Russia to monitor 'all communications' at Winter Olympics in Sochi

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/06/russia-monitor-communications-sochi-winter-olympics

Russia to monitor 'all communications' at Winter Olympics in Sochi

Exclusive: Investigation uncovers FSB surveillance system – branded 'Prism on
steroids' – to listen to all athletes and visitors

Shaun Walker in Moscow

The Guardian, Sunday 6 October 2013 15.31 BST

Sochi, venue for 2014 Winter Olympics

The Black Sea resort of Sochi has apparently been wired so that the FSB can
log all visitor communications. Photograph: Ignat Kozlov/AP

Athletes and spectators attending the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February
will face some of the most invasive and systematic spying and surveillance in
the history of the Games, documents shared with the Guardian show.

Russia's powerful FSB security service plans to ensure that no communication
by competitors or spectators goes unmonitored during the event, according to
a dossier compiled by a team of Russian investigative journalists looking
into preparations for the 2014 Games.

In a ceremony on Red Square on Sunday afternoon, the president, Vladimir
Putin, held the Olympic flame aloft and sent it on its epic journey around
the country, saying Russia and its people had always been imbued with the
qualities of "openness and friendship", making Sochi the perfect destination
for the Olympics.

But government procurement documents and tenders from Russian communication
companies indicate that newly installed telephone and internet spying
capabilities will give the FSB free rein to intercept any telephony or data
traffic and even track the use of sensitive words or phrases mentioned in
emails, webchats and on social media.

The journalists, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, who are experts on the
Russian security services, collated dozens of open source technical documents
published on the Zakupki government procurement agency website, as well as
public records of government oversight agencies. They found that major
amendments have been made to telephone and Wi-Fi networks in the Black Sea
resort to ensure extensive and all-permeating monitoring and filtering of all
traffic, using Sorm, Russia's system for intercepting phone and internet
communications.

Putin at a Sochi Olympic flame ceremony in Moscow on Sunday. Photograph: Ivan
Sekretarev/AP

The Sorm system is being modernised across Russia, but particular attention
has been paid to Sochi given the large number of foreign visitors expected
next year. Technical specifications set out by the Russian state telecoms
agency also show that a controversial technology known as deep packet
inspection, which allows intelligence agencies to filter users by particular
keywords, is being installed across Russia's networks, and is required to be
compatible with the Sorm system.

"For example you can use the keyword Navalny, and work out which people in a
particular region are using the word Navalny," says Soldatov, referring to
Alexei Navalny, Russia's best-known opposition politician. "Then, those
people can be tracked further."

Ron Deibert, a professor at the University of Toronto and director of Citizen
Lab, which co-operated with the Sochi research, describes the Sorm amendments
as "Prism on steroids", referring to the programme used by the NSA in the US
and revealed to the Guardian by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. "The scope
and scale of Russian surveillance are similar to the disclosures about the US
programme but there are subtle differences to the regulations," says Deibert.
"We know from Snowden's disclosures that many of the checks were weak or
sidestepped in the US, but in the Russian system permanent access for Sorm is
a requirement of building the infrastructure."

"Even as recently as the Beijing Olympics, the sophistication of surveillance
and tracking capabilities were nowhere near where they are today."

Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, which also
co-operated with the research, said: "Since 2008, more people are travelling
with smartphones with far more data than back then, so there is more to spy
on."

Wary of Sorm's capabilities, earlier this year a leaflet from the US state
department's bureau of diplomatic security warned anyone travelling to the
Games to be extremely cautious with communications.

"Business travellers should be particularly aware that trade secrets,
negotiating positions, and other sensitive information may be taken and
shared with competitors, counterparts, and/or Russian regulatory and legal
entities," the document reads. The advice contains an extraordinary list of
precautions for visitors who wish to ensure safe communications, such as
removing batteries from phones when not in use and only travelling with
"clean" devices.

Soldatov and Borogan have discovered that the FSB has been working since 2010
to upgrade the Sorm system to ensure it can cope with the extra traffic
during the Games. All telephone and ISP providers have to install Sorm boxes
in their technology by law, and once installed, the FSB can access data
without the provider ever knowing, meaning every phone call or internet
communication can be logged. Although the FSB technically requires a warrant
to intercept a communication, it is not obliged to show it to anyone.

Tellingly, the FSB has appointed one of its top counterintelligence chiefs,
Oleg Syromolotov, to be in charge at Sochi: security will thus be overseen by
someone who has spent his career chasing foreign spies rather than
terrorists.

Another target may well be gay rights, likely to be one of the biggest issues
of the Games. Putin has said that competitors who wear rainbow pins, for
example, will not be arrested under the country's controversial new law that
bans "homosexual propaganda". However, it is likely that any attempts to
stage any kind of rally or gathering to support gay rights will be ruthlessly
broken up by police, as has been the case on numerous occasions in Russian
cities in the past. Using DPI, Russian authorities will be able to identify,
tag and follow all visitors to the Olympics, both Russian and foreign, who
are discussing gay issues, and possibly planning to organise protests.

"Athletes may have particular political views, or they may be openly gay,"
says Deibert. "I think given recent developments in Russia, we have to be
worried about these issues."

At a rare FSB press conference this week, an official, Alexei Lavrishchev,
denied security and surveillance at the Games would be excessive, and said
that the London Olympics featured far more intrusive measures. "There, they
even put CCTV cameras in, excuse me for saying it, the toilets," said
Lavrishchev. "We are not taking this kind of measure."

The FSB did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian, while a
spokesperson for the Sochi Olympics referred all requests to the security
services. But Russian authorities often express a belief that NGOs working on
human rights and other issues have subversive agendas dictated from abroad,
and the FSB apparently feels that with so many potentially dangerous
foreigners descending on the Black Sea resort for the Olympics, it has a duty
to keep an eye on them.

In the end, the goal is overarching, but simple, says Soldatov: "Russian
authorities want to make sure that every connection and every move made
online in Sochi during the Olympics will be absolutely transparent to the
secret services of the country."
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