[Radio Liberty: Programs: Internet]

Presenter Alexey Tsvetkov

Effectiveness of electronic surveillance; Runet company and investments

Our first topic is electronic surveillance and interception on the Internet. Analyzed by Alexander Kostinsky.

Alexander Kostinsky:

At the April international seminar “Window to the Free World - 2000,” computer scientists, cryptographers and human rights activists repeatedly noted that intelligence officers were very happy about the spread of the Internet - a network of interconnected computer networks. In their reports to the government and bills pushed through parliament, they seek virtually uncontrolled access to all communication channels. The main argument of the intelligence services was the internationalization of crime. They argue that in order to effectively combat terrorism, drug smuggling, and pornography, they need to sift through their super-powerful computers e-mails, telexes, telefaxes, and texts of telephone conversations not only of specific criminals, but also of millions of ordinary people.

Let us pay attention to one characteristic common feature of these reports. They say nothing about the effectiveness and economic feasibility of total surveillance in comparison with other methods of work of intelligence services and the place of electronic espionage in the overall system of operational investigative activities.

Let's try to at least partially fill this gap. Moreover, for more than one year thousands of people from five English-speaking countries have been serving the notorious global surveillance project - ECHELON, its “brother” ENFOPOL is starting in Europe, and SORM-2 is being implemented here.

For simplicity, let's consider an extreme special case. Let the intelligence services be able to view all electronic information down to a single message, listen to all telephone conversations, and so on.

What will happen? Remembering the expression - “Who owns the information, owns the world” - I would like to say that the intelligence services will become omnipotent. But it's not that simple.

Let us turn to the results of studies of the movement of information within successful commercial firms along a specially designed communication chain from top management down to employees. Moreover, all participants in the communication process are interested in understanding, constantly interact with each other and receive rewards for good assimilation of information.

It turns out that a manager trying to communicate some important but complex information to his deputy can only count on an understanding of 60%. In turn, the deputy will be able to convey to his assistant no more than 60% of the content, and so on down. Thus, with five levels of management, a junior manager will be able to understand no more than 13% of the original message. This refers to oral communication, when subordinates ask questions and clarify the essence of the matter. The understanding of a written message, as strange as it may sound, is even lower. Usually at the level of 15-20%.

What about business communications? Anyone who has transcribed sound recordings of events at which he himself was present, personally knows most of the speakers, and, it would seem, understood everything, knows how often it is not possible to understand exactly who and why said this phrase and what it means.

Now let's return to the intelligence officer who is diligently trying to eavesdrop on hundreds of similar organizations at the same time. How much can he understand without being a member of the team, without understanding the system of connections within the organization, without mastering the structure of concepts and jargon, which is by no means uniform in the industry and has significant features in each division of the organization? And within the company itself, do the employees of the supply department understand well the work of the advertising department, and they, in turn, understand the work of system administrators? Even if an intelligence officer is a narrow specialist and eavesdrops on his own kind, let us remember where any computer translation fails, even on a narrow topic - ignorance of the context in which certain words are heard.

So, an avalanche of information constantly falls on an intelligence officer. How will he cope with her? It can be assumed that he does not read all the information, but only that which contains certain keywords and sentences. But we must not forget that information is growing exponentially, and, therefore, information that matches keywords is growing exponentially. The number of intelligence officers cannot grow exponentially. It can be argued that supposedly there are expert systems that have elements of artificial intelligence and they can effectively filter out unnecessary messages. Let's say right away that this is a bluff. And not only because there are no programs that would have such properties. Even if there were such programs, setting them up for specific topics would take a monstrously long time. After all, the program, again, needs to include not only a dictionary and thesaurus (a system of concepts), but a hierarchy and structure of knowledge in a given area, refracted through the needs of a specific organization, which are extremely flexible and can change almost daily.

Therefore, with the help of only electronic methods, it will not be possible for a very long time to solve the main task of analytics - the task of selection, the task of separating the main from the secondary, no matter how the intelligence officers of the whole world from the units of electronic surveillance methods puff out their cheeks.

If you do not have in advance a satisfactory theoretical model of the flow of information in a group or organization as a whole, then you do not have a satisfactory interpretation of the texts that you manage to steal. And an adequate small group model requires presence within this small group. Let's not forget that even the most capable newcomer becomes a full-fledged member of the team in no less than three months.

When thinking about the role of intelligence officers' access to the primary documents of the group being monitored, the same mistake is made as when assessing the role of facts and their classification in science. There is a widespread misconception that the initial stage of science is the collection of facts. Only after they are collected and brought into a certain system do scientists create a theory to explain them, and theories are considered correct only if they explain all the facts.

Everything is exactly the opposite. To collect facts, there must already be a concept for their selection. Let us remember what Albert Einstein said: “Only a theoretical model tells us what we actually observe in experiment.” Charles Darwin spoke about this more fully: “About thirty years ago there was a lot of talk about how geologists should only observe and not build theories, and I well remember someone saying that one might as well go into a gravel pit to count pebbles and describe their colors. How strange that there are people who do not see that any observation must confirm or refute some view if it is to be of any use.”

It turns out to be a vicious circle - an intelligence officer cannot enter many of the groups he is monitoring. Without entering into them and without having an adequate model of what is happening in the organization, he will not be able to correctly select facts and the information for him turns into information noise.

How is this contradiction resolved in practice?

Many have already guessed. Certainly. The main and decisive role in the work of the special services is still played by His Majesty - agent, informer, spy, sexpot, informer, informant. We have been coming to this conclusion for so long to emphasize: an informant is not a person who supplies a set of facts and random, overheard conversations. No. It serves a much more important role. It is a full-fledged expert system that breaks the vicious circle, giving the intelligence officer a basic, hierarchical model of communications in the team under study. It is the informer who creates that same Darwinian “certain view” or Einsteinian theory, carrying out a qualitative selection of information, turning it into a knowledge base about the observed object. Look at the informers' reports. From a four-hour evening - two or three pages. The information is squeezed out, comprehended and formulated.

An objection immediately arises. Often, informers use denunciations for personal, selfish purposes, distorting or even inventing things that were not said. What kind of expert system is this? But a scientist, like an intelligence officer, knows that even an incorrect theory, connecting the facts together, makes a huge leap forward, since it allows starting from an incorrect structure to build a correct one. For example, everyone now likes to slander the caloric theory, but they forget that the heat equations, which are successfully used to this day, were written within the framework of this particular theory. The magazine "Soviet Justice" back in 1925 was well aware of the fundamental role of any denunciation: "Develop the ability to denounce and do not be afraid of a false report."

Let us present one more piece of evidence from interesting materials by Alexander Gorbovsky and Vladimir Tolts . One of the leaders of the Soviet Sociological Association was invited to the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee Chernenko. The sociologist began to convince Chernenko that sociological research could provide an excellent picture of the moods and views of Soviet people. Chernenko replied that the CPSU Central Committee does not need sociological research and surveys, since “The Party has an army of voluntary informants. We have a complete understanding of everyone, everyone.”

It is not known exactly how many informants there were in the USSR, but it is known how many there were in “friendly socialist countries,” which should be the same order of magnitude. According to these data, the total number of informers is about one percent of the population. But among the leadership stratum and the creative intelligentsia, this figure increased to 10 percent. That is, one informer for ten people.

But this is “old Soviet times”. What about now? After August 1991, the KGB was headed by Bakatin and immediately declared: “transfer of archives to agents only through my corpse.” The current “fellow traveler” of the liberal Yabloko, Sergei Stepashin, publicly stated the same thing: “The agents were, are and will be.” He calmly said that his department was introducing informants into new parties and political movements. Now we understand that they made these unpopular statements, defending an intelligence network and an agent - a key figure in operational-search activities.

It must be said that within the intelligence services themselves there is a serious struggle for influence and finance, and computer departments manage to grab huge funds for programs like ECHELON, but as soon as serious failures occur, such as the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade or emergencies like explosions in Moscow, the voices of “traditionalists” immediately begin to sound loudly in the press, saying that the information network has been destroyed, now try to get somewhere or someone catch it. There is also an official document in which the Swedish Drug Enforcement Commission strongly disputed the serious role of electronic surveillance methods. Comparing their own successful detection of serious crimes with the modest results of European colleagues who widely use eavesdropping and interception in electronic networks, they came to the conclusion: “Good results can be achieved by competently carried out traditional investigative measures, without resorting to these sophisticated technical devices.”

Let's summarize. The main role in operational investigative activities is still played by a person, and a person located within the group or group of people being studied. Electronic surveillance methods are activated in full force when the informants formulate and explain to the intelligence officer a model of the situation. Typically, electronic surveillance is justified when it is strictly focused on individuals, groups and organizations. Electronic surveillance methods are also effective if businessmen order surveillance of specific economic competitors about whom they know a lot. In the case of a large information sieve, like ECHELON or SORM, in my deep conviction, it is impossible to establish a successful selection of information. Here, in its purest form, in addition to a large-scale violation of the rights of citizens, there is a grandiose deception of taxpayers in favor of computer scientists in uniform.

In conclusion, we will say that the so-called risk groups - politicians, businessmen, human rights activists, journalists - are certainly included in the area of ​​close attention of the intelligence services. And they must take their own information security seriously. This can be achieved, firstly, by encrypting most, or better yet, all of your external communications, and, secondly, taking measures for the internal security of organizations. It is known that now most computer network hacks occur not from outside, but from within the system.

If you are part of such a risk group, do not give literally anyone your personal password and change it at least once a month. Encrypt, if not the entire hard drive, then at least important files. Be extremely attentive to the state of your accounting records, as they can be the most vulnerable point of even a well-run and honest organization. Remember that intelligence workers are people too, and they need to feed their families. They work part-time in commercial structures and know very well what black cash and cashing out are.

Radio "Liberty", program "Seventh Continent". Mikhail Mirny will talk about the Runet company and investments in the Russian Network.

Mikhail Mirny:

If you ask 100 Internet users in Russia what the World Wide Web is for them, the majority will answer that it is a means of obtaining information or a means of communication or entertainment. However, there are still few people in Russia who are engaged in making money online. Nevertheless, Runet is already beginning to gradually turn into a place of profitable investment. According to the General Director of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, a serious Internet advertising market has emerged over the past 2-3 months.

The Internet advertising market did not exist six months ago. It was, one might say, 0 or, one might say, so many thousands, but in reality it was not there. Now there is an advertising market. It appeared in the fall, but really since February. If you look at “big” sites, then you see how much advertising there is, not exchange, but commercial.

How much does it cost to make your own website? With a minimum investment you can get it under one hundred dollars. Then you need to unwind it. Gradually, the site can develop and with great luck, it can be sold. This is a theory. In practice, promoting your pages to the point that they become visited is not so easy. This requires a team of professionals and large cash injections. In RuNet there are about two dozen really visited, well-promoted sites that are of interest to buyers.

One of them is the Yandex search engine website. Probably almost everyone who has access to the Internet has at least ever visited www.yandex.ru . This is one of the most popular places on the Russian network. A few days ago it was bought by Ru-net Holdings.

Ru-net Holdings employees compare Yandex with one of the most popular English-language search engines, Yahoo! Yandex, which makes it possible to search for documents on the Internet using the morphology of the Russian language, quickly gained popularity among users.

According to information disseminated at a press conference dedicated to the sale of Yandex, the system has the largest database of Russian Internet content and is twice as large as its closest competitors: the database currently contains about eighteen million documents with a total volume of 180 GB.

The company CompTek, the former owner of Yandex, received its main profit from advertising on the site - this is somewhere around 40 thousand dollars a month. It is not surprising that one of the fastest growing Russian Internet projects has attracted foreign investors.

The Ru-net Holdings company is already known on the Russian Internet market. A few months ago, she acquired a large stake in the largest online bookstore on the Runet, Ozon, for $1.8 million. The purchase of Yandex is the second transaction of this company in Russia.

Ru-Net Holdings was created in February 2000 with an initial capital of 20 million 500 thousand US dollars. The company's shareholders include Baring Vostok Capital Partners (a leading Russian private equity firm and a subsidiary of Baring Private Equity Partners), United Financial Group, as well as a number of private investors who have helped create the largest and most successful Internet companies in the United States.

The deal was as follows. Yandex becomes a separate company, now independent from CompTek. According to the agreement reached, Ru-net Holdings will invest 5 million 280 thousand dollars in the Yandex company and receive a share of 35.72% by issuing additional shares. The raised funds are planned to be used to improve the search capabilities of Yandex, develop and develop new Internet projects, conduct a massive advertising campaign and develop the technological base.

As for the advertising campaign, its first fruits can already be seen on NTV, where search engine advertising should go on.

The newly formed company acquired all rights to the Yandex trademark, as well as to the Yandex search technology and the family of software products of the same name. In addition, the recently launched project www.narod.ru , which provides services for the free creation and placement of your own Internet sites, was transferred to Yandex.

Ru-net Holdings analysts conducted extensive marketing research before purchasing Yandex. According to Elena Ivashentseva, an investment manager at the company, the Internet is developing so rapidly in Russia that it is now very profitable to invest money in it.

In terms of investment areas, both the company’s shareholders and the people who currently work there have been engaged in direct investment in Russia for a long time. Moreover, in a variety of directions, including traditional areas. There is a clear understanding that, of course, the Internet has come to Russia, and Internet technology is changing the essence of all technologies in business. This is a new direction for us, definitely very risky, and therefore we are investing in it with Internet specialists. From our point of view, this is the best time to invest in the Russian Internet.

Elena Ivashentseva also believes that this is just the beginning. Recent statements by many Western investment companies suggest that a large flow of investments into the Runet is expected in the next 2-3 years.

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