Russia now sends men to war with an electronic summons
Earlier this week, Russian legislators voted in favor of a new digital draft. Conscripts, currently all men between the ages of 18 and 27, will now be called up electronically, as will other men eligible to serve. Hundreds of thousands of Russian men fled the country last September in response to Putin’s “partial mobilization” of citizens to fight the war in Ukraine. The Russian parliament wants to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
New amendments to the laws on conscription will make it illegal to ignore electronic military summons. As soon as they are posted to a person’s e-government account (known in Russia as Gosuslugi), they will be considered “received.” This is a big change. Previously, draft officers had to physically hand a person their summons before he could be considered a conscript. But the new rules mean conscripts who fail to enlist within just seven days of receiving the summons on their Gosuslugi account will be banned from leaving the country and have their assets frozen.
Conscripts who ignore their electronic summons, or risk fleeing the country, will be considered fugitives. The legislation will also create a unified registry of citizens eligible for military service. I’ve heard from Russian colleagues who are concerned that such a registry might be used or abused by the Kremlin and, given Russia’s notoriously leaky systems, might be open to exploitation by other malicious actors. They’re right to worry. From Kenya to India to South Korea, we’ve seen too many examples of how citizen registries can be compromised.
India’s IT Ministry says it will form a “fact-checking unit” that will review online news related to the government, flag stories or information it deems “fake” and then order their removal. This will require everyone from small news sites to big online platforms like Facebook and Twitter to take down these kinds of posts or risk litigation.