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

Then, a theatrical pause.

“Mr. President, you have a question from former intelligence agent Edward Snowden!”

Putin grinned:

“Do I really?”

Then Snowden’s Skype call appeared on the screen. His first word was in Russian: “Zdravstvuyte”—Hello.

Then he proceeded in English:

I’d like to ask you a question about the mass surveillance of online communications and the bulk collection of private records by intelligence and law enforcement services. Recently, the United States, two independent White House investigations, as well as a federal court all concluded that these programs are ineffective in stopping terrorism. They also found that they unreasonably intrude into the private lives of ordinary citizens—individuals who have never been suspected of any wrongdoing or criminal activity; and that these kinds of programs are not the least intrusive means available to such agencies for these investigative purposes. Now, I’ve seen little public discussion of Russia’s own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance. So I’d like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store, or analyze in any way the communications of millions of individuals, and do you believe that simply increasing the effectiveness of intelligence or law enforcement investigations can justify placing societies—rather than subjects—under surveillance? Thank you. [29] Transcript, “Direct Line with Vladimir Putin,” Kremlin, April 17, 2014, http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/7034 .

The host in the studio, journalist Kirill Kleymenov, asked Putin, “Mr. President, did you get the gist of the question?”

Putin, obviously pleased with the question, replied, “Yes, by and large.”

Nevertheless Kleymenov—after praising Putin’s ability to speak English (Putin laughed, saying American English is slightly different)—tried to translate the question. He almost missed the introductory part about the White House investigations and mistranslated the part about the debate in Russia over surveillance, saying there is a large debate in Russia, and then posed a question about mass surveillance.

Putin began his reply with a joke. “Mr. Snowden, you are a former intelligence officer, and I,”—a pause, and the audience started to giggle—“worked for an intelligence agency too. So let’s talk like two professionals.” Putin then insisted that Russian laws strictly regulate the use of special equipment by the security services, including for the tapping of private conversations and for the surveillance of online communications. Putin emphasized that a court warrant is needed to use the equipment in each particular case. “So there is no, and cannot be any, indiscriminate mass surveillance under Russian law,” Putin declared.

“Yes, we do surveillance on the Internet,” Putin allowed, “but not on such a large scale and not arbitrarily. Besides,”—and here he smiled slyly—“we do not have such technical capabilities and funds as the United States.” [30] Ibid.

Putin’s answer was a classic obfuscation, just like the one he gave NTV journalists more than a decade earlier in the library of the Kremlin.

At first we were encouraged that Snowden at last started talking about Russia’s tightening surveillance of the Internet, hoping it could provoke a public debate about SORM—Andrei made this point in his public comments. But Snowden was heavily criticized for taking part in a Putin show, and the next day he published an op-ed in the Guardian answering his critics. “I was surprised that people who witnessed me risk my life to expose the surveillance practices of my own country could not believe that I might also criticize the surveillance policies of Russia, a country to which I have sworn no allegiance, without ulterior motive,” he wrote. “I regret that my question could be misinterpreted, and that it enabled many to ignore the substance of the question—and Putin’s evasive response—in order to speculate, wildly and incorrectly, about my motives for asking it.”

Snowden added, “The investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, perhaps the single most prominent critic of Russia’s surveillance apparatus (and someone who has repeatedly criticized me in the past year), described my question as ‘extremely important for Russia.’ According to the Daily Beast , Soldatov said it could lift a de facto ban on public conversations about state eavesdropping. Others have pointed out that Putin’s response appears to be the strongest denial of involvement in mass surveillance ever given by a Russian leader—a denial that is, generously speaking, likely to be revisited by journalists.” [31] Edward Snowden, “Vladimir Putin Must Be Called to Account on Surveillance Just Like Obama,” Guardian , April 18, 2014, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/18/vladimir-putin-surveillance-us-leaders-snowden .

In the end Snowden’s question didn’t provoke a debate in Russia over surveillance. Nor did it stop the Kremlin.

On May 5 Putin signed a new law aimed at tightening the controls over the many popular online bloggers in Russia who carried out lively and relatively free debates on the Internet. Widely known as the “Bloggers Law,” it was a part of a broader rewrite of Russia’s antiterrorism statute, started in January 2014, which expanded the already-vast clout of the country’s Federal Security Service and altered penalties for terrorism and extremism crimes. The new law required bloggers with more than three thousand followers—which was many of them—to register with the government. Registration was more than a mere formality; it would give the security services a way to track them, intimidate them, or close them down. Once registered like the news media, a blogger would be subject to state regulation. In addition to the registration, the law required that bloggers could not remain anonymous and that social media would maintain computer records on Russian soil of everything posted over the previous six months. The law marked a first legislative step to force the global social media to relocate their servers to Russia. At their headquarters in California, both Twitter and Facebook said they were studying the law but would not comment further.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 presaged still more efforts to control the Internet. Ksenzov, the chief censor at Roskomnadzor, became more and more aggressive on Twitter against the demonstrators in Ukraine, whose Maidan uprising, named after the square in Kiev, had touched off the crisis. The Maidan demonstrations frightened Putin too.

Ksenzov lashed out at the US, Russian, and international media in a string of angry tweets. In one of them he accused CNN of being “insane” for quoting Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former White House national security advisor. Then, on May 16, he attacked Twitter itself, and this time it was much more serious. In an interview with Izvestia , the largest pro-Kremlin daily newspaper, Ksenzov claimed that Twitter promotes the interests of the United States and then added, “We can tomorrow block Twitter or Facebook in Russia. It will take few minutes. We do not see this as a big risk. If at any point we decide that the impact of disabling of social networks will be less significant compared to the harm caused by the unconstructive position of management of international companies for Russian society, we will do what is required to do by law.” The threat was the most categorical yet made in public. Medvedev, serving as prime minister, criticized Ksenzov, and Roskomnadzor did not officially enforce Ksenzov’s statement. But he was unrepentant. The same day on Twitter he said, “Not going to make excuses. Responsible for my words.”

Twitter got the message. A few days later it blocked accounts of the radical Ukrainian party Pravy Sector for Russian users, saying the action was in response to a Russian court order. The action marked another success for the Kremlin’s effort to tame the global Internet giants, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the United States took note and made a good point about Twitter’s decision: “There are two ways that Twitter’s actions are disappointing. First, Twitter has no employees or assets in Russia, so it should not have to comply with a Russian court order at all. And the order isn’t even about a Russian account—it’s a Ukrainian one. Worse yet, Pravy Sector’s account is plainly political. If Twitter won’t stand up for political speech in a country where independent media is increasingly under attack, what will it stand for?”