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The New Nobility
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Russia's cyberspace looks pretty free compared to that of China, where access to Facebook, Twitter and independent websites is blocked by the government. The Kremlin has been involved in the creation of new media websites since 2000, but for many years the blogosphere and social networks were left to develop unnoticed. It was only towards the end of the 2000s that the Kremlin made its first incursions into the blogosphere, and the Arab Spring, when several Middle Eastern regimes were toppled, finally alerted the government and its security chiefs to the role of social networks in the organisation of protest actions.
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The March 5 protest rally on Pushkin Square in Moscow revealed how government security forces were unprepared to respond properly to what should have been a very predictable situation. The 55th Division of OMON riot police, heavily equipped with helmets, body armor, batons and shields was on hand to ensure order at the rally. This stood in sharp contrast to the lightly equipped force of mostly cadets deployed to keep the peace at previous anti-Putin rallies on Prospekt Sakharova and Bolshaya Yakimanka. /March 12, 2012/
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The 2011-12 election cycle has seen the full catalogue of dirty surveillance tricks return to Russian politics, from covert video recording to phone hacking of opposition leaders. Most have pointed the finger of suspicion directly at the door of the FSB. In reality, any one of a number of agencies could have been at work. The story within the Project_ID, a series of investigations about how the Russian state and private corporations are employing new advances in technology to monitor the general public. . /February 26, 2012/
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In December 2011, Wikileaks released ‘Spy Files’, a project revealing details of the burgeoning surveillance and interception industry. The list of companies providing high-tech equipment to governments included a number of Russian firms, which are emerging as global leaders in the industry. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan took to investigate how the Soviet Union’s expertise in spy technology is being adapted to the new reality of global capitalism. /January 25,2012/
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As Russia’s largest and best organised ‘horizontal’ community in Russia, football fans have found themselves at the centre of governmental attempts to control informal groups. Perhaps more surprisingly, they have also become guinea pigs for international, mostly European data exchange programmes, with Russian authorities picking up the very worst of surveillance practices from their foreign colleagues. /January 6, 2012/
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Nearly a week has passed since the last mass opposition rally in Moscow. Moscow’s protest movement is gathering momentum, bringing in greater numbers and a wider constituency of supporters. What is as yet unclear, however, is whether it has the organisational clout to become a sustained force for change. /December 29, 2011/
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For years, a pact of loyalty in exchange for roubles fostered the growth of a largely apolitical middle class in Russia. On Saturday December 10, that middle class turned against their creator. They are, however, some way off uniting behind a single opposition candidate, write Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov. / Published December 14, 2011/
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Amongst the current projects of the Commission for the Modernisation and Technological Development of the Russian Economy, created by Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 and hailed by forward minded citizens as a tool for reform, is one focussing on perfecting personal identification systems. The project is being carried out by the security services, and its aim is to create multibiometric systems for identifying individuals in real time.
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