture, I was just transferring to another line and another 15 minute ride to Barikadnaya. An hour later I have been in for the same ride back and at night I was unfortunate again and needed to take a similar one to another meeting at 7:30 PM (in the middle of the evening rush hour).

Oktyberskaya at 8:30 AM, transferring from the orange to the brown ring line on a weekday.

Why I’m not taking the car? Well, that means hours of traffic jams. Instead of Babushkas pushing you around you have to deal with rude new rich Russians in their black SUV’s, which believe they own the road and hire their drivers from Tatschikistan or other exotic regions, where they don’t seem to have traffic rules. These guys only believe in the right of the stronger and driving during the rushour gives me as much stress as a metro ride. Sometimes, when I am stuck in traffic again and some guy tries to push me with his SUV, I daydream of taking a baseball bat and crashing his windows. Of course that is a pretty aggressive gesture, but nothing else seems to work against these guys and at least I’d get rid of all my frustration and aggression, which they are causing me. Hey, I’d even pay for the windows. Violence is not a solution against these rude drivers, I know that and I don’t want to look into the barrel of a gun, which is also a common thing on Moscow streets.

So ok, taking a car, I don’t have the bad smell around me, but when taking the metro, I have at least a vague idea on when I will arrive to my meeting. Monday I had to go to Sheremetyvo airport to pick up Sonia. It took me 2 ½ hours to get there in rush hour (7 PM). Last time I went, it was a Sunday morning and I made it in 45 min. The way back was a bit better, but basically the same. Its 15 million people (plus a few none-registered illegal workers) who have to make it to work and back, each day. With the economy doing so well, we get more and more cars in the city, but also more and more people coming here, looking for work and a better life. The government is as helpless as I am this morning standing in the crowd.

Coming back from my meeting at 10:20 AM I pass the same point again. This time from the other side.

It was about 2 years ago, when our New York office received an angry letter from a former client of us. Well, it was a bit more than an angry letter. The advertising agency network’s lawyers have found a series of research documents on our server, which they felt belong to them. They wanted to sue us for $150 000 per document and we were looking at a $1.5 million lawsuit. Needless to say, that our little company would have not even been able to pay a lawyer for that kind of lawsuit. Marc, my business partner in New York was shocked.

What happened? It only took me a few minutes and I found the cause. When working for the agency network as an interim manager in 2000, I had access to internal research papers. Nothing special or classified, just some whitepapers and a few powerpoints. Some of these papers I have saved on our companies web server, to have them handy when I need them locally on client meetings. I password protected the directory to ensure only I have access to the materials. After the assignment we have moved on with our lives and the documents were forgotten. In 2004 we have changed our hosting and while transferring the files, the password protection of this particular directory got lost. The directory was not linked from anywhere and it has a very long (impossible to guess) URL, but Google has found it and listed the documents. Some people found them on Google and linked to them, even though most of the documents were from 1999 and totally outdated in 2004.

It took only a few weeks until we received the threatening letter of our ex-client. Well, we were lucky. Of course I immediately deleted the documents and a call into their lawyers office could clear the situation and settle this thing for good. The lawyers didn’t even know, that I have been a manager in their lead agency from 1999-2000. They thought we had hacked a server or stolen the documents somehow illegal. They also didn’t know that the documents were long outdated.

Well, that is America. You are not watching out for a minute and you have a bunch of young lawyers and a $1.5 Million lawsuit on your ass, trying to bite you hard.

We are much more careful now, but others still do the same mistakes. Check this post from the Lifehacker Blog. It shows you, how you can use Google to find documents (in this case MP3’s). It’s all out there. You just need to find it and Google helps us with that. You can alter the script anyway you want, looking for research documents, videos, mp3’s. Anything you desire.

Here is another article on Google Tutor that explains you how to find hidden (porn) videos: http://www.googletutor.com/2005/04/15/voyeur-heaven/

And the hacker “shell” tells us how to use Google to find sensitive data, you’d need to hack someone’s server, such as the WS_FTP.ini. Its amazing how many people still upload this file to their webserver (and don’t even protect it).