IP: Russia spies on its own people

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

St. Petersburg Times
January 14, 2000
Russia's Electronic Police Get Carte Blanche
By Jen Tracy
STAFF WRITER

Under an obscure bit of legislation quietly approved by acting President
Vladimir Putin, the nation's major law enforcement and security bodies -
from the tax police to the Border Guards - are to be technically equipped
to enjoy instant real-time access to e-mail and other electronic traffic.

Seven law enforcement bodies named in the new law are now to join the
Federal Security Service - the main KGB successor agency and acting
President Putin's alma mater - in being hard-wired to Russia's Internet
service providers.

These authorities are still required by the Russian Constitution to obtain
a court warrant before tapping phones, opening e-mails or accessing other
private correspondence between citizens or organizations. But for all of
them, e-mails, e-commerce transactions and other Internet traffic will be a
mere mouse-click away - easily perused without anyone ever knowing,
regardless of what the courts or the Constitution may say.

"This means Russia has officially become a police state," Yelena Bonner,
the human rights activist and wife of the late Soviet dissident Andrei
Sakharov, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday from Boston, where she
has been visiting for the past few months. "And this wartime police state
came about unnoticed when Putin rose to power on Dec. 31."

Putin signed the legislation - an amendment to the 1995 Law on Operational
Investigations that passed the State Duma on Dec. 1 - on Jan. 5. It took
force Jan. 6 upon publication in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the official
government newspaper.

The original 1995 law gave the security services the right to monitor all
sorts of correspondence, from postal deliveries to cell phone
conversations, provided they first obtained a warrant.

With the growth of the Internet, the FSB and the State Communications
Committee have issued new regulations - based on their interpretation of
the 1995 law - that force Internet service providers to link their
computers to those at FSB headquarters.

Internet service providers do not like to talk about the FSB's so-called
SORM project - the acronym stands for Sistema Operativno-Rozysknykh
Meropriyatii, or System for Operational-Investigative Activities. But many
of them have already quietly complied.

The costs to the Internet service provider of installing the equipment are
estimated from $10,000 to $30,000, not including any future upgrades.
That's enough to shut down some smaller providers, and some SORM-watchers
argue that the big Internet players actually welcome SORM as it helps them
consolidate their market share.

The new amendment doesn't mention SORM by name or detail the new technical
requirements for Internet service providers. But it does extend the FSB's
hard-wired access to electronic traffic to seven other agencies: the tax
police, the Interior Ministry, the Border Guards, the Customs Committee,
the Kremlin security service, the presidential security service, the
parliamentary security services and the Foreign Intelligence Service, or
SVR.

Internet experts interviewed on Wednesday said they expected the additional
security organs could simply piggy-back on the FSB's SORM technology, which
has already been installed at the expense - and expertise - of the
providers.

Human rights activists worry that the FSB - and now the seven other
security organs - will not bother getting a court order when they can see
private information at a whim. And if once they placed some faint hopes on
the FSB simply not having the manpower to systematically track mass
quantities of e-mail and other traffic, the situation has drastically
changed now that eight security organs can in theory be working at once,
perhaps even in cooperation.

"It was bad enough that the FSB had unlimited control over confidential
correspondence, and now it is multiplied eight times," said Boris
Pustintsev, chairman of St. Petersburg-based Citizens' Watch rights group.

"The FSB alone had some problems implementing SORM as NGOs
[non-governmental organizations] were fighting it. Now, it will be routine
[to get SORM set up and functioning], as you can't fight a monster with
eight heads."

The FSB says SORM will help law enforcement track and capture criminals
ranging from tax evaders to pedophiles, because such people may conduct or
discuss their business electronically.

Human rights groups counter that the Russian security services are cannot
be trusted with such power. They argue that agents will abuse SORM to
assemble political dossiers and to steal and sell commercial secrets -
something that could line the pockets of agents and organizations who have
not fared well under post-Soviet budgets.

In the nationally televised New Year's Eve address in which he acknowledged
Boris Yeltsin's resignation and took on the duties of the presidency, Putin
promised he would be a generous patron to Russia's security services.

"The potential of the special services will not just be maintained but
increased," Putin pledged then.

The FSB and the tax police did not reply to questions faxed by The St.
Petersburg Times.


Esther Dyson                    Always make new mistakes!