U.S. eases restrictions on cyber-security sales to Russian spy agency The U.S. Treasury allows U.S. companies to do business with the Russian Federal Security Service, Check out this story on dailyworld.com: http://usat.ly/2k0be6s A woman walks along a bridge over the Moskva river near the Kremlin during a sunny winter day in Moscow on Feb. 2, 2017. The Treasury Department amended the sanctions against the FSB, the main successor agency to the KGB, to authorize U.S. sales of tech tools to the agency “that are necessary and ordinarily incident to requesting certain licenses and authorizations for the importation, distribution, or use of certain information technology products in the Russian Federation.”

Obama first issued sanctions against the FSB in 2015 and reinforced them with a supplemental order on Dec. 29 to punish Moscow for its purported interference in the U.S. presidential election. At a news briefing Thursday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that the move was not an easing of sanctions, but rather a routine reevaluation. At the White House, President Donald Trump responded to a reporter’s question about whether he was easing sanctions on Russia, saying, “I’m not easing anything.”

Sanctions experts and former Obama administration officials stressed the exceptions to the sanctions imposed in December do not signal a broader shift in Russia policy.
The United States Department of the Treasury eases some sanctions on the Federal Security Service (FSB), allowing for limited transactions with the intelligence agency. The sanctions were put in place last year by Barack Obama over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.