Recent Issues
A near doubling in Russian wiretaps over five years
In a previous article, we asked who was bugging the Russian opposition. Here we develop this theme, looking at how a combination of recent legislation and new technology has allowed Russia’s many security agencies to expand their activities still further. / June 4 2012 /
The Kremlin and the hackers: partners in crime?
The recent Russian parliamentary and presidential elections were notable for the wide use of cyber attacks on the websites of the liberal media, as well as opposition hackers accessing officials’ email exchanges.
The Russian state and surveillance technology
The Russian blogosphere has burgeoned into a open-door sanctuary for all strands of political opinion. Predictably, it has also attracted the attention of the country's security services. Our first in a series of investigations outlining how the Russian state is now monitoring its online public.
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The New Nobility
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The terrorist attack in Boston was an intelligence failure for both Russia and the U.S. It turns out that the Federal Security Service had information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev's suspicious activities but did not even question him when he visited Dagestan for six months in 2012. The FBI received its initial lead on Tamerlan from the FSB in 2011 and even brought him in for questioning, but then forgot about him completely until the day of the bombing. / April 24, 2013 /
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On March 26, a village school in a distant Russian region in Eastern Siberia, only few kilometers from the Mongolian border, was raided by the authorities. A team of FSB agents with the support of a local prosecutor's office rushed into the school in Kochetovo village in the Tuva republic. Were these agents of the state hot on the trail of terrorists, Mafiosi, or drug smugglers? No, they were there to check on a software update, specifically whether the school's computers were outfitted with filtering software to prevent access to banned websites. / April 5, 2013 /
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Hot on the heels of a new law establishing a register of forbidden sites, Russian authorities are now promoting a system of 'virtual' borders and international supervision. Their proposal has so far failed to find significant support, but Russia will keep trying, says Irina Borogan. / February 12, 2013 /
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President Vladimir Putin recently ordered the Federal Security Service to create a system to allow the state to detect, prevent and disable cyberattacks in Russia and at diplomatic stations abroad. It is an ambitious goal and one that the FSB is well-equipped to tackle with the help of its Information Security Center and Communications Security Center. But the FSB might very well go beyond its immediate mandate to neutralize hacker attacks against Russia and expand its cyberspace presence among members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS, perhaps even gaining access to information on hacker attacks waged around the world. / January 29, 2013/
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Manned by the country’s main security service, the FSB, this ”System of Operative Search Measures” has been in use for more than two decades. But recently, SORM has been upgraded. It is ingesting new types of data. It is being used as Moscow’s main tool for spying on the country’s political protesters. And it has become extremely useful in the quest to make sure that the Kremlin’s influence in the former Soviet Union continues long into the second regime of Vladimir Putin. / Agentura.Ru investigation on Wired, December 24, 2012 /
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A new internet law came into effect in Russia this month. Ostensibly designed to tackle extremist websites, the list of banned sites has already cast a much broader net. Things are likely to get even worse, says Irina Borogan. /November 20, 2012/
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On the surface, it’s all about protecting Russian kids from internet pedophiles. In reality, the Kremlin’s new “Single Register” of banned websites, which goes into effect today, will wind up blocking all kinds of online political speech. And, thanks to the spread of new internet-monitoring technologies, the Register could well become a tool for spying on millions of Russians. Agentura.Ru investigation published in Wired on November 1, 2012.
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Today marks ten years since the start of the Nord-Ost theatre siege, which ended tragically with a bungled special forces operation and the deaths of at least 170 people. Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov, reporters on the scene, reflect on those dramatic days and the lack of a proper investigation since. / October 23, 2012 /
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