CDR: Big Comrade is Watching

[An Metet]

Russian law lets agency monitor e-mails, Net traffic and cell-phone conversations without users' consent

BY MARGARET COKER
Cox News Service 

MOSCOW -- For Russian computer users, the message ``You've Got Mail!'' might now well read, ``You've Got Company.''

Under a far-reaching new law going into effect this month, Russia's intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, is allowed to snoop on all Internet traffic and eavesdrop on cellular telephone and pager communications -- all without the user's consent or knowledge.

Russia's flourishing Internet service providers, or ISPs, say the government's demand that they install the eavesdropping equipment and train intelligence officers to use it will put the fledgling companies out of business.

Meanwhile, civil rights groups say the surveillance measures, known by their Russian acronym SORM, are yet another sign of a return to Soviet-style political repression under current President Vladimir Putin.

``This is the end to all e-mail privacy,'' said Anatoly Levanchuk, an Internet and free-speech advocate. ``Wiretapping is now only a click away.''

The Draconian regulations were first issued by government decree in 1995. At this time, they only covered wiretapping telephone calls. SORM was updated in 1998 to include Internet technologies -- the venue where, Russian officials believe, most crime in the 21st century will be committed. The Justice Ministry approved the measures on July 25, effectively making them law.

The amended directives require all Russian ISPs to equip their networks with an FSB monitor and connect them with a high-speed fiber-optic link to FSB headquarters. The link permits the agency to keep an eye on electronic transmissions -- from private e-mails to e-commerce purchases -- in real-time and in total privacy. Failure to put in the bugging devices, which the Internet firms say cost between $15,000 and $25,000, will mean the loss of the service provider's operating license.

Alexei Rokotyan, a top official in Russia's Communications Ministry, admits that the regulations -- the Orwellian-termed ``System of Operational and Investigative Measures'' -- give the government access to all information transmitted via Russian ISPs.

``Security organs and special forces have the right, and now the capability, to monitor private correspondence and telephone conversations of individual citizens in the name of establishing legal order,'' Rokotyan told Russian television in July. He insisted, though, that SORM would be used only for ``monitoring individual cases according to the law.''

Internet surveillance has come under fire in many countries, including the United States. In 1994, U.S. lawmakers authorized the FBI to wiretap and eavesdrop on criminals conducting or discussing crimes over the Internet. The measure was vehemently opposed, with only limited success, in 1998 by civil liberties groups and telecom businesses who viewed it as a threat to both profits and personal freedom.

Human rights advocates in Russia say these same issues that aroused opposition in the United States are magnified here because there are virtually no checks-and-balances to prevent the FSB from using their expansive powers to cross from law enforcement into political blackmail and commercial espionage.

``No one is saying that the FSB should not have access in the course of a criminal investigation. There is a law that says Internet (service) providers must render assistance in a criminal case. But free access to the Internet gives the FSB great power that would be easy to abuse,'' said Ina Zemskova, a lawyer with the St. Petersburg-based Citizens' Watch, a human-rights group. ``In our country, no one monitors the eavesdroppers.''

Legal experts say the SORM regulations are fraught with loopholes that allow the FSB to sidestep the required warrant before conducting any electronic surveillance. That leaves telecommunications firms in the dark.

``We do not know exactly what the FSB does in our network. We cannot see what they are doing, when they are tapping in. We can only trust that they are not working against our clients' interests,'' said Mikhail Yakushev, the head of the legal department at GlobalOne, a multinational telecommunications company.

About 7 million people, or 4.8 percent of Russia's 145 million population, are connected to the Internet. That number is expected to rise to 8 percent of the population in the next three years, according to Avi Krel, the telecom analyst at UFG investment bank in Moscow.

Although minuscule compared to the United States, this activity has generated 2,000 Internet start-ups in the last two years. More than 300 businesses are licensed to provide Internet service here, and some 20,000 Russian Web sites offer search engines, chatrooms and e-commerce outlets. Economists estimate Russia's dot-com economy's annual turnover at $100 million.

So far, the Internet has offered Russians much more than monetary gain. The information superhighway has spurred the growth of environmental organizations, academics and a rising number of government critics by connecting them across Russia's 11 time zones that extend from the Pacific Ocean to the Polish border.

In many cases, the most outspoken opponents of government policy are chatroom monitors or network operators themselves. They were among the first to sound the alarm about SORM, leaving the traditional media in their wake as they posted up-to-the-minute news about the progress of the proposed regulations.

Oleg Syrov, the director of an ISP based in the northern Russian town of Volgograd, has become one of SORM's most vocal critics. After denying the FSB access to his Bayara-Slavia Communications network in 1998, Syrov said he received anonymous death threats. He said he has also fought off multiple attempts by the FSB to shut down his business.

An FSB spokesman contacted about the allegations raised refused to comment for this story,

But around the rest of the marketplace, opposition to the regulations among ISPs has weakened as the government's determination to institute the surveillance measures have strengthened.

While the Communications Ministry said the vast majority of Internet providers are complying with SORM, all but one of the six Moscow-based ISPs contacted for this story refused to say whether they had installed the eavesdropping equipment. The exception -- GlobalOne -- said all of its hardware and software contained the equipment necessary for the FSB to dial in.

``The resistance movement is as good as dead,'' said a grim Alexander Levanchuk, the founder of www.libertarium.ru, a Russian political Web site, and one of the people spearheading a legal challenge to SORM. ``The FSB can outmuscle us, and it usually wins these things.''