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Snowden leaks reveal harmfulness of US monopoly on internet – Russian minister

Snowden leaks reveal harmfulness of US monopoly on internet – Russian minister 

The NSA’s mass surveillance would not be possible if the internet wasn’t controlled by just a few major US companies, Nikolay Nikiforov, Russia’s communications minister, told RT after the first BRICS ministerial meeting on the de-monopolization of IT.

“Snowden’s disclosures showed exactly the harmfulness of the monopoly because it would not be possible if the world IT sector should be structured in a more balanced way,” Nikiforov said, adding that, as things stand, US security agencies have the power to just “come to several companies and to force them… to actually provide absolutely illegal access to hundreds of millions records of private data of users globally.” 

In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents revealing the US National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs, proving that Google, Facebook and other US tech giants have been passing information to the spy agency.

Russia’s Communications and Mass Media minister stressed that, in purely economic terms, the monopoly is also harmful for BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the international community as a whole.

“The monopolist could dictate you the certain price level… each country in the world is actually sending out billions of dollars outside its national economies as the license fees… for key technologies,” he explained.

Nikiforov said that BRICS nations are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs, where a particular state or company controls up to 90-95 percent of certain IT market niches, such as the assigning of domain names performed by the American ICANN company under contract with the US government.

During the maiden meeting in Moscow, the BRICS communications ministers agreed that their countries want fair competition and “want it to be balanced, not to depend on one country or several companies,” he said.

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