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. ^{[citation needed]}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. This point is, however, disputable (see below).

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".

Criticism

Alexander Yusupovskiy, head of the analytical department of the Federation Council of Russia (Russian Parliament) published in 2003 an article "Conspiracy theory" in Russian Journal with criticism of theory of web brigades. ^[11]

His points included:

• Authors exclude from their interpretation of events all other hypotheses, such as internet activity of a group of some "skinheads", nazbols or simply unliberal students; or hackers able to get IP addresses of their opponents.
• According to Yusupovskiy, authors treat "independence of public opinion" in spirit of irreconcilable antagonism with "positive image of Russia".^[11]
• Although Yusupovskiy himself has a list of claims against Russian security services and their presense in virtual world (as "according to statements of media every security service is busy in the Internet tracking terrorism, extremism, narcotic traffic, human trafficking and child pornography"), his claims are of different nature than those of Polyanskaya.
• Yusupovskiy himself didn't take Web brigades theory seriously, "naively" considering that officeers of GRU or FSB have more topical problems than "comparing virtual penises" with liberals and emigrants. His own experience at forums also did not give him a reason proving the theory.^[11]

Public discussions

Discussion on control over the Internet

In 2006 radio talk show hosted by Yevgenia Albats with a topic "Control over the Internet: How does that happen?", Russian intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov made the following points^[12]:

• There are countries with greater or less control over the Internet; but there is control over the Internet in Russia;
• During the US invasion of Iraq, a group of people calling themselves GRU officers published allegedly internal GRU information on American losses in Iraq — this information was shown on the background of Anti-american hysteria and was well consumed. Later it turned out this information was not credible, but this effectively didn't change the result;
• After 2005 Nalchik raid Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that Kavkaz Center "is a very bad resource", and after two days two teams calling themselves hackers appeared, to arrange hacker attacks against Kavkaz Center;
• Soldatov doesn't think web brigades are fiction. He had related issues with his own site, especially during such events like Moscow theater hostage crisis;
• One of structures having related business with the Internet is signals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB and has been formerly a part of 16th KGB department;
• There is a related agency in Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs with competent people who can do such things. ^[12]

Other participant of the talk show, Russian political scientist Marat Gelman made the following points:

• There are countries with control over the Internet, there's none in Russia; there may be control understood as observation, but there's no tool to forbid any certain resource;
• Internet is good as the space where authorities and opposition are placed in absolutely equal conditions and they need to actually struggle and convince people. It's impossible to actually prohibit in the Internet, one needs to win [a game];
• Professional activity exists for long in the Internet — as many sites are professional media-structures with a team and owners perhaps — in a way a newspaper is. And coordinated work of these resources is possible. Commenting on a possibility that besides open structures there are closed ones imitating activity of youths, Gelman said he had an exact feeling it's fake;
• Answering Albats' question about possibilities of control over Internet as a means to exert influence on youths, Gelman asserted that authorities, opposition and America are all equal players in question of control and attempts of influence. Unlike e.g. television or newspapers all players in the Internet have equal possibilities, every player tries to do one's sort of work;
• Answering Albats' question "How control over Internet is technically organized?", Gelman noted that there are two major concepts: either the information is filtered before an user may access it ("premoderation"), either "postmoderation". While the first is the case in China, where access to certain types of resources is physically blocked, Gelman considers it a bad practice and it is absolutely unacceptable for Russia. Gelman thinks there must be control over the Internet in Russia, but only in the form of an agency searching for criminals in the Internet, tracking their IPs to get personal information, as well as there must be a mechanism to impose a penalty on such people. ^[12]

See also

• Internet police
• Web brigades

References