Sometimes you can get an impression that Putin's Russia truly managed to materialize the old hackers' iconic phrase "information wants to be free" as you can buy literally *any* data on the market, including details of any person, vehicles, flights, properties, hotels etc etc.
@kravietz its pretty easy to hack into data here in the states, if I lived in Russia, I'd probably do the same thing.
@lnx Data breaches happen everywhere but in Russia it's practically a full-scale market where employees of all kinds of private and government enterprises (law enforcement, telcos, airlines etc) are selling personal details from their databases. Funny thing, shortly after the Navalny investigation was published (and it was based mostly on such data), Russian government introduced a proposal to make data of gov operatives secret, basically confirming it was all true 😂
@kravietz well you have to remember that there is no middle class there, so people are always looking for a way to make an extra buck. The only time you are really safe is if you or someone in your family is employed with the gov or some underground organization. People know they can't get in trouble for leaking data, as long as its not internal gov data.
Oh there's absolutely middle class in Russia and it's just like any other country really. Law enforcement is however very selective, and on one hand you can be jailed for merely a critical comment about church or gov if you don't have the right friends, and you can get away with anything if you do.
@kravietz yeah russia is pretty complicated with their laws especially when it has to do something with the church. They'll have you arrested for anything that goes against their religion, but thats also what keeps some order unlike here in the states.