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

It sounded rather unobjectionable. But the Western delegations were certain that this clause was intended, among other things, to support actions by governments that want to control content on the Internet, as Russia was striving to do. Kramer said the treaty was “seeking to insert governmental control over Internet governance” and, in a dramatic moment, walked out of the hall, destroying any prospects for a treaty. [22] AFP, “Confusion on Internet Future After UN Treaty Split,” December 16, 2012, www.securityweek.com/confusion-internet-future-after-un-treaty-split . On the whole, fifty-five countries refused to sign the new treaty, including Western European and Anglo-Saxon nations, and their refusal to sign the new treaty meant that the document simply could not be implemented.

Krutskikh was the only Russian official in Dubai willing to comment. “The Americans are the fathers and mothers of the Internet, and we have to appreciate that,” he said with bitterness. “But words like ‘Internet’ and ‘security’ should not be treated like curse words. They have been treated like curse words by some delegations at this conference.” [23] Eric Pfanner, “U.S. Rejects Telecommunications Treaty,” New York Times , December 13, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/technology/14iht-treaty14.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1& .

The Kremlin had sought to recruit nations from around the world to change the rules of the Internet to give authoritarian countries the ability to censor it. But it didn’t work. The nations involved in building the Internet, chiefly the United States, were dead set against it.

Krutskikh’s dream slipped away.

A few months after the ITU disaster Krutskikh took part in a conference on information security in Russia. He spoke at length about the threats to Russia on the Internet, and when he finished, Irina approached him and asked for a comment about what had happened in Dubai. He was both angry and passionate, stating that the Russian initiative didn’t fail because it was never officially on the table. Then he exclaimed, “We have not lost! Eighty-nine countries support us!” He vowed that Russia would continue to promote its model of global Internet regulation in every possible forum.

Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance of Internet and telephone metadata in 2013 prompted other countries to start thinking in terms of “national sovereignty” on the Internet, and the United States faced widespread condemnation and criticism. Brazil’s communications minister said that local ISPs could be required to store data on servers within the country, saying local control over data was a “matter of national sovereignty.” Later, Germany’s Deutsche Telekom declared that it wanted to create a national Internet to protect Germany from privacy infringements. In February 2014 German chancellor Angela Merkel, furious at the disclosure that the NSA had monitored her cell phone, raised the prospect with French president François Hollande to build a European network so as to avoid data passing through US servers.

In June 2013 Presidents Obama and Putin agreed to establish a new working group within the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission as part of a cyber security confidence-building measure between the two countries. To chair the group from the Russian side Putin appointed deputy secretary of the Security Council Klimashin, and Krutskikh was made the group’s cocoordinator. [24] The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Fact Sheet: U.S.-Russian Cooperation on Information and Communications Technology Security,” June 17, 2013, www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/17/fact-sheet-us-russian-cooperation-information-and-communications-technol . Putin clearly still trusted Krutskikh and his generals. The new working group gathered for the first time in November in Washington; the participants, our sources told us, consciously left Snowden’s name out of the talks.

Krutskikh got a second chance. In February 2014 Putin appointed him his special representative for international negotiations on Internet regulation. On April 23–24, in São Paulo, Brazil, a conference was held, NETmundial. Provoked by Edward Snowden’s revelations, it was a two-day global meeting on the topic of Internet governance. Nikiforov, the Russian minister of communications, noted that the conference delivered a standing ovation after a speaker expressed words of gratitude to Snowden. Nikiforov delivered welcoming remarks prepared by Krutskikh, and they had all his usual hallmarks—attacks on ICANN and calls to hand over all powers to the ITU. But against Nikiforov’s expectations, the speech didn’t go over well—the participants simply ignored Russia’s proposals.

The very next day in Moscow Putin declared that the Internet was a “CIA project” and that Russia needed to be protected from it. [25] Ewan MacAskill, “Putin Calls Internet a ‘CIA Project’ Renewing Fears of Web Breakup,” Guardian , April 24, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/24/vladimir-putin-web-breakup-internet-cia . His remarks were reported far and wide, overshadowing the Russian presentation at the conference, and Nikiforov’s speech was omitted from the documents of NETmundial. The Russian ministry was outraged and published a protest on its site. [26] Minkomsvyaz Rossii, “Rabota nad itogovimi documentami NETmundial-2014 neprozrachna” [The Ministry of Communications of Russia: The Work on Resulting Documents of NETmundial 2014 is Nontransparent], April 25, 2014, http://minsvyaz.ru/ru/events/30026 .

Many countries were unhappy with the way the Internet was governed, but it didn’t mean they would march in lockstep with Russia. They could be very critical of US dominance on the Internet or the way their citizens’ personal data was circulated, but they were not ready to turn the global network into a collection of local Internets under the control of national governments.

The Kremlin’s attempt to change the global rules of the Internet fell flat. But there were other ways Putin could experiment with digital sovereignty—for example, in a small, beautiful town on the Black Sea.

In the center of Toronto, on Bloor Street, on a cold day in March 2013 we walked up the steps of a two-story English-style mansion with a tall round tower attached to it. During World War II the building was used to train pilots to identify weather patterns, but now it is part of the University of Toronto. Inside we found a bunch of geeks and researchers who worked to identify surveillance and filtering equipment on communications around the world.

We were met by Professor Ron Deibert, forty-nine years old, who, as a scholar, was deeply interested in the impact of the Internet on world politics. In the mid-1990s he moved to the University of Toronto because it had been the home of Canadian communications theorists Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. In 2001 the Ford Foundation offered him a $250,000 grant to conduct research on the Internet and international security, giving rise to a research center known as the Citizen Lab. [1] Andrew Mitrovica, “The Troublemaker,” UofTMagazine , Autumn 2009, www.magazine.utoronto.ca/autumn-2009/profile-of-u-of-t-citizen-lab-founder-professor-ron-deibert . Deibert recruited ex-hackers, programmers, and researchers in an effort to discover hidden surveillance and content filtering on global networks.

In a few years Citizen Lab emerged as a primary source of data on repressive regimes’ Internet intrusions and attacks on their critics and opponents. In 2009 they identified a massive intrusion into the computers of the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, and on computers in 103 countries. The intrusion was called “GhostNet” and was believed to have emanated from China. Citizen Lab also revealed malware campaigns against Syrian activists and exposed how a remote intrusion and surveillance software called FinFisher was used against protesters in Bahrain and political dissidents in Malaysia and Ethiopia.