If you wanted to become a telecom service provider—for example, to bring internet access to several neighboring buildings—one of the things you would have to do is buy, at your own expense and for an outrageous price, equipment from FSB-affiliated companies that the FSB itself would then use—to listen in, inspect, and monitor. All of this is done without your involvement, and you would not even know whether they were doing it under a court order, on political instructions, or because someone paid them off.
That is how the SORM system works. Of course, in many countries intelligence agencies try to gain as much power as possible to monitor citizens’ lives while being accountable as little as possible. But nowhere else is there this kind of “legalized lawlessness” directed at a country’s own citizens. One can recall the famous scandals involving U.S. intelligence agencies, but first, there were still scandals and court cases, and public opinion forced the NSA and CIA to adjust their methods; and second, this almost always concerned foreigners, not American citizens.
Here, there are no scandals, public opinion is silent, and there are no court cases. Or rather, not yet. Take a look at Volkov’s post about the first projects of the Internet Protection Society.
The most important project, in my view, is a court case between some brave providers (by some miracle, the Internet Protection Society managed to find them) and the FSB over the principles governing how SORM operates.
The providers’ interest, especially that of smaller ones, is obvious—they are being squeezed by the requirement to purchase equipment for SORM. And this equipment is foreign-made anyway: some FSB-certified company just takes a few pieces of imported hardware, turns them into something like the “MikhalIvanych-2 Hardware Complex,” and sells it for five times its real value.
Our interest is obvious too: let SORM exist, but let it operate on the basis of court orders, as the law requires.
If the Internet Protection Society does manage to get this litigation underway, it will be an important and interesting case.
More broadly, the whole idea behind creating the Internet Protection Society and its projects is excellent. At last, there is a public organization that will take on practical organizing work and campaigning in defense of the internet.
Leonid is recruiting volunteers—sign up if this matters to you.