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

It was the openness of Medvedev’s instruction that shocked us—it was posted on the government’s website. What’s more, it seemed to us that the authorities were trying, somehow, to signal that at the Olympics, watch your back, because we are watching you.

Medvedev’s instruction required the government to store the data collected during the Games for three years and said the FSB must be provided “round-the-clock remote access to the subscriber database.” That means the FSB, operating from a remote location, will have three years to explore by whom, when, and how often athletes, judges, and journalists attending the Games were contacted.

On November 13 three members of the European parliament tabled written questions that raised concerns about surveillance at the Sochi Olympics, referring in particular to our investigation. “Given that everybody seems to be spying on everyone else these days, it seems legitimate to ask questions not only about the EU and the United States but about Russia as well,” said Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch member of the European parliament and the author of the questions. “Russia is a particular problem because of the Olympics, which it is using as a pretext for stepping up surveillance, with no court oversight.” She added, “I hope this will act as a wake-up call.” [14] Shaun Walker, “MEPs Raise Concerns Over Sochi Winter Olympics Surveillance Plans,” Guardian , November 13, 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/meps-concerns-sochi-winter-olympics-surveillance .

On December 29, at 12:45 a.m., a suicide bomber walked in the hall of the railway station in Volgograd, about six hundred miles from the venue of the Olympics, and blew himself up. Eighteen people were killed. The next day around 8:30 a.m., a trolleybus that connects a suburb to Volgograd’s downtown area was hit by a suicide bomber, killing sixteen people. Volgograd is a large city located in the South Federal District of Russia, the same district as Sochi. Militants from Dagestan organized the bombings, which raised fears that the Russian authorities would be unable to secure the Games and that the “ring of steel” Putin had declared was built around Sochi would not stop terrorists. The stakes were high, and Western leaders hastened to offer Putin more help in providing security. Privacy concerns were set aside.

On Sunday, January 19, the Islamic militants in Dagestan claimed responsibility for the bombings. They also delivered a direct threat to the Olympics. In a video posted online two men addressed Putin, “If you hold these Olympics, we will give you a present for the innocent Muslim blood being spilled all around the world: in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Syria.” One of them added, “For the tourists who come, there will be a present, too.” [15] “Islamic Group Claims Volgograd Attacks and Threatens Sochi Visitors,” Associated Press, January 20, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/20/islamic-group-claims-volgograd-threatens-sochi .

A few days before the video was posted, Dokku Umarov, a leader of Islamist extremists on the North Caucasus, was reported to have been killed by Russian forces, but it didn’t eliminate the threat. The Olympics presented a tempting target for militants. In the 2000s strong censorship in the Russian media had deprived the militants of attention, and the movement was in decline. But for the Olympics the eyes of all major global news organizations were to be focused on Sochi.

At the time journalists spotted wanted posters with the images of three women who were suspected suicide bombers, so-called black widows, at the airport and in the Sochi hotels. Police launched an urgent search for possible suicide bombers and distributed the posters further. For months the Russian media had been under pressure to report everything around the Olympics in positive way, and now they were hesitant to report the news that black widows were being sought inside the “ring of steel.” Then a local blog, blogsochi.ru, posted information about these suicide bombers. When NBC reported the news, the Russian media picked up the story. The authorities felt clearly uncomfortable; they had failed to prevent the news from spreading.

Meanwhile, after the publication of our investigation in the Guardian , dozens of Western journalists came to us, asking anxious questions about their communications before traveling to Sochi. Some of them were on their way back from Sochi to Moscow and told us stories of odd happenings with their phones and laptops in Sochi. Wacek Radziwiniwicz from the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza could not connect with the server in Warsaw, and his phone received wrong SMSs. “Our technicians told us not to use public Wi-Fi,” said Nataliya Vasilyeva, Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press. “But sometimes we used it, and every time the system required to provide all details for identification. It was like enter and say, ‘Hello, it’s me.’” [16] Nataliya Vasilyeva, interview with authors, March 2014. Andrei opted not to bring his laptop to Sochi when he traveled to the city with an NBC crew in early January.

Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader in Moscow and a former deputy prime minister, had written a report, published in 2013 and prepared with help from Nikolai Levshits, a civil activist, that documented some of the corruption surrounding contracts for the Olympics. He suggested that more than half of the $50 billion spent on the Games had disappeared. Just before the Games, in January 2014, Levshits applied for a spectator pass to the Olympics. He tried twice, but every time the website sent him the same message: “Your application is rejected.” He also noticed that the website tried to take control of his laptop. [17] Nikolai Levshits, “Sochi-2014: Zaslon dlya ne loyalnikh” [Sochi 2014: The Wall for Not Loyal], New Times , January 27, 2014.

On February 5, two days before the opening ceremonies, Dmitry Kozak, the deputy prime minister responsible for the Olympic preparations, made a tour with foreign journalists around Sochi. Kozak had a surprising response to some criticism expressed by journalists about the conditions in the hotel rooms: “We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall, and then leave the room for the whole day,” he said. [18] Paul Sonne, Gregory L. White, and Joshua Robinson, “Russian Officials Fire Back at Olympic Critics,” Wall Street Journal , February 6, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304680904579366712107461956 . His statement was bizarre but also struck us as containing a fascinating warning: we are watching you, even in the shower.

The Games opened on February 7, and the grand opening ceremony at the Fisht Olympic Stadium lasted for three hours. Forty thousand spectators came to watch the event, and Putin personally greeted the athletes. The official theme of the ceremony was “Dreams of Russia,” and the mood was festive.

That same day the website nosochi2014.com, which had been launched in 2007 to protest the Sochi Olympics and to serve as a reminder of ethnic cleansing carried out against Sochi’s native people—the Circassians—by Czarist Russia, was hacked and infected by malware. [19] Umberto Bacchi, “Sochi Winter Olympics: Circassian Protest Website NoSochi2014 Hacked on Games’ Eve,” International Business Times , February 7, 2014, www.ibtimes.co.uk/sochi-winter-olympics-circassian-protest-website-nosochi2014-hacked-games-eve-1435553 . Citizen Lab experts looked at the site and discovered that the site included a malicious JavaScript hosted on the domain e094bcfdc2d.com, which at the time of investigation, was hosted at an address registered to the Russian State Institute of Information Technologies and Telecommunications in St. Petersburg.