In yet what appears to be another move toward more censorship, on Friday the Russian Parliament passed a new law which will require all Internet companies in Russia to store the personal data of citizens in Russia, on servers within Russia, and not out of the country. This law follows previous new rules about blogger sites which were attracting more than 3,000 daily visitors. The sites are being required to register with a communications watchdog, and a regulation is in place allowing websites to be shut down without a court order.

According to a report from Reuters, Internet companies in Russia will be forced to store the data within Russia only beginning in 2016, or face the risk of being blocked entirely from the web. It’s been reported from several media sources that the Kremlin is doing this in an attempt to secure and protect the data, but there are many others who see this as nothing more than additional censorship that is likely to affect Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and several other US based social sites as well.

In the report from Reuters, Putin, an ex-KGB officer who has called the Internet a "CIA project", denied he was restricting web freedoms, saying his main concern was protecting children from indecent content.

Earlier this year, the Kremlin adopted a law which gave authorities power without a court order to block websites that were deemed either very radical, or a threat to public order. In another law enacted in Russia in May, all cussing was banned in any films, books, and music.

While the Kremlin cites reasons of "protection" for each of these new laws, critics continue to condemn Russia for what they believe is just a continuation of more censorship. This new law literally takes away the rights that people have over their own personal data, away from them.