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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Under surveillance in Russia |
| 2016-11-09 |
| [AlJazeera] Towards the end of September, I received a few emails from Google informing me that someone tried to break into my email. It was not the first time I had received messages like that, so the first thing I did was check the email address from which they were sent. The links in the emails led to phishing websites made to look like Gmail and if I had put my password there, hackers would have gained control over my email. In late September and early October, dozens of other Russian journalists, activists and workers in NGOs such as Transparency International received similar phishing emails. This is the biggest wave of hacking attacks on dissidents in Russia so far, but by far not the first one. I have been encountering such phishing emails since 2014 and it is not a secret who is behind them. Back then in 2014, the hacking group which was behind such attempts was known as Pawn Storm; today after the attacks on the servers of the US State Department, this group has become known as Fancy Bear. Just in case, I sent the emails to four different organisations dealing with cyber security and they confirmed that they originated from Fancy Bear/Pawn Storm. This is the group that regularly attacks people and institutions of interest to the Kremlin: from Russian opposition politicians and journalists, to NATO and US political organisations. They are attacking not just email accounts, but also various messengers. For example, the Telegram accounts of two Russian activists - Grigory Alburov and Oleg Kozlovski - were hacked. The perpetrators managed to break in by intercepting the SMS confirmation sent through the mobile operator. Some internet companies have also actively been cooperating with the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the General Administration for Combating Extremism. Those companies who do not cooperate with the FSB start facing problems. It was resistance to the FSB demanding access to the social networking site Vkontakte that resulted in its founder leaving his post as chief executive of his company and departing from Russia for good. I was on a watch list for a while. It would happen that during a regular train ride, I would be approached and taken to a local police station for a "preventative chat". It would be a completely meaningless action whose only purpose was to make me understand: "We are watching you closely." But these days, state surveillance has been expanding beyond spying on the usual suspects. Most recently, under the guise of a sociological study, a survey was carried out in Russian universities to probe protest activity and readiness. The organiser of the survey admitted that the information on all students who showed opposition attitudes were submitted to the authorities. The state is not even trying to hide the extensive surveillance over its citizens. State TV and websites regularly release "leaks" discrediting public figures; they are usually obtained through email hacks, phone tapping and hidden cameras. Sometimes these "leaks" contain genuine information, sometimes they are fabricated and sometimes both. All these instruments - following, threatening and campaigns for discrediting - are typical of the Soviet times and, of course, they are well-known to Vladimir Putin as a former KGB agent. But why is it specifically in the past few years that we see this intense activity of the secret services in controlling public sentiments? The reasons are several and the main one is economics. For the first time since Putin came to power, the standard of living in Russia has started to deteriorate due to the drop in oil prices. Sanctions are exacerbating the situation. According to the official statistics, the number of people living under the poverty line has increased over the past year and a half to 23 million people, while the proportion of the population which spends all of their money for food has almost doubled from 22 percent to 41 percent. Some commentators have objected, saying that not everything is "so bad" since there are no mass protests. Regardless of that, the state over the past few years has done everything to rein in independent media and political movements. It seems all this surveillance and intimidation is working quite well. |
| Posted by:Pappy |