Could Order 65 signify the end of communications privacy in Russia?

FSB agent

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
As of July 21, Russian postal services and Internet providers are required by law to provide Russian intelligence agents with on demand access to the dispatch information and content of private correspondence. This is stipulated in Order 65, which the Russian government and the Russian Ministry of Communications made public on July 6.  Apart from granting automatic communications inspection rights to officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and seven other intelligence and security organizations of the Russian state, the new law requires all Russian post office sorting facilities to set up “special rooms where security officers will be able to open and inspect private mail”. Additionally, all Internet service providers are now required to grant the FSB and other intelligence and security agencies complete access to their electronic databases. A recent article on the Washington, DC-based Jamestown Foundation website correctly points out that not even during Soviet times was the KGB, FSB’s predecessor, able to so openly and formally inspect private communications. This is certainly true, though I would point out that Order 65 appears to differ from post-9/11 communications interception practices in America only in the sense that it provides a basic legislative framework for the indiscriminate siphoning of private communications, signified by, among other things, NSA’s STELLAR WIND project (intelNews, passim).