Kaspersky culls staff, closes doors in US amid Biden's ban

Re: Should I ever choose...

I don't believe your government are telling you what software you can use.

Kaspersky are being banned from operating in the US market. It would be an offence for them to sell software to you, but not for you to buy it off them. Although of course that will make it harder for you to buy it, if you really do want to.

This is what we have governments for though. Foreign relations and product standards are perfectly reasonable roles for government and I believe your Constitution allows the government to regulate the market and gives it sole control of foreign policy.

This is also for perfectly good reasons of policy. The Russians are being far more aggressive than the Soviets were during most of the Cold War. They clearly believe they're engaged in political, intelligence and economic warfare with the West. Russian intelligence and hacking activities have been at a very high levels in the last 15 years. Particularly recently. But the Russians have carried out quite a few assassinations in Europe (and tried a few that have failed) - in a way that just didn't happen in the Cold War where there were tacit (and sometimes explicitly agreed) rules established. Putin and most of his cronies being ex-KGB know those rules - and have chosen to break them.

Since the big invasion of Ukraine in 2022 hacking of our infrastucture has also gone up massively, leading people to suspect that they're planning to make attacks. As well as actual attacks on pipelines and undersea cables. And some possible physical attacks on factories - though some of those are hard to attribute (and may be random events). I'm pretty sure that GRU did blow up a Czech arms depot in 2016 though - which was shipping weapons to Ukraine. As well as murdering a Bulgarian arms dealer involved in another deal with Ukraine (or the same one I can't remember).

So Kaspersky are a potential threat that has to be at least considered. It's even possible that our intelligence agencies know something already. It's been pretty clear since the US and UK decided to release intelligence on the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that they've got some decent sources somewhere. Probably technical, as some of the info they released could lead back to an actual agent and get them killed (or locked up for the rest of their lives). But equally it could just be precautionary.

And yet Israel is still friends with most of the West's leaders.

As opposed to Crypto AG and the CIA/NSA.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/11/crypto_ag_backdoored_german_swiss_news_allegs/

Mark Exclamation,

Russia has chosen to exit civilised society.

Not Russia. Vladimir Putin. There is a difference - and I think it's an important one, seeing as we might want to improve relations with Russia at some point.

The full scale invasion of Ukraine appears to have been his personal policy.

Not that there aren't a lot of Russians with blood on their hands. There have been so many human rights violations in the invasion of Ukraine that it's going to be hard to have normal relations afterwards. Particularly as Putin does still have some support. But we almost certainly want to signal to ordinary Russians that we're not a threat to Russia, and that our beef isn't with Russia - but with the current Russian government.

I'm still happy with banning Kaspersky. But I think it's important to make the distinction if we can.

What has Russia done?

There is also a deeply fundamental issue with OS design that such access is needed, but that is not going to change so we are left with AV out of necessity.

Lots of people use TikTok (for better or worse). There was (is?) quite the uproar online when talk of "banning" it started, for however much good that does.

Whereas most people probably don't use Kaspersky, or any other AV software for that matter. It's hardly a household name outside of tech/IT circles.

Heck, the number of people who use a Windows PC on a regular basis is probably pretty small relative to the number of phone users -- and it's a fair bet a lot of TikTok happens on phones.

TL;DR: "banning" TikTok would be unpopular and likely cost the politicians votes and/or donations/fundraising in some fashion, which is what they actually care about. Whereas "banning" Kaspersky would likely not be a blip on most people's radar. So the politicians can claim they're doing something about National Security[tm] with no meaningful impact to their own coffers.