Андрей Солдатов - The Red Web - The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries

Mishenkov explained to Andrei that the ministry’s central research institute in Moscow had traditionally been responsible for intercity phone lines, so naturally they got the assignment to handle the SORM black boxes for those. The St. Petersburg institute historically worked on local phone stations, so of course they were assigned the black boxes for local phones. When cell phones appeared, a third institute was put in charge of intercepting cell phone calls. [9] Sergei Mishenkov, interview with Soldatov, August 2014. All of it was to help the FSB snoop on anybody.

After Gusev’s hostile reaction, Andrei didn’t have high expectations for his conversation with Mishenkov. But he had one small fact in the back of his mind: he had heard from another source that the real history of the SORM system could be traced to a place that Mishenkov had, so far, neglected to mention—the KGB’s top-secret research institute at Kuchino. [10] We found several articles online by Vitaly Vekhov about SORM in journals close to the secret services, Zashita informatsii Inside [Protection of Information, Inside] and Operativno-Rosysknoe Pravo [Operation-Research Law: The Volume of the Volgograd Academy of the Interior Ministry]. Vekhov is a criminologist from Volgograd with a long and successful career in Russian law enforcement agencies, ending at the central apparatus of the Investigative Committee of Russia in Moscow. In all his work he repeats that “the formal emergence of SORM took place in the mid 1980s when one of the KGB’s Research Institutes finalized its tactical and technical guidelines.” When we contacted Vekhov, he replied to an e-mail, confirming that development of SORM started in the 1980s. When we asked what particular KGB research facility he meant, he replied simply, “Kuchino NII of the KGB.”

“Kuchino?” Soldatov asked Mishenkov, almost casually.

Much to his surprise, Mishenkov nodded affirmatively. All the other institutes had done some research, but the birthplace of SORM was behind the walls at Kuchino, about twelve miles east of Moscow. Kuchino was the oldest research facility of the Soviet police state, and it had been in service as far back as 1929 for Stalin’s NKVD, a forerunner to the KGB. Kuchino had a storied history of accomplishments, such as figuring out how to intercept a human voice from the vibrations of a window. It was the sharashka—the prison camp—where the talented engineer Lev Kopelev had worked from January to December 1954.

Even today the facility is heavily guarded and the engineers carry the rank of officers in the FSB. [11] In August 1955 the chairman of the KGB, Ivan Serov, turned the Kuchino laboratory into the Central Scientific-Research Institute of Special Equipment, or, by its Russian acronym, TsNIIST.

We understood that we needed to find someone in the FSB to explain more about how SORM worked and how the technology originated. But this task proved nearly impossible. For years the FSB had been closed and inaccessible to journalists. The press office stopped responding to media requests; they didn’t care about public opinion anymore. After all, the rise of President Vladimir Putin had given the FSB a huge lift in power and resources.

We noticed in the documents the signature of Andrei Bykov, who was deputy director of the FSB from 1992 to 1996, holding the rank of colonel-general. Before 1992 he had been head of the KGB Operative-Technical Department, in charge of bugging, interception, and technical surveillance operations. It was Bykov whom the chairman of the KGB ordered on December 5, 1991, to hand over to the United States the documents that confirmed the bugging of the new US Embassy building in Moscow. [12] KGB agents posing as laborers bugged the US Embassy in Moscow during its construction in the 1970s. When discovered in the early 1980s, it was found that even the concrete columns were riddled with bugs, and the eight-story, cubic monolith became known as an “Eight-Story Microphone.” The building was abandoned and the case seemed to have no solution until 1991 when Vadim Bakatin, the head of the KGB at the time, gave an order to present US Ambassador Robert Strauss with the blueprints for the embassy bugs. In July 2000, after a complete renovation, including a new top to the building, it was finally opened. In the 1990s Bykov’s signature was on most of the SORM documents.

When he left the FSB, Bykov followed the path of many former security officers—he went to work at a private company, in this case a communications business.

Andrei tried to call, then sent an e-mail leaving his cell phone number.

That same day Andrei’s cell phone rang. He answered it. A few minutes later, looking shocked, he hung up.

“What happened?” asked Irina.

“You know who it was? It was Bykov!” he said. “I’ve never had a colonel-general of the FSB call me back!”

“What did he say?” Irina asked.

“He offered to meet in person,” Andrei replied. “He said the topic of SORM is not a phone conversation.”

Bykov offered to meet the next morning at ten o’ clock on Lubyanka Square, near the monument to victims of repressions. “There is usually nobody there in the morning, so we won’t miss each other,” he told Andrei and then hung up the phone. His voice was brusque, and Andrei thought Bykov might refuse to meet in a coffee shop. The next morning it was raining, and Soldatov went early, walked to the nearest café, ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, and carried them to the rendezvous point.

Lubyanka Square is rectangular. On one side is the new luxury St. Regis Nikolskaya Hotel, on another the Detsky Mir department store, and three huge buildings of the FSB stand clockwise nearby; first, the so-called new building constructed in the early 1980s, then the main building—the most famous—headquarters of the central apparatus of the Soviet and Russian secret police, and finally the angular building built in the mid-1980s to house the Computation Center of the KGB, now the Information Security Center of the FSB.

On the south side of the square there is a small rectangular park lined by trees. To get to it requires walking through an underpass, beneath the busy traffic above. In the part facing the FSB there is a large, raw stone on a small pedestal and a tiny space before it. In October 1990 the stone was brought from the prison camp, Solovki, which was part of the gulag system, to honor victims of Stalin’s repressions. The space before the monument is usually empty but fills up every October when Muscovites gather to read aloud the names of victims in a commemoration ceremony. It was there Bykov chose to meet.

When Andrei exited the underpass near the stone, he saw a small, round-shouldered figure in an oversized gray suit that hung loosely on him. Bykov had gray hair combed back, sunken cheeks, and held an umbrella. As Andrei feared, he refused to walk to a coffee shop. Bykov also refused to have the coffee or tea Andrei brought. Andrei didn’t know what to do with the two cups, so he put them on the bench facing the monument. Bykov firmly declined the offer to sit down, saying, “We can have a walk around,” and the two of them circled the bench as they talked.

“My office was in the new building,” said Bykov, pointing to the edifice on the left.

Bykov, an engineer by training, studied at the Moscow State Technical University in Department No. 6, which focused on small arms research. Within three years after graduation he was recruited by the KGB. In 1966 he entered the KGB’s Operative-Technical Department and rose up through its ranks to become department chief. The department in earlier years had supervised sharashkas in Marfino and Kuchino. Bykov spent his career developing new kinds of weapons and special equipment, including listening devices.