18 February 1999. TTA.
SOURCE: http://www.times.spb.ru/current/internet.htm The St. Petersburg Times, No. 441, Tuesday, 16 February 1999 FSB Sets Sights on Internet Control By Jen Tracy Staff Writer Free-range monitoring of the Internet by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, may soon be as easy as clicking a mouse - a situation that has local service providers forecasting both the demise of their businesses and the complete loss of private electronic correspondence for St. Petersburg's 50,000 Internet users. In fact, industry analysts and providers say, the only thing standing between the FSB and unlimited access to Internet correspondence is a little matter of who picks up the check for the necessary technology. If the FSB has its way, a regulation currently pending approval in the federal Justice Ministry will soon have the service providers themselves paying for the very upgrades that will leave their clients vulnerable to unchecked and unwelcome surveillance. The regulation, SORM-2, is an addition to SORM-1 (Systema operativno-rozysknykh meropriyatii, or System of Ensuring Investigative Activity) - a regulation, already in place in Russia, which allows the FSB to monitor telecommunications transmissions provided it obtains and shows a warrant to providers. SORM-2, if enacted, will add insult to injury - from the perspective of Internet Service Providers, or ISPs - by not only allowing FSB agents to receive information without first showing a warrant, but also passing to ISPs the cost of the technical upgrades required to establish "hotlines" automatically bouncing information directly to FSB computers. Such upgrades, analysts say, will not only set ISPs back thousands of dollars a month but will likely decimate their client base as well. "This is a police-state practice," said Anatoly Levenchuk, a Moscow-based independent Internet analyst who was the first to leak news on the Web of the SORM-2 proposal. "This agency shouldn't be alone in its right to surveillance. Society should be able to audit the agency in return. It's a step towards dictatorship." "We will not, I repeat, will not buy this equipment for the FSB. This is ridiculous," said Andrei Sorokin, executive director of Peterlink, one of the largest of St. Petersburg's 20-odd ISPs. "Ninety-nine percent of our 8,000 clients may not deal with secret information, so we won't lose them on that basis. But we'll have to pass along the costs of the technical requirements to the customers, and then we'll lose them. We're in the middle of a crisis, and they can barely afford the Internet as it is," he said. Both Sorokin and Sergei Zhitinsky, president of Nevalink, say they have already been approached by FSB agents looking for information, although neither would elaborate on what specifically the agents were hoping to find out. Levenchuk, however, claimed to know the true target of SORM-1 and SORM-2, despite FSB assertions that the regulations were designed specifically to target tax evaders and other criminals. "It's not terrorists, mafia, drug dealers or tax evaders who are first," he said. "Journalists are always first, especially foreign journalists who follow politics. They hunt for their sources. I would warn all of them if they're not using cryptography." Internet experts have also argued that individual FSB agents could use the monitoring privileges of SORM-2 to sell company-to-company information on the side. This, Levenchuk said, could do irreparable damage to Russia's already shaky reputation with Western businesses. Furthermore, a Jan. 16 article appearing in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper speculated that the "active ingredient" in SORM-2 was the FSB's ability to alter e-mail messages in order to blackmail or otherwise pressure individuals. Fledgling Internet regulations have become a major topic of concern throughout the world over the past few years. In the United States, no fewer than 30 bills regulating confidentiality and security issues on electronic correspondence are currently under discussion. But according to Alexei Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Fund human rights organization, current Russian law offers opponents of the SORM regulations little form of recourse or resistance. Federal law allows the government to issue decrees regulating areas not already covered by existing legislation, provided they don't violate provisions of the Russian Constitution. In the case of the SORM edicts, this means that the FSB is virtually free to sidestep the checks and balances of standard legislative process. "In general there is no legislation governing the Internet, so this makes it easy for the FSB to make things up as it goes along," he said. "They've tried to appease us by saying [SORM-2] is only a technical question, but all the same they plan to start operating without answering the legal question [about obtaining information without showing a warrant] - this goes against the Russian Constitution's protection of privacy." According to Levenchuk, Russia's current Law on Investigative Activity still technically requires the use of warrants when requesting information. With SORM-2, the FSB can ostensibly work from "home," receiving enormous volumes of information directly to their computers without physically delivering warrants in advance and without having to reveal the nature of the desired information to the ISPs. Even without SORM-2, the FSB has been known to overlook warrant regulations in its past requests for information from ISPs. Sorokin confirmed this, saying that Peterlink had been visited by FSB agents who failed to present a warrant. "We refused to give them information, but they're professional," he said. "They know what to say to us. They threaten to revoke our operating license. We want to protect our clients' rights, but we also have to protect our business. Everyone is afraid." State Duma Deputy Yury Nesterov, a St. Petersburg native, is one local offical who has been fighting, and losing, the legal battle against the FSB. "Everything that concerns SORM-2 is illegal," Nesterov said. "We are in a very bad position to do anything about it, because everything we do requires a legal procedure and is out in the open - whereas everything the FSB does is secret and under the table. Only the providers and users can fight this fight." No one from the FSB was available to comment on the issue. Though they are not making any immediate plans, St. Petersburg providers say that when the FSB comes asking for cooperation with the SORM-2 provisions - as Levenchuk said has already happened with a number of Moscow ISPs - they will present a united front of opposition. "We will band together and fight them," Sorokin said. "The FSB can't close an entire market." To this, Levenchuk said he wasn't so sure. "In Moscow they tried to organize an anti-SORM movement. Only three providers joined and they were immediately called to the FSB, which threatened to revoke their licenses. They lasted all of five minutes. St. Petersburg will do the same. The FSB usually wins these things." According to Levenchuk, the only association in Russia that could ostensibly serve as a watchdog group on Internet privacy issues is the Moscow-based RANS, or Russian Association of Networks and Services - which, in addition to a handful of providers, has six FSB members on its board. Boris Pustinsev, chairman of the St. Petersburg-based Citizens' Watch, seemed equally doubtful that the ISPs would meet with much success in their efforts to resist the SORM decrees. "I'm sorry to say that they will probably only be successful at going broke," he said. But, he added, "if 51 percent of St. Petersburg providers unite and fight the FSB, they will be successful. And we'll stand behind them and broadcast this throughout the world. The FSB can't close them all down. That would be a scandal of international proportions, and Russia can't have that right now." Levenchuk, however, said that so far the FSB is testing the limits of how far it can take its authority - and providers are letting them. Besides, he added, the problem is a much bigger one. "The movement towards freedom will change over the next two years," he said. "The Internet has changed the face of the world, but it is all new to Russia. Many Russians don't understand the concept of checks and balances. In our country there's no discussion of it. It's a problem of educating the people - starting from the ground up. It's no use fighting the FSB when no one understands what the fight is for." Copyright 1999 The St. Petersburg Times.