The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows: Russians are being taken out from under the FBI's hood
The Russian state, through the federal Law on Personal Data, which entered into force on September 1, 2015, is increasing the degree of control over popular foreign Internet resources. First of all, behind social networks. The first one went: a message was published on the Roskomnadzor website that the popular microblogging network Twitter will transfer its databases with personal data of Russian users to a data center in the Russian Federation by mid-2018.
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For some, this step is another reason for sobbing “we are all under the hood of Bloody Gebnya,” but in general, the transfer of databases of Russian users to Russia is a more than logical step. If the NSA and FBI have access to all data of users of American social networks without exception, then the idea of bringing millions of Russians out from under their hood is a completely sensible idea.
In fact, it has long been proposed to bring the databases of Russian users to their native soil under the threat of blocking intractable owners of foreign social networks.
Perhaps it will make someone feel better if we recall that in the mid-90s SORM (system of operational investigative measures) was introduced for the newly emerging cellular communications, when mobile phones were large, expensive and were used by respectable boys wrapped in gold chains Adidas sweatpants and crimson jackets.
So, Twitter, in this case, is the first major achievement of Russian regulatory authorities.
A logical question immediately arises: why only Twitter? When will other popular social networks release their databases of Russian users? Facebook, for example? And what about messengers?
The following is known about other social networks. At the moment, only one social network for business contacts is blocked in Russia - LinkedIn. The reasons for blocking include demonstrative ignorance of Russian laws, reluctance to negotiate, annoying users with spam, and, importantly, the low popularity of LinkedIn in Russia.
As for the very popular Facebook, its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, at first flatly refused to move the databases of personal data of Russians closer to our native birches, but later changed his mind. Currently, according to experts close to Roskomnadzor, the organizers of the social network are taking certain steps towards this. Google and Microsoft also take a reasonable approach to Roskomnadzor’s requirements. The latter even managed to localize almost 100% the storage of ticket sales data in Russia.
You can even remember that Microsoft was cooperative on other issues. In particular, the company handed over the source code of the WinXP OS to the FSB for the purpose of studying the operating system for all sorts of “back gates” and “bookmarks”. Moreover, the source codes were transferred not at the end of WinXP’s popularity, but very timely - in the early 2000s. In 2012, it was reported that Microsoft itself may allow intelligence agencies to listen to conversations of Skype users, and will also provide access to personal correspondence, following the “new” policy of fully cooperating with law enforcement agencies.
However, Microsoft is even more responsive to requests for control from American intelligence agencies - this is where Big Brother grew a big eye, and not even just one. The fact that many Google projects and startups are supervised by a venture capital company associated with the CIA has been written and said more than once.
In addition, on the way to complete localization of databases, there are a number of purely technical difficulties. In particular, the creation of national data centers is a costly issue in every sense, since it is associated with the acquisition and installation of certain expensive equipment and the transfer of large volumes of data. According to experts, Roskomnadzor and large foreign social networks are at the stage of searching for a compromise.
Blocking the activities of large foreign social networks on the RuNet is both difficult and pointless. Roskomnadzor may well install a red warning hand when a user requests a particular resource, but in our time, bypassing the blocking will not be a problem for any more or less literate user. On the other hand, owners of social networks understand that official restrictions lead to loss of popularity and, as a result, losses. Hence the search for a compromise.
As for the popular instant messengers Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram, Roskomnadzor’s situation with them is quite complicated. In the sense that their owners refuse or find it difficult to compromise with Russian regulatory authorities and intelligence services. Although they account for the lion's share of network communication among terrorists. In particular, ISIS.
WhatsApp is a separate issue. As you know, this service was acquired by everyone’s unloved Mark Zuckerberg, who has long been suspected of close cooperation with American intelligence services, but it’s worth talking about the mega-popular Telegram service in particular.
As you know, the champion of liberal values and owner of Telegram, Pavel Durov, flatly refuses to make any contacts with any intelligence services. However, in 2015, he was faced with the fact that a whole horde of terrorists from ISIS and other similar vipers were communicating using his secure messenger. It turned out that Channels, public channels with an unlimited number of participants, are extremely popular among barmalei. Terrorists used them to spread their news and media. The most popular jihadist channel has as many as 9000 subscribers. In Russia and in a number of other countries around the world, they started talking about blocking Telegram. Durov was forced to revise his previously established rules and recognize information sent through Channels as public content in order to remove ISIS talkers.
It must be said that Telegram’s maintenance staff now have a wide range of work to do. Already on January 15, 2016, the organizers of the messenger reported that 660 channels used by ISIS to transmit information were blocked. The work is carried out regularly and, as Pavel Durov personally said on Twitter, up to a dozen such channels are deleted every day due to user complaints.
Interestingly, the jihadists tried to bypass Channels blocking using closed group chats, access to which is open only by invitation, but, as the messenger administration cheerfully reports, they had to leave Telegram.
However, police representatives in Malaysia and Indonesia report that ISIS still uses Telegram to search for and recruit supporters in Southeast Asia. There is other data according to which the jihadists simply decided not to report it, but still actively use Telegram for their own purposes. There is reason to believe that the messenger still has at least 200 channels for terrorists, with between 500 and 1000 subscribers.
Another thing is interesting. Terrorists show miracles of flexibility and adapt on the fly, adopting the experience of Telegram. Their programmers have developed their own Alrawi messenger for the Android platform, distributed not from the official Google Play store, but through file sharing services. In terms of its encryption characteristics, Alrawi is not as good as Telegram or Signal, but is still able to provide user anonymity. Through Alrawi, group communication is possible even in the absence of the Internet: users can communicate via Bluetooth and coordinate their actions. The same feature was noted in the “rebel” messenger FireChat, which gained popularity during the 2014 Maidan in Hong Kong.
Recently, ISIS terrorists have been cautiously exploring the Tumblr blogosphere, which is not widely popular in Russia. Communication between bearded people so far boils down to discussing issues of providing medical care, consultations and searching for medical equipment and medications.
It will be interesting to know that all this data was dug up by an independent team of hackers, Ghost Security Group, associated with the famous Anonymous, engaged in the fight against terrorists in cyberspace.
At the end of December 2015, Adviser to the Russian President on Internet Development German Klimenko called on Telegram to cooperate with the authorities - otherwise the service, according to him, would be closed. Among the countries capable of taking such a step, Klimenko mentioned the USA, France and Germany. Durov responded by writing on his VKontakte wall that Telegram has not and will not give out personal data and encryption keys to a third party.
Apparently, Roskomnadzor knows something or is guessing about something, but Russian officials are expressly prohibited from using Viber, WhatsApp and Telegram for communication. It is hardly wise to block these services.
The need for control over instant messengers and social networks by domestic intelligence services is a necessary measure, since they have long been closely guarded by Western intelligence services - the NSA in the first place. Leaving this clearing without supervision on our part is the same as unilaterally disarming, and we have already gone through these tricks: a holy place is never empty. And it's not just terrorists. Besides them, there are pedophiles, distributors of child pornography, “blue whales,” and finally, and other scoundrels who perfect their manipulation of people.
Companies have their own interests, regulatory authorities have their own, and they often do not overlap. Let's remember the story of the FBI's attempt to obtain data from the iPhone of one of the terrorists who killed 14 people in California in December 2015. Apple then refused to help the FBI, and they used the services of hackers. Would anyone dare call the method that the FBI was forced to resort to, so to speak, immoral?
And if we additionally remember that some private companies quite openly offer similar methods, such as software for hacking electronic media, information located on the Internet or transmitted through it. This is what Elcomsoft does (a Russian company, by the way), which, among other things, produces various “tools for forensics” necessary for extracting data stored in phone memory, in “cloud” storage, guessing passwords for files, etc. And they are available not only to special services - anyone can buy them directly on the website. Doesn't a private owner's invasion of privacy bother anyone?
The world is becoming more complex, but the world is not becoming safer. Hence all the costs.
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