State secret services mull banning leading global Internet portals in Russia
In a classical display of blatant lack of coordination between different parts of the so-called Kremlin’s rigid power system vertical, while a local Moscow municipal administration chief was proudly displaying how he had used the Skype telephony communication technology to help disabled pensioners in his district communicate with relatives and municipal authority officials in his district, another government agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), announced drastic moves to curtail the use of such Internet-based technologies in the country.
These contradictory actions are much in line with the ‘the right hand does not what the left hand is doing proverb,’ and are very typical of most government’s policies on vital issues. Thus, to show its seriousness, FSB, the today’s successor of the legendary Soviet KGB that reports directly to the Russian president in the Kremlin, moved from merely expressing serious concerns over the growing popularity of major foreign-based Internet communication portals to more concrete steps, calling in April for an outright ban of Skype, Hotmail and Gmail, amongst others, in the country.
The security agency’s reasons and arguments for the ban are grounded in stone: “the uncontrollable use of such services by citizens and the law-enforcement agencies’ inability to freely access and monitor the services’ content traffics pose a real risk to Russia’s national security interests.” If the FSB gets its way, Russia will find itself among such countries as Iran, Algeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and exotic dictatorship regimes across the globe, where several modern Internet-based communication gadgets have been completely or temporarily banned on national security grounds.
The seriousness of FSB’s intention was further underscored by the fact the disclosure was not made via the agency’s secret in-house channel as an official recommendation for higher political authorities, but was made openly at a session of the State Commission for Federal Communications and Technological Issues of Informatization, an official organ that oversees Internet and related issues in the country. As one of the meeting participants put it, ‘from the text read out by Alexander Andreyechkin, the director of the FSB’s Center for Protection of Information and Special Communication Routes, the security agency was advocating for ‘banning the use of these foreign-based communication services in Russia.’
The origin of problem
The bone of contention is that the FSB and other elite secret services — under a 2000 law that authorizes security agencies to monitor conversations of suspects without a court ruling — have legal ways of monitoring domestic Internet communications, but they do not have such legal jurisdiction over overseas-based email and telephony services portals. Apart from the use of this traditionally vague expression ‘posing threats to national security,’ the other reasons forcing the FSB to seek the adoption of such a radical and controversial policy in a country that has developed an allergic reaction to all forms of censorship after over 75 years of Soviet draconian totalitarianism have remained a tightly a guarded secret as most of the FSB’s view on this issue was aired behind closed doors.
“If FSB gets its way, Russia will find itself among countries with exotic dictatorship regimes across the globe, where Internet-based technologies and gadgets have been banned on national security grounds.”
Arguing for the abolition policy, the FSB official, according to those present at the meeting, noted that the use of cryptographic tools and foreign algorithm codes in public networks has in recent times become a source of worry for his agency, as the uncontrollable use of these tools poses a huge risk to Russia’s national security interests. If the position of the FSB could be understood, taking into consideration the agency’s job profile, its traditionally unique spymaniac behavior and absolute lack of trust in systems or gadgets that are outside its total control, then the meek stance of the Ministry of Information and Mass Communication, a mainly civilian institution that oversees communication issues in the country, on the issue, has justifiably raised a ‘red flag’ in the society.
This stemmed from the fact that, instead of standing up to the FSB at the meeting, the ministry almost sided with the security agency, as it does not really exclude the possibility of introducing much stricter regulation of the use of foreign communication services in Russia. “Though these services are located on foreign servers, they have lots of users in Russia. Therefore, it is impossible to ban citizens from using them,” Ilya Massukh, the deputy information and mass communication minister, said.
Massukh, however, went on to seriously dilute this unequivocal stance by saying that “we need to look for other means” to find an exit from this dilemma. His colleague, Naum Marder, another deputy information and mass communication minister, was even more concrete: “All these services need to be put under the state’s control. Therefore, we need to draw up normative requirements for Internet services operators that they need to strictly follow and be held responsible within the frameworks of their licensing obligations.”
These two federal agencies were not the only bodies involved in the discussion. Indeed, the proposed restrictions or outright abolition of these email service systems are a part of a broader policy to ‘effectively monitor, regulate and manage the use of publicly accessed Internet-based networks in Russia,’ according to the official blueprint. Interestingly, the FSB’s initiative has also received preliminary support from the banking community. However, the bankers’ support stemmed their belief that the absence of effective control over the Internet in Russia has created fertile grounds for criminal gangs as well as professional and amateur hackers to attack financial institutions with absolute impunity, and without fear of legal and financial retributions from both the hacked banks and law-enforcement agencies. Citing concrete cases, the bankers pointed to 2008, when the national banking system came under massive cyberattacks that led to huge losses. The scale of the attack prompted the Central Bank to rally round the most severely hit banks by pumping billions of rubles into the system to prevent mass bankruptcies and destructive bank runs on the remaining ones.
FSB’s initiative contravenes Kremlin’s Internet development policy
However, it is not clear how all these new initiatives, notably, the restrictive regulatory measures on free email services portals, will rhyme with one of President Dmitry Medvedev’s key signature policies, “Electronic Russia,” whose end objective has been described as the “Creation of an Open Information-based Society” in the country and turning “Russia into a “Modern Electronic Government.”
Expectedly, the Kremlin has outrightly condemned the initiatives, with a top Kremlin staff calling the proposals ‘a private position’ of the FSB that doesn't reflect state policy on Internet development. “Andreyechkin went beyond his authority because security services have no right to define state policy in the sphere of Internet technologies," the Kremlin official added. But the news from Russia’s White House headed by the nation’s powerful prime minster and ex-President Vladimir Putin, whose pedigree comes from the KGB, was not as encouraging.
Thus, commenting on the issue, Putin, specially noting that he does not share the FSB’s point of view on banning these portals, however, stressed that he does understand Russian secret services’ growing concerns over the probable threats to our country from such portals. “The Internet is not only a tool for solving the most important economic tasks and social problems, but also an opportunity for dialogs, self-expression and improving citizens’ life quality and living conditions,” he added. “However, the control over most of these Internet-based resources is not in our hands, as they are located overseas. This is what worries our special services; by this I mean the possibility of using of these resources in ways that contradict the general interests of our society.”
In a related development, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, almost echoing his boss’ stance on the issue, called the FSB’s stance ‘a professional, but not the final view on this policy. “The decision on the future of these services in Russia will be made after considering all interested parties’ points of views on this issue,” he noted. “One of these is the view aired by FSB, which is more than justified, both from the points of view of the tasks being solved by the security agency and from the arguments put forward in its support,” he noted. “On the other hand, there are other views, which, along with that of the FSB, need to be comprehensively studied and analyzed within the frameworks of the State Commission, after which a single policy position will be formulated.”
Experts’ reactions and opinions
However, top local security experts, including Gennady Gudkov, an ex-top KGB official that currently serves as the deputy chairman of the Duma’s Security Committee, do not fully understand why the FSB wants to ban these services, rather seeking cooperation with their owners on contested issues. “Common logic calls for collaboration with service owners, thus the FSB ought to request encryption keys to contents it is interested in, rather seeking an outright ban of such services,” he added. The legislator also noted that some types of Russian defense weapons are equipped with foreign-made computer blocs and electronic systems that are completely ‘black’ boxes. “Thus, if we go down along the banning road, then we also ought to ban computers and other foreign-made electronic gadgets on the same premise that they could compromise Russia’s national security.”
Besides, the FSB certainly has the necessary capabilities — both the manpower and technological expertise — to decipher all encryption codes, irrespective of their origins, but it seems it wants to do its job the simplest way, other security and digital information protection experts said. “The FSB is fully capable of cracking these services’ secret codes, but doing so will require lots of efforts and resources, which the security services, naturally, are not eager to do,” Ilya Ponomaryov, a top State Duma’s Information Policy Committee member, added.
Other experts, including those from the threatened foreign-based telecommunication services, citing international experiences, say even if security agencies cannot decipher sophisticated codes, they have legal rights to demand such information from the codes owners. Therefore, the ban proposal hit them like a thunderbolt, especially as they have said they are ready to cooperate on such issues if official requests are made through the right legal channels.
Thus, commenting on these issues, Alla Zabrovskaya, the spokesperson for Google Russia, the local subsidiary of U.S.-based Google, which owns the Gmail portal, noted that the company was ready to cooperate with the local law enforcement agencies, but added that ‘the FSB or other official security agencies have never requested for any information from the company.’ Similar views were aired by the other threatened portals owners — Microsoft, the owner of the Hotmail portal and Skype — as they also have declared their willing to cooperate with the law-enforcement agencies on all relevant security issues.
Window of hope for censorship-free Internet
The divergent positions of the so-called ruling tandem — the president and prime minister — has a left a window of hope that this restrictive policy was the ‘brain child’ of only the FSB, and has not been sanctioned by the nation’s highest political authorities. The key issue now is how to unify all the different views and come up with a single policy statement on the type of cryptography in free emails portals that can be used freely by citizens in the country.
The fact that all the parties involved have agreed to set up an Interdepartmental Working Group to review all the options on the table and work out a set of recommendations for the government by October 1 on the best way to realize this highly controversial social policy that can have serious international economic and political implications for Russia is a good sign that censorship of private communications could still be avoided.
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