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Revision as of 14:46, 16 January 2009
It has been claimed, that Internet operations by Russian secret police services include a variety of "active measures" to influence the world events, including denial of service attacks, hacker attacks, dissemination of disinformation over the internet, participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, internet surveillance using SORM technology, and persecution of cyber-dissidents. According to author and intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov [1], some of these activities are coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB but has been formerly a part of 16th KGB department, but others are directed by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Propaganda and disinformation
According to former senior Russian intelligence officer Sergei Tretyakov, who defected in the United States in 2000, he often sent his servicemen to branches of New York Public Library where they got access to the Internet without anyone knowing their identity. They placed propaganda and disinformation to various web sites and sent it in e-mails to US broadcasters [2]. The articles or messages were not written by the intelligence officers, by prepared in advance by Russian experts, often with references to bogus sources[2]. The texts were mostly accurate but always contained a "kernel of disinformation". The purpose of these active measures was to support Russian foreign policy, to create good image of Russia, to promote ant-American feelings and "to cause dissension and unrest inside the US"[2]. Tretyakov did not specified the targeted web sites, but made clear they selected the sites which are most convenient for distributing the specific disinformation. During his work in New York in the end of 1990s, one of the most frequent disinformation subjects was War in Chechnya.
According to Soldatov, one of the Russian teams, who called themselves GRU officers, was actively involved in a disinformation campaign prior to US invasion of Iraq[1].
Cyberattacks
Some believe that Russian secret police services organized a number of denial of service attacks as a part of their Cyber-warfare against other countries [3], most notably 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia and 2008 cyberattacks on Georgia and Azerbaijan. One of young Russian hackers said that he was paid by the Russian state security services to lead the hacker attacks on NATO computers. He was majoring computer sciences at the Department of the Defense of Information. His tuition was paid by the FSB [4] According to Soldatov, a hacker attack on his web site Agentura was apparently directed by the secret services in the middle of Moscow theater hostage crisis[1].
Disruption of political blogs
The appearance of Russian state security teams in RuNet was first described in 2003 by journalist Anna Polyanskaya [5] (a former assistant to assassinated Russian politician Galina Starovoitova[6]), historian Andrey Krivov and political activist Ivan Lomako. They claimed the appearance of organized and fairly professional "brigades", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who were working in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy Internet forums and Internet newspapers of RuNet.[7].
Russian agents in Polish web sites
According to claims of anonymous "Polish experts on Russian affairs", reported by the Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny in 2005, at least a dozen active Russian agents work in Poland, also investigating the Polish Internet. The same anonymous source claims that the agents scrutinize Polish websites (like those supporting Belarusian opposition), and also perform such actions, as—for instance—contributing to Internet forums on large portals (like Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, WP.pl). Labeled as Polish Internet users, they incite anti-Semitic or anti-Ukrainian discussions or disavow articles published on the web, according to the source.[8]
"LiveJournal fighters"
A member of National Bolshevik Party Roman Sadykhov claimed that he secretly infiltrated pro-Kremlin organizations of "LiveJournal fighters", allegedly directed and paid from the Kremlin and instructions given to them by Vladislav Surkov, a close aide of Vladimir Putin [9] Surkov allegedly called Livejournal "a very important sector of work" [10] and said that people's brains must be "nationalized".
See also
References
- ^ a b c State control over the internet, a talk show by Yevgenia Albats at the Echo of Moscow, January 22, 2006; interview with Andrei Soldatov and others
- ^ a b c Pete Earley, "Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War", Penguin Books, 2007, ISBN-13 978-0-399-15439-3, pages 194-195
- ^ Cyberspace and the changing nature of warfare. Strategists must be aware that part of every political and military conflict will take place on the internet, says Kenneth Geers.
- ^ Andrew Meier, Black Earth. W.W. Norton & Company, 2003, ISBN 0-393-05178-1, pages 15-16.
- ^ Articles by Anna Polyanskaya, MAOF publishing group
- ^ Template:Ru icon "They are killing Galina Starovoitova for the second time", by Anna Polyanskaya
- ^ Commissars of the Internet. The FSB at the Computer by Anna Polyanskaya, Andrei Krivov, and Ivan Lomko, Vestnik online, April 30, 2003 (English translation)
- ^ Operation "Disinformation" - The Russian Foreign Office vs "Tygodnik Powszechny", Tygodnik Powszechny, 13/2005
- ^ Template:Ru icon Interview with Roman Sadykhov, grani.ru, 3 April, 2007
- ^ Military wing of Kremlin (Russian), The New Times, 19 March, 2007