BOOK REVIEW -THE RED WEB

BOOK REVIEW APRIL 7, 2020 Book Review – The Red Web by Adrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan (2015) Elisha Ngwana RST727 Russian Politics & Statecraft BOOK REVIEW – THE RED WEB 1 OUTLINE Page Book Brief – The Red Web ..………………………………………………………………………..…... 2 Information is Power – Who Controls the Russian internet (Runet) ……………….… 2 The Prison of information ………………………………………………………………..….. 2 Revolt of the Wired (The Arab Spring & Colored Revolutions ..………….…. 4 Putin strikes back (Persistent DDoS Attacks) ……………………………………..… 5 We just came up with the hardware ……………………………………………………. 6 The Snowden Affair ………………………………………………………………………….…. 7 Putin’s Overseas Offensive ……………………………………………………………..…. 8 Watch your back …………………………………………………………………………..…… 9 The Big Red Button ……………………………………………………………………….…... 9 Moscow’s Long Shadow ………………………………………………………………....…. 11 Information runs free ……………………………………………………………………....... 11 Other Opinions about internet censorship in Russia …………………………………….… 12 Analysis …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 15 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………..…………..…. 15 Reference …………………………………………………………………………………..…………………. 16 2 THE RED WEB - Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan - BOOK SUMMARY Book Brief: KGB becomes FSB, inheriting all surveillance technology developed during the Soviet era. These include SORM tapping into the Russian internet traffic located in the building where half of phone-traffic passes through, Station M9 with critical Internet Exchange point MSK-IX. SORM intercepts calls, reads emails, monitors social media & all digital communications. The book is in two parts, part one deals with the information environment after the collapse of the Soviet Union until the advent of Putin and the introduction of modern communication social media platforms in Russia. Part two handles the reign of assertive Putin, coming of Snowden and reprisal attacks, regulations and monitoring in modern Russia. The desire for government information control clashes with modern-day desires for internet freedoms in an inter-connected Russia. This review starts with the book, then other opinions and concluded with an analysis. “INFORMATION IS POWER” – WHO CONTROLS THE RUSSIAN INETRNET (RUNET) The Prison of Information The Soviet Union’s secret research facility housing imprisoned engineers, mathematicians, and linguists forced to work on developing a secure telephone system to listen and identify callers (phonocopy) for Stalin during the Soviet days. These Sharakas researched on surveillance equipment with the most renowned being the camp of Marfino (sharashka) under the Ministry of State Security. There were some Russian Jews who were heavily invested in these researches but a purge of Jews from the administration caused demotions and forced transfers. Thus, Jewish inventions like the first photocopy machine made in Russia (electrophotography) were confiscated and destroyed for fear of being misused to mass-produce material offensive to the state. The Soviet regime stifled the flow of information even after buying several Xerox machines from the West. Khrushchev took over after Stalin’s death in 1953 and ushered in the period of the Thaw where more freedoms were granted, nationalistic groups flourished and Jews who wanted to emigrant were allowed. These were highlighted in Khrushchev’s party speech codenamed the “Secret Speech'' denouncing the repressive policies of Stalin. However, this was short-lived as Brezhnev ousted Khrushchev and re-introduced information control. Even with rigid controls dissidents still found a way to spread unauthorized materials though not at a fast pace due to lack of copiers. Stalin’s information control stifled even the Church replacing them with heavy propaganda louder speakers in most streets which started and ended the day with the Russian anthem. Generations lived by without know the difference between information and propaganda. Newspapers, telex, phone calls and television were tightly controlled by the State. There was widespread jamming of radio signals from outside Russia; deploying 350 jammers in 1949, 600 by 1950, 1,000 jammers by 1955 and 700 in Soviet bloc countries to jam 70 Western 3 transmitters. By 1986 the Soviets had 13 powerful long-range jammers and 1,300 others in USSR. These were dismantled by Gorbachev. The KGB requested for more powers to monitor and restrict international calls mostly made by those of Jewish origin. However, the Jews shared a samizdat book that was passed around for daily readings only. The Jews also used public calling offices which required booking. These encouraged most Jews to become Zionist and seek a return to Israel. Some were arrested & imprisoned for short periods while eventually left to leave the Soviet Union. This illustrate a very restricted information environment with very few avenues to spread critical information. But the advent of the internet in the early 1990s Russia changed these dynamics. However, online platforms were cheap to run without the need for paid investigative journalists, faster for publication with less scrutiny and bloggers became journalists within seconds and a platform for aggrieved unemployed journalists to vent their anger against the Kremlin. It was much easier to generate a huge online following than generate sales in print media as most of the blog content was free. Once influential media outlets like Gazeta.ru, Kommersant were bought over by government loyalists. Putin handed the Presidency to Dmitry Medvedev who was once his campaign manager in May 2008. Medvedev portrayed himself as a libertarian accommodating to the new internet society, but he was still a Putin loyalist. Just a few months later after Medvedev took power the Russian-Georgian six-day war broke out and the Kremlin received a huge rebuke from the online media for such aggression. Yandex was the top search engine and millions of Russians consumed more news from this website than any frontpage newspaper. The internet had emerged as a major household item in Russian society. The Sovereign democracy definition of Russia was to ensure Russia was void of external influences, this was accomplished by creating pro-Kremlin youth organizations to counter street protesters to prevent the ushering of Orange Revolutions which had gripped Georgia and Ukraine. Kremlin officials took interest in Yandex’s algorithm of selecting top news content. Bloggers sought to appear top in Yandex news rankings which meant those opposing Kremlin could be read more if their stories were enticing enough - not good for Kremlin. The prospect of friendship with the Kremlin was complicated as it meant Yandex would lose the trust of its followers which was more valuable. Medvedev went further to transform the Ministry of Interior structure from organized crime and terrorism to simply counter extremism. There was large scale surveillance on religious and political groups as the 2008 global financial crisis hit Russia and the government expected serious ramifications. Advanced surveillance technology like CCTV cameras, drones, facial recognition software were installed at transportation stations. To target the expanding online media, the regime hired “hacker patriots” who carried out massive Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS) exemplified by the Estonian, Georgia and Lithuanian events. These attacks disrupted the service delivery of critical blogs and sites. These hacker patriots were made of pro-Kremlin youths recruited within Russia who were tech-savvy like the Nashi group and the youth wing of pro-Kremlin political Unity party (called Molodaya Gvardiya or Young Guard). The Kremlin “School of Bloggers” was launched in August 2009 consisting of 80 people from across Russia. 4 Alexy Navalny, a lawyer by profession, had sought political prominence but was largely unsuccessful to discover the power of blogging in Russia. He organized anti-immigration marches against Russia’s involvement in the Caucasus, even bought shares in state-owned corporations to give him access to questions or even sue the CEOs for corruption. These include Rosneft, Gazprom, and Transneft. When Navalny posted documents of how 120 billion rubles disappeared from the construction of the Eastern Siberian pipeline project, he became an instantaneous blogger hero and opposition leader. The Russian Middle Class fell in love with Navalny. Revolt of the Wired (The Arab Spring & Colored Revolutions) The Arab Spring of early 2011 was a turning point for the Russian regime as massive protests had ousted Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned, and Kremlin viewed this as a pre-course for an eventual Russian revolt. The Western intervention in Libya and Color Revolutions also sprang great doubt in the minds of Putin and Medvedev who saw this as an eventual threat to the Kremlin. Former Soviet friendly leaders were replaced by pro-West backers, encroaching on Russia's sphere of influence. Putin got suspicious of Twitter and Facebook as CIA tools used to cause chaos in a disorganized fashion (leaderless movements). Security agencies could not identify ringleaders to be targeted nor did they know the precise moment things could explode. This was troubling for the Kremlin who preferred firm control on all aspects of life. On the other hand, Medvedev was presented as a digital revolution leader who believed in the economy of computer and information technology. He engaged with Digital October, a startup group, visited Silicon Valley and supported many modernization projects. The old bureaucracy Putin had installed with his friends and loyalists seems too corrupt for the Middle Class who did not benefit much for the extensive commodities wealth of Russia. Parks were renovated and free Wi-Fi was provided increasing the number of the middle class in Moscow. This created uncertainty if Medvedev or Putin would announce an election bid. In September 2011 Putin & Medvedev jointly announced Putin’s return to the Presidency. This was met with total disappointment to those who wanted a new digital, modern Russia. A signal of the end of democracy, liberalism, and modernization. Some even considered self-exile. Widespread disdain for Putin’s return caused angry urbanites to create multiple online elections monitoring sites which included Grazhdanin Nablutel (Citizen Observer), Ros Vybori (Russian Elections), Liga Nabluaterlei (League of Observers) and others. Thousands of people volunteered to be election observers during the 2011 Parliamentary vote which eventually brought Putin to power. Putin brought economic stability and was a trade-off which the Middle class was bound to accept. This group chose a leader Grigory Melkonyants who set up a hotline for fraud reporting and an interactive map with data that anyone could contribute adverse activities during the polls. Even popular new website Gazeta.ru opted to share the map on their front-page. The fraud was extensive, some actors caught while the Golos map reported 7,000 fraud incidents were reported. For example, the Rostov region tallied 146% of total votes interesting. This was followed by widespread anger on the streets as people protested the brazen theft of elections. Police responded with forces arresting over 300 people including Alexy 5 Navalny. Social media countered with numeric criticizing posts against the government. Those detained got 15 days of jail time respectively. Putin Strikes Back (Persistent DDoS attacks) Putin targeted many online news sites and blogs including LiveJournal which was the favorite site for information before the Parliamentary elections. The attack was in the form of DDoS on its servers forcing it to shut down. This same tactic was employed against 14 other sites that ran criticism forums on Putin. These included sites of new sites, online TV, magazine sites, discussion blogs to force them out of service for the entire election day. For instance, there were about 200,000 - 250,000 bots that sent high volume traffic requests to Slon.ru causing an overload and crashing the site. When the websites went to reset mode (Qrator) these attacks persisted to keep them down. Golos had to use google docs to upload the election results. The first wave attacks targeted the larger sites while those with fewer readers experienced the second wave attacks. DDoS attacks were not new in Russia but had been perfected as in 2002 the Chechen rebel website Kavkaz.org was targeted. The Russian regime used Students in the Siberian town of Tomsk to launch these attacks with the FSB supporting them as their right of expression as citizens - patriot hackers. The Kremlin has never accepted responsibility for these attacks but most of their chat rooms have been focused on targeting the Kremlin’s adversaries like Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania. Renowned Russian cybersecurity expert, Eugene Kaspersky, denied any involvement in the DDoS attacks even though he confirmed the occurrence. These DDoS attacks were short term reprieves as these bloggers simply relaunched new websites with their saved backup contents. Notably, most had Facebook pages which they hopped on for communication with followers. Facebook was much more popular than most of their sites and the servers for Facebook are in the United States beyond the reach of the Russian government. The Russian version of Facebook, VKontakte was asked to block 7 protest groups on their site but they refused despite the threat of legal prosecution. The pro-Kremlin groups responded by releasing taped conversations between opposition leaders which were damaging with very limited success of reducing sympathizers. Things only got worse as tens of thousands of angry citizens were intricately linked on social media. Putin held a live press conference (Direct Line) to show his confidence in winning the forthcoming Presidential Elections but was not happy with the protests proposing the installation of video cameras at polling stations. Putin blamed the West for fueling the protests as part of the Orange Revolution. He even accused the Russian opposition of helping to oust the Ukrainian President - Yuschenko. To him, Ukraine was a testing ground for the grand finales in Russia. Putin also made a mockery of the ribbon symbol the protesters used saying “condom up”. These only further ignited the protesters to contribute finances online via Yandex exchange to organize future rallies. A request for 3 million rubble yielded 4 million. A hundred thousand protesters poured on the street rejected the notion of Putin becoming President for a second time. Prominent poets, writers, businessmen, society leaders 6 took part in these December rallies. Even former government officials participated in the surprise of most. Alexy Navalny was the main speaker and had just been released from jail a few days earlier. Navalny spoke harsh words of criticism with less strategic thoughts which made some doubt his capability to lead Russia. His limitation as just an internet blogger was exposed. Such huge protests forced Putin to replace his Deputy Chief at the Presidency. These protests yield less politically as they had no strong candidate to counter Putin at the polls. At the close of the poll, Putin won with 63.3%. Then began the next phase of cyberattacks in the form of spear-phishing which were thousands of emails promoting protests Putin wrapped with malicious attachments containing malware. The single-line email had a Trojan installed in the attachment labeled program for the protest. However, people had become aware of previous attacks and were suspicious of these emails. The protest was huge, Police made it difficult to manage and the leaders were arrested (27 of them) as the Kremlin used force to disperse the protesters. The next day May 7, 2012, Putin was sworn in for a third term as President. The Duma approved legislation for the registration of banned sites under the pretext of child protection. This gave the executive blanket powers to ban sites across Russia. A meeting between the Deputy and a few internet companies yielded fruits of blocking pages, not entire sites and if possible, choosing technology that filters content. The item on the menu was establishing a censored internet using DPI technology which attracted the world’s larger DPI manufacturers to Moscow; American Cisco & Procera, Israeli Allot, Canada’s Sandvine and China’s Huawei. This technology allowed the filtration of content according to set government parameters. All three telecom operators had a DPI partner; VimpelCom installed Procera DPI, MegaFon had Huawei DPI and MTS hosted Cisco technology. The DPI was a more efficient way of interception in the age of cloud computing than the SORM system alone. This prepared the groundwork for government TV stations to launch attacks on protesters with all sorts of accusations. Stations like Dozhd TV which have opposition to a voice on mass media came under immense pressure to tone down or be blacklisted. Yandex lost its pioneer due to the new filtering system of DPI. We just Come up with the Hardware Facial recognition software companies like Ladakom-Service provided high-tech facial recognition technology to the Russian government. These tools were used during football matches, public events to capture faces of attendees and matched with government databases for identification. A tool that was used for catching criminals had been transformed into surveillance equipment. These are fed with images from CCTV cameras installed in business streets, metro stations, rallies just to name a few. The system was so advanced that it scanned 10 million images within 7 seconds. Imprisoned Engineers in the Sharakas of Marfino had invented phonocopy the science of voice identification. They also worked on creating a secure phone for Stalin and continue to work on other voice identification projects. This technique was used to catch a spy in the Ministry of 7 Foreign Affairs who gave away Russian atomic secrets to the Americans. Today this building houses the National Research Institute No 2 producing listening sets, radio devices. They succeeded in bugging the US Ambassador in 1945 via a camouflage US Seal as a gift to the envoy. The facility became a major research center for the KGB and later FSB and even funded several universities’ research. More research led to the integration of both voices, image characteristics - Biometric data. The technology was meant to pursue criminals but in the hands of FSB became a powerful surveillance tool. It was able to identify individuals from voices of speech fragments. Mexico was the perfect test ground for this technology as all these data were collected for every citizen irrespective of whether law abiding or criminals. A perfect population control software for authoritarian nations like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus with repressive ones as Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Yemen, and Turkey by 2012. SpeechPro, a company incorporated in the United States by former KGB scientists, has been instrumental in developing speech recognition software and covert listening via muted mobile devices. Gazprom bank acquired 35% of the company. Russian scientists were less concerned about ethical values in their inventions than their Western counterparts. Companies like Protein configured SORM and other technologies for export to other nations. The Snowden Affair By the late 2000s, the internet had evolved from basic messaging platforms to chat forums, search engines, real-time information monitoring despite the filtering employed by the Russian regime only particular IP addresses or web pages or websites could be blocked. The Kremlin created the Roskomnadzor which oversaw setting watchwords that could be used to trace sites. The selling point of filtering was to combat pornography and narcotics and by 2012 about 591 sites were blacklisted. The Kremlin had the most powerful tool to take on critical online media for the first time thanks to DPI technology. Filtration was a technique used by private online newspapers to block out DDoS attacks from pro-Kremlin hackers. Thus, it was a two-way street for both the Kremlin and opponents, though it could coincidently block out entire sites if words mismatched or misidentified. These pro-Kremlin hackers deploy a new form of attack called DNS amplification whereby the host servers of the websites were targeted. These could affect entire websites hosted in a single compromised server thus requires a higher level of sophistication. The Russian internet supervisory agencies requested Facebook and Twitter to take down some accounts/pages or risk being blocked in Russia which they complied - a huge victory for the global reach of Russia’s control mechanisms. Some groups emerged in 2012 to sanitize the internet by taking down sites with prohibited materials like Cyberguards of the Safe Internet League. The SIL claimed to have processed 37,400 complaints which show how the Kremlin used hacktivists alongside FSB spying technologies to clamp down on online critics. Even Putin’s political party launched the Media Gvardiya (Media Guard) consisting of 3,699 members for the same purpose of taking down 2,474 pages. 8 Snowden’s arrival in Moscow in 2013 was a dynamic Putin could never have thought of. Snowden released metadata of US vast surveillance activities without the appropriate authorization. En route to South America, his passport was revoked, and Snowden got stuck in the Russian airport. This period clashed with Putin’s continual effort of widespread filtering of the internet - two opposites. Snowden’s entry to Moscow raised the issue of digital sovereignty for Russian citizens. The Duma supported the Kremlin in requesting the transfer of Facebook, Google and Twitter servers to Russia which could have been followed by the installation of SORM on them. Snowden though propagating freedoms did not criticize Putin’s squeezing of digital media in Russia - was being coerced? The Communication Minister expanded the SORM requirement instructing telecom companies to hold data for 12 hours minimum and for SORM to be installed on all communications servers. A few of these telecom companies protested this move as an abuse of privacy rights and incurring high costs as they needed at least 6 petabytes to store daily data from Runet. After the successful management of the Sochi Winter Olympics and annexation of Crimea, Putin’s popularity soared to over 85%. Putin went further to sign the “Bloggers Law” which restricted online forums critical to the Russian regime. It required bloggers with more than 3,000 followers to register with the government and maintain computer records of everything they post for 6 months. This law was the start of transferring servers of bloggers to Runet under the Kremlin’s control. While Russia’s Association of Electronic Communication awarded Snowdon for his bravery, Kremlin enacted new laws in 2015 specifying that web pages without authors or links to other offensive material could be taken down - Wikipedia was in danger. Putin’s Overseas Offensive Putin viewed the internet as a CIA project to control the world and he had to end the supremacy of the United States. The internet control policies he initiated in Russia sought to export them to the rest of the world. Putin wanted the world to know he has the right to control all Russian internet traffic and even post abroad which challenged his power. The Russian government sought to push through a UN General Assembly Resolution with the notion that terrorist groups could use it for nefarious purposes when they were hiding the atrocities of the Chechen war in 1998. This was the battleground for cyberwarfare. The Western nation contracted this assertion celebrating the internet as an information superhighway. The Kremlin drafted the Doctrine for Information Security of the Russian Federation for cryptographic information protection by 1999 arguing the need to protect the sanity of the Russian culture void from foreign manipulation. However, the government's efforts disbanded the FAPSI in 2003 and initiated the Moscow State University in further research on the internet. By 2009, Moscow proposed a collaborative partnership with Washington to regulate the internet by creating an international organization to control cyber-weapons like previous bilateral treaties between the two countries. When this effort to transform ICANN failed, the Kremlin decided to persuade the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) which had at its lead a Malian education in Moscow. The events of the Arab which deposed several leaders in the Arab world compelled Moscow to exploit the capabilities of ITU further than ever envisaged to instill rigid 9 internet control. This persuasion was demonstrated during the December 2012 ITU Conference in Dubai where a couple of nations aligned with Russian for global internet administration - China, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. Google launched a powerful counter to the Russian effort by May of 2012 forcing over 50 participants including Western government to threaten a walkout from the conference of 193 nations if the bill was not withdrawn immediately. The success for liberal as short-lived as Snowden’s revelations of 2013 about the United States’ surveillance program opened a new can of worms against internet freedoms with the Kremlin seeking the most stringent rules. Germany's Deutsche Telekom threatened to create a national German internet to protect citizens from the prying eyes of the United States with France seeking to host European internet traffic and data in Europe only. President Obama initiated the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission for cyber confidence building. This was exciting for Russia that repeated internet censorship calls during the Sao Paulo NETmundial Conference in April 2013 with Kremlin’s calls for ICANN to hand over all powers to ITU. That same month Putin declared the internet was a CIA project. This created a new doubt about the future of the internet both within and without Russia. Watch Your Back The Canadian research company Citizen Lab has created in 2001 thanks to the generosity of the Ford Foundation to investigate the hidden surveillance and content filtering on global networks. This effort focused on repressive regimes' intrusive tactics to the extent that 103 countries filter their internet content (even the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama was a target). Both Citizen’s Lab and British Privacy International were contributors to this book. Citizen Lab discovered extensive FSB surveillance activities during the Sochi Olympics which was used to test the advanced capabilities of the redesigned SORM. The KGB’s surveillance techniques of 1980 during the first games with the invented SORM was perfected to an advanced level to collect the private data of millions of participants. Within six years, Russia expanded the SORM program intercepting phone conversations and emails a hundred percent over - 265,937 in 2007 and 539,864 by 2012. Privacy International warned travelers to the Sochi Olympics to buy new gadgets, sanitize existing ones, and avoid being in the wrong places. Sometimes surveillance has been instrumental in solving crimes like the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings which killed three people and injured 250 others. The analysis of surveillance cameras led officers to the location of the two brothers who perpetrated the acts. Russia offered enormous support to the United States during these events. Learning from this the FSB stepped up rigid controls making sure everyone was recognizable with the initiated of the “Safe Sochi” program which cost over $48 million. The Big Red Button Though the Sochi games were successful and hitch-free, Putin was not happy as it ended with the ouster of his good friend the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The Color 10 Revolutions whereby pro-Kremlin former Soviet states leaders were ousted by mammoth protests organized via the use of social media platforms was a new dynamic Kremlin was not ready to welcome. This resulted in the forced annexation of Crimea, tightening of information controls and ramping up of financial support to pro-Kremlin online activists to counter critics, dissuade protest groups - predate.com i.e. traitors. Crimea organized a hurried referendum on March 16 to officially join the Russian Federation. This move skyrocketed Putin’s approval ratings to a level never seen before. An emboldened Putin had one major score to settle - control the internet. The Kremlin instructed the internal internet regulator Roskomnadzor, to block sites critical of the government's policies and most were either bought or blocked or branded as unpatriotic. As with every human endeavor, these sites resorted to registered with a foreign domain like .com, .us whereby when you open their blocked .ru pages you were redirected to a secondary subnet website. This allowed them to dodge the internet filtering. The state argued it was important to protect children from harmful content which the web created rejected as a ploy to stifle their freedoms. By 2014 Russia had four categories of blocked web pages - first were those deemed to be extremist; second were those considered to propagate child pornography, suicide, and drugs; the third those with copyright issues and fourth were mostly those that organized protests without state approval. Tor, the dark web browser became a favorite tool to circumvent the authorities. The major problem was how do you teach millions of readers to navigate Tor which needed specialized skills, thus these sites risk losing millions of followers. The solution was creating a single directory of blocked sites with links to their Tor pages codenamed Freedom from Roskomnadzor project on LiveJournal.com and later Rublaclist.net (Roskomsvoboda). Later a better solution was found whereby they installed a big red button on their blocked page and when readers click this button, this took them to foreign-registered domains of the same web pages. Also, the IP addresses of pro-Kremlin activists were installed and masked on critical sites so that when the government agency blocked that IP it was instead blocking its supporters than critics. This created more issues for the Kremlin as filtering was getting just half the work done. These critics registered between 150-200 subdomains which were switched around often, to make matters worse they published the names, logos, and duties of that in charge of blocking websites in the state agency. The Kremlin bought those they could, suspended satellite access for TV/Radio stations, intimidated owners to sell their shares of any media that covered critical news programs or criticized the government using the two-strike rule. However, the Facebook-like VKontakte and Google-like Yandex survived this purge. Other more powerful outlets like BBC Russia refused to succumb to such censorship. These efforts to suppress online media were extended to BuzzFeed, Facebook, Google and Twitter with little success - a new reality for Putin. Facebook had previously complied with releasing data of 19 Ukrainian activists but changed course when they received new requests after heavy criticism. 11 Moscow’s Long Shadow A Facebook post by Ukrainian activist/journalist, Mustafa Nayyem, organizing a massive protest in Kyiv started the November 21, 2013 revolt that ousted Kremlin’s strongman Yanukovych from Ukraine. A Facebook group called Euromaidan was the central organizing authority of the protests providing information, strategies to outsmart security forces, schedule, planning, legal and political advice. These protests expanded rapidly when a major TV channel broadcasted the hotline of Euromaidan. This presented Ukrainian security forces (SBU) loyal to Moscow to demonstrate their advanced cyber capabilities using the intrusive SORM. The protests received SMS messages that their identities had been established as a scare tactic. The telecom companies refused to send these messages but claimed the security forces had used an IMSI catcher device which mimics a cell tower within a defined location for mass messaging. This was a new capability that even Moscow SORM did not yet have meaning the Ukrainian program was far intrusive and could interfere directly with communication they didn't like, not just mere listening. Ukraine had less rigid cyber capabilities and Moscow easily deployed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the Information Agency UNIAN. This motivated both private cybersecurity individuals to join forces with the Ministry of Interior to fend off the Russian attacks. Ukraine and Russia share the same culture, with over 20 million Russian speakers in the Eastern part of the country making it easy to spread disinformation over popular social media platforms like VKontakte. Groups of trolls spread inflammatory, extraneous or off-topic messages to disrupt, provoke and intimidate protesters. These were like troll activities (of a group like Vedomosti) against France and Italy which were less successful despite the eloquent posts due to differences in culture (untrustworthiness of strange posts without identifiable accounts). Fake, edited photos from the war in Syria were pushed over Ukrainian networks especially the Donetsk region. Slogans like “Ukrainian army is killing Donbas people” or #SaveDonbassPeople were a staple. A troll group of 250 people had the target of 135 comments per person per day - totaling 33,750 trolls daily. US Diplomats Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt were victims of SORM phone tapping as their conversations were altered to degrade Ukrainian people - extensive disinformation. This was the height of intrusion and the SORM manufacturer, IskraUraltel was excited about such advanced capabilities. The ability for Ukraine to have such advanced SORM capabilities was due to the close ties Kyiv maintained with Moscow. Information Runs Free The Kremlin's response to the above was to force the creator of VKontakte out of the company by selling all his shares to a Putin supporter. Yandex on its part was threatened to register as a media company to threaten the two-strikes rule. VKontakte was modeled after Facebook, with the same fonts, styles, colors, and displays with a focus on Russian culture. This attracted users from the public and private sectors as well as the military. It was this platform that exposed the presence of Russian forces in Ukraine despite repeated denials from Putin. Soldiers often posted pictures of their weapons, artillery, and tanks with Ukrainian signposts behind them. VKontakte 12 refused to give Moscow data on Euromaidan group organizers and close opposition leader, Alexi Navalny’s anti-corruption group. Putin requested these prominent foreign online platforms like Facebook to build their servers in Moscow accusing them of the United States’ plan to monopolize the internet. The second shock was when Putin criticized foreign companies which had Westerners on their Board of Directors, a common initiative required for raising funds for IT companies without government support. VKontakte was the first victim of how the Kremlin's pressure can bear on internet service companies, a stark warning even for global giants like Kaspersky which has several Americans on their board. Some other companies like Luxoft had relocated their offices out of Russia and others were debating whether to follow. Despite all these repressive tactics after more than a decade the Russian internet has grown into a $143 billion annual business, employing over 1.3 million people, generating 8.5% of Russia's GDP and accounts for 2.5% of trades. Putin even launched the Agency of Strategic Initiatives to support the industry not just for technological advances but most importantly loyalty. The Kremlin's current project to build a domestic internet inaccessible from abroad is called Cheburashka, named after a popular children cartoon hero character. The entire Russian territory is connected by terrestrial-fiber optic cables owned by state agency Rostelecom, having just a dozen internet exchange points compared with 80 for the United States. Putin's last-ditch effort is to transfer the domain administrative power from the Kolesnikov Research Center to the government which will effectively put all Russian domains under the thumb of the state. OTHER OPINIONS ABOUT INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN RUSSIA The BBC Moscow Analyst Sarah Rainford noted in January 2019 that the new law of internet censorship in Russia gives the government sweeping powers to switch off websites within the national territory or even internationally to improve cybersecurity. The “sovereign internet” law has been touted by the Kremlin as not having any significant changes to already existing laws, but simply keeps bad actors offline for the safety of society. During emergencies as defined under Russian law, the government has the sole prerogative to determine what is allowed, permitted or illegal. Moscow sees the internet as the vast realm of information control which they must bring under their command after having disseminated several radio and TV stations for over two decades. All telecoms companies must install DPI (deep packet inspection) devices which Soldatov called SORM for the monitoring of internet content, traffic, origin, and destination. ProKremlin supporters advocate for a centralized internet system whereby all Russian data is stored on servers in Moscow for national security. To them, these actions will shield Russia from attacks from abroad. These come at the backdrop of the United States intelligence accusing the GRU of exploiting the internet to interfere in the 2016 Presidential Elections. Also, the Duma has OK'd Putin’s plan by passing two controversial laws in early 2019 outlawing the disrespect of state authority and prohibiting the spread of “fake news” in Russia. All these are meant to preempt preparation in an event that Russia is shut out of the global internet as exemplified with the mounting sanctions from the West - thus, the term “sovereign” the ability to survive on one’s self without reliance on others. By implication, the West might have played an indirect unwitty role in encouraging Russia to go full-scale censorship on their domestic internet. The popular 13 Telegram messaging app will be the main target of such repressive internet laws as the last attempt flopped due to masking of the real IP address with those of Kremlin loyalists - creating a wide-scale shutdown for government supporters. 1 According to Maria Domanska, the Russian State Duma Bill on “Sovereign Internet” focused on mitigating the risks of an eventual severance of Runet from the external networks as this could disrupt life in Russia. Thus, this was an infrastructure to serve as a backup plan in the case of a calamity. Interestingly, the internet started in the same fashion in the United States during the peak of the Cold War to serve as a back-up of sensitive data and information in case of a nuclear holocaust - a result of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia during the 1960s. The law instructed telecom companies to gather and store data on transfer routes, internet exchange points, and cross-border links for a couple of weeks and this information had to be readily available to the state when need be. Also, an autonomous DNS system was to be created independent of the internationally ICANN in charge of the issuance of country domain names. Russia failed to bring the power of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) on ICANN and resorted to leaving the organization altogether this 2020. This Westphalia form of independence propagated by Moscow argues that they have the God-given rights to determine how their internal politics and communications are conducted including the use of the internet. The Color Revolutions had scared the ruling class and Oligarchs who did not want a repeat of such an event in their homeland - Russia. Thus, the Kremlin opted for a proactive approach this time as the internet had appeared to be a formidable force when it wanted to re-ascend to power. He was never going to let his faith be determined by the powers of bloggers and online journalists. Current prominent social media platforms have proven to be too recalcitrant enough beyond the complete control of Moscow as they possess a deep understanding of how to manipulate and mask their websites by hosting them on foreign servers beyond the reach of the administration. But if all internal websites were forced to register on Russian issued domains, maintain data on Russian servers and need authorization from the State to operate, then there will be no hiding place for the internet entrepreneurs as previously announced by Putin. Such a move simplifies the work of the security agencies too in data harvesting on all Russian citizens and residents. 2 The Times of Israel highlighted a University of Michigan Study which reveals that Russia is largely succeeding in controlling the thousands of internet service providers. This model proves that decentralized internet operators can be forced to succumb to rigid state control mechanisms with the possibility of being exported to other countries the likes of China and Iran. Russia effectively created a blueprint of how to crack down on thousands of service providers like Western internet societies. The Kremlin established nix between the Duma and Security agencies to effectively achieve the feat of legalizing internet control within its border stringently and even request foreign service providers to adhere to Moscow’s rules. With legitimacy from the Duma, Kremlin compelled all telecom companies to install intrusive devices at their costs, not the state. 1 Sarah Rainsford, Russia internet: Law introducing new controls, BBC Moscow (January 2019) pp 1 3 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50259597 Maria Domanska, The Runet Fortress: the Kremlin’s struggle with the hostile internet, OSW Poland (April 2019) pp 1-4 2 14 Russia has shut down internet service in regions where mass protests have erupted, and African nations like Cameroon have followed this model to shut down the internet for three whole months to quell protests. Even though Moscow desires for complete internet control, the government does not have the technical capabilities to carry out broad censorship. The Kremlin relies mostly on a few Western privately-owned companies like Cisco (United States), Procera Networks (United States), Huawei Technology (China), Allot Communications (Israel), EcoFilter & VAS Experts (Russia). Therefore, these companies are effectively participating in this censorship program and profiting handsomely from it. Thanks to the technology of these companies, Roskomnadzor has blocked 132,798 internet domains in just seven years 2012 - 2019 (63% in Russian and 28% in English). 3 Moreover, Steven Wilson argues that most blocked websites in Russia were justified as mere political statements rather than outright persecution of the opposition. This is shown when primary sites were blocked but the secondary host sites were left to run despite the authorities knowing all the details of these secondary sites. Even the block on Navalny's blog was uplifted and some were given the option to remove terrorist-related materials for their sites to be unblocked. These internet bloggers were a nuisance but did not pose a severe threat to Putin who could crush them within days if he ever wanted to. Putin also needed these critics to exist in a realm that was viewed by the West as credible opponents when they could not create a revolution strong enough to oust him. The appearance of the existence of opposition in Russia meant the country will be viewed as moving to more democratic tolerance - thus, more Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) from the West. Thus, Kremlin’s half-handed repressive tactics were more of political maneuvers to avoid stringent criticism from the West and provided Putin a trump card option to use during any period of real crisis with global powers. It was a single-use option during negotiations for global internet censorship or conflict against Western interference which Putin wanted to keep open to maximize its full potential rather than waste it on a few recalcitrant online critics.4 Lastly, a study by American and Russian Sociologist discovered that 49% of Russians support and 58% do not mind the government’s internet censorship for the interest of national security. This was the conclusion of the “Benchmarking Public Demand: Russia’s Appetite for Internet Control”. About a third of Russians do not use the internet which means they do not share the sympathies of Kremlin’s online critics while viewing some as Western propagandists. Child pornography was the top reason for those who supported internet censorship and the prevalence of vague threats traded on the web annoyed others. However, there has been a vague ban on the internet initiated since 2014 when websites could be blocked without a court order for indefinite periods. If the Security agency felt like it, they could use the excuse of communication with terrorists or propagation of hostile activities to ban suspicious web pages. Even local District courts that count in their thousands in Russia’s 42 regions have the power to ban prominent websites like Facebook and Google. The creation of a Federal Register of banned websites was another intimidation strategy which the government implemented. Most Russian citizens view it as the obligation of the state to protect life, infrastructure, and property from any 3 4 Tami Abdollah, Russia is succeeding in censoring the internet, study show, Times of Israel (Nov 2019) pp 1 - 4 Steven Wilson, The logic of Russian internet censorship, The Washington Post (March 2014) pp 1 - 3 15 eventual cyber threats which may befall Russia. Thus, they do not mind the Kremlin's repressive activities so far as they are meant to guarantee their protection and safety. The study concluded that most citizens favored internet censorship as this did not impact their daily lives directly and most were mere political spectators than actors.5 ANALYSIS The Red Web book portrays a detailed description of the origins, growth, and transformation of the internet as well as information in Russia focusing on how Kremlin took subsequent actions to control information. The Fall of the Soviet Union presented new democratic practices in Russia as the people sought more information sharing, enjoyed certain freedoms to communicate with the outside world and the taking down of Soviet jammers. The ascend of President Putin to the Kremlin introduced a new phase especially after the Russian economic recovery of the 1990s. By the early 2000s, Putin had grappled with how to use or manage the cyberspace. The barrier of entry was very low with no formal training, registrations nor the expectation of ethical standards. Due to heavy-handed measures which Kremlin used on traditional media organs; critics sought comfort in the new information superhighway which did not need editorial approvals, concerns about national security nor care about the feelings of the government. The cost of losing an investment incurred by running a website was much lower than losing a print journal and there was the possibility of running multiple sites at once without any additional costs. Putin tried to woo the online media to be supportive of the Kremlin promising them support in their development process, but these cyber entrepreneurs sought fame, foreign investments, and a free-for-all forum to air their grievances. Kremlin created its band of cyber ninjas to counter online pressures from these platforms. Pro-Kremlin hacktivists did not just post counter-messaging propaganda, they collaborated with the security forces to launch multiple Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on sites and servers of opposition figures like Navalny. An agency was established in 2012 just to banned disloyal websites. As necessity has always been the mother of invention, these opponents implemented various tactics like registering abroad, masking IPs, changing names or using VPNs to counter the government’s censorship. Kremlin saw this as blatant disrespect for his authority and expanded the powers of the state telecoms departments, security forces and courts to clamp down further. Russia even sought to request for an international treaty to censor the cyberspace via the ITU. When this failed, Kremlin opted for a “Sovereign internet” which can work autonomously without the global net. CONCLUSION Kremlin’s ability to control the flow of information online will determine its ability to maintain a firm grip on power. Internet entrepreneurs still pose a serious threat to Putin’s ability to have a nation void of critics. If Russia can convince ICANN to hand over domain registration powers to a state agency or if Russia creates its domain registry requiring every local entity to re-register, 5 Yekaterina Sinelschekiva, Why Russians Support Internet Censorship, Russia Beyond (Aug 2015) pp 1 - 3 16 then this will give the authorities complete control over the internet. However, these efforts are limited to an extent as there are multiple technologies available in the open market which are purposely created to circumvent such censorship. The best Putin can down be slow the online readership (audience) to an extent that most Russians do not care about these critical online platforms. In so far as more and more Russians turn to these platforms for information, there will always be the motivation to counter government censorship with new technics. What the people want, they always look for ways to get it, especially in modern societies. REFERENCES 1. Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan, The Red Web, Public Affairs New York (2015) 2. Sarah Rainsford, Russia internet: Law introducing new controls, BBC Moscow (January 2019) 3. Maria Dominika, The Runet Fortress: The Kremlin’s struggle with the hostile internet, OSW Poland (April 2019) 4. Tami Abdollah, Russia is succeeding in censoring the internet, study show, Times of Israel (Nov 2019) 5. Steven Wilson, The logic of Russian internet censorship, The Washington Post (March 2014) 6. Yekaterina Sinelschekiva, Why Russians Support Internet Censorship, Russia Beyond (Aug 2015)