Translated material
Listen served
Comrade Major will like your jokes again
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Listen submitted. The process of turning telecom operators into branches of the Lubyanka has been completed: the Minister of Information Technologies and Communications Leonid Reiman approved the "Requirements for telecommunication networks for conducting operational search activities." The FSB can listen in on all telephone conversations, remove any information from communication channels virtually without a court decision, although no one has yet repealed the Constitution
The meaning of Reiman's orders (No. 6 of January 16, 2008 and the joint order of the Ministry of Information and Communications and the FSB No. 5/8 of January 15, 2008) is simple. Through the “point (s) of connection”, operators are obliged to ensure the possibility of transferring data to the control point for operational search activities (ORM) of the “authorized state body”: about subscribers, their location and transmitted information. ORM facilities are located at the communication centers of operators, any possibility of detecting the fact of information control should be excluded. And "protection against unauthorized access of personnel serving the communication network" is provided.
Simply put, FSB operatives from a remote control have the ability to remotely read any information without notifying the operator and without his consent. Another trick is that the operators do all these delights for the FSB at their own expense, i.e. for ours with you: this is included in the cost of communication services. So two skins were removed from one cat.
According to The New Times experts, this differs from the Soviet practice of tapping only in the presence of a decorative regulatory framework. In particular, the historian Nikita Petrov clarified: the KGB units (in 1991, this was the 12th department - the use of operatic equipment, and the 6th service of the Operational and Technical Directorate - the perusal of correspondence) when carrying out such events were guided only by departmental documentation - orders and instructions. There were no legal restrictions. As well as there were no technical difficulties: KGB officers could listen to the conversations of the “client”, for example, from a special room at a telephone exchange. 1
Without procedure
During the reorganization of the Lubyanka after the collapse of the USSR, many copies were broken around wiretapping. As a retired colonel of state security, who then held a rather high post, told The New Times correspondent, “our position was simple: we listened and will listen as we know how, we are used to and consider it necessary, as it is convenient for us. But there were almost no objections to the court decision. The question is different: what is the real procedure and how to bypass it. And they got around!” The colonel explained: if the wiretapping materials do not go into a criminal case, why a sanction? "It is more important to know and accumulate information - it will come in handy." And if he is impatient, a quick-witted judge will issue a retroactive decision, and “who will prove that the law was violated? The object of wiretapping must first find out that it fell under our “hood”, and this is where the difficulties begin - it is impossible to find out.
Legislative norms regarding wiretapping were introduced by the 1995 law "On Investigative Activities". The main achievement: wiretapping materials obtained illegally are recognized as inadmissible evidence. And at first they were pierced on this. 2 But to this day, the mechanics and procedures for controlling the OSA are not de facto spelled out, except only in part in the Code of Criminal Procedure (Articles 165 and 186). Lev Levinson, an expert from the Institute of Human Rights, told The New Times correspondent: there is no evidence that judges ever refuse to issue sanctions for an operational-search activity, and there are no statistics on issuing such decisions. “The regulation, the procedure, the mechanism of this action - everything is spelled out in general terms, even a reasoned decision to conduct wiretapping does not remain in court: it is immediately taken away in a briefcase, registering only the fact of extradition. There is no control procedure." 3
In the global stream
For the first time, the noise around the legalization of total wiretapping broke out when Reiman's order No. 130 of July 25, 2000 became known. The document, in black and white, ordered telecom operators to install and put into operation equipment for listening to the phones of their subscribers at their own expense (!). St. Petersburg journalist Pavel Netupsky then filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Communications with the Supreme Court, and even won it. But the highest court found fault with only one phrase of the order, without encroaching on the essence. 4
Digging around, you can find other documents. For example, Order No. 25 of February 18, 1997, signed by the then Minister of Communications Vladimir Bulgak, on the implementation of the agreement with the FSB. Almost everything has already been laid down there, including equipment by means of SORM at their own expense, "regardless of departmental affiliation and forms of ownership." On August 27, 2005, signed by Mikhail Fradkov, government decree No. 538 was issued, approving the "Rules for the interaction of telecom operators with authorized state bodies engaged in operational-search activities": networks and means of communication must comply with the requirements of SORM.
Facts of illegal wiretapping rarely come to the surface. In 2007, the ex-prosecutor of Novy Urengoy, Mikhail Apanasenko, accused Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika of illegally tapping his office phone: the prosecutor was formally fired for discussing official matters over the phone, but there was no sanction for tapping him! During the recent trial of the mayor of Arkhangelsk, Alexander Donskoy, phone records obtained outside the law were also used.
“I am not aware of cases of punishment of intelligence officers for illegal wiretapping,” said Lev Levinson. But those who catch the special services by the hand really suffer. Like, for example, the famous lawyer Boris Kuznetsov. In the case of his client, Levon Chakhmakhchyan, a member of the Federation Council from Kalmykia (now former) Levon Chakhmakhchyan, the lawyer found a protocol from which it followed: the FSB began listening to the senator's phones before the sanction was received. Having photographed the document incriminating the FSB, the lawyer sent the photograph along with the request to the Constitutional Court. And right there, a criminal case is initiated against Kuznetsov himself - on charges of disclosing state secrets. The lawyer was forced to seek asylum abroad.
Even a law-abiding layman is not given to know how and where the word thrown by him will respond. And how a state security official uses the obtained commercial and intimate secrets is a rhetorical question: in today's Russia, unlike the USSR, this is a hot commodity. There is no control over Big Brother - except decorative - and is not expected.
The Constitution of the Russian Federation. Art. 23-2: ... Everyone has the right to privacy of correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraphic and other communications. Restriction of this right is allowed only on the basis of a court decision; Art. 24-1. Collection, storage, use and dissemination of information about the private life of a person without his consent is not allowed.
In 2006, a number of employees of the central apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation were accused of organizing illegal telephone tapping, but in January 2008 the Moscow City Court fully acquitted them.
In the summer of 2007, a number of high-ranking officials of the Moscow police department were accused of organizing illegal wiretapping. Mikhail Yanykin, deputy head of the Department of Special Technical Measures of the Moscow Central Internal Affairs Directorate, was arrested and Nikolai Orlov, deputy head of the MUR, was fired from the bodies - materials of illegal wiretapping were found in his office.
In the fall of 2007, the arrested General of the Federal Drug Control Service Alexander Bulbov was charged with illegal wiretapping: the investigation continues, Bulbov is in prison.
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1 At the moment, the place of the 12th department of the KGB is occupied by the Directorate of Operational and Technical Measures of the FSB.
2 In the case of Captain 1st Rank Alexander Nikitin, who was accused in 1996 of treason and disclosure of state secrets, there was also a recording of telephone conversations made before obtaining the appropriate court permission. They were declared null and void and removed from the case.
3 The handbook on OSA notes that “the legislator does not specify the form of mandatory notification to the court” in the case of “an urgent OSA”.
4 Of all the operators and providers, only Nail Murzakhanov, the general director of the Volgograd BayardSlavia Communications, made an attempt to resist the system, refusing to implement SORM. After that, he got into trouble.