Compromant because of the surroundings

Who is behind Shaltay Boltay-an Internet project that publishes the secrets of the inner kitchen of the Kremlin

Shaltai-Boltai transfers a message to the royal messenger. Artist John Tenniel. 1912/Photo: Ken Welsh/Design Pics/East News

Shaltai-Boltai is a character in English literature, mainly known to the wide audience based on the book by Lewis Carroll "Alice in Zaslavlova." This is a humanoid egg that loves riddles, is particularly proxy of the king and regularly receives gifts from him.

It is not surprising that behind a group of hackers who call themselves an “anonymous international” and make a Shaltay Boltay project, many suspect the Kremlin’s hand: after all, these guys do not only break some kind of mail and pour out its contents into the public, but get documents that, in their words, are available only dozens, and sometimes units in the presidential administration.

The New Times correspondent talked with Shaltai and chatter (how many people are actually hiding behind these pseudonyms is unknown) in the so -called cryptocat, where messages are encrypted, they cannot be copied and saved.

They joke a lot, rarely answer questions specific, with obvious pleasure they catch up fog and represent themselves as a kind of romantics. Sometimes their answers are more like a slight mockery.

“We like this fairy tale (“ Alice in the behind -the -ry ”. - The New Times). There are many meanings in it: the obvious and those that are hidden under them, ” - so shaft and chatter explain the choice of the name for their project. They say that they are not “hackers in the classical sense of the word”, so you should not compare them with the sensational Anonymous: massive DDOS attacks on government sites, large corporations of shaft and chatting yet, they like to get documents-as WikiLEAKS does.

How many years they are doing in life do not say. But during the conversation, they admitted that they listen to the background of the MTV Dance TV channel and do not like ties.

They don't like the word "drain" either.

"We do not" merge ", we tell the truth!" - wrote Shaltai. He says that the “anonymous international” has “simple motives”, and in fact, activists of this community just love their homeland.

But in the cryptocat, it is difficult to understand - they joke this way or seriously.

Russian Assanzhi

The Shaltay Boltay project even opened almost jokingly: on the morning of December 31, activists of the “Anonymous International” posted on the Internet the original text of the New Year's appeal of Vladimir Putin, which the president later rewritten: in the second version there were words about the victims of the terrorist attack. (On December 29 and 30, explosions took place in Volgograd, which took 33 people.) As a result, the inhabitants of Kamchatka heard the same words on TV from the president that were published by hackers, but in other regions where the hourly difference with Moscow was not so significant, showed the treatment of other texts. Hackers then said that the appeal was urgently overwritten precisely because of the leak. And the presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the incident “technical mistake”.

The second time Shaltay Boltay shot on March 7. A few hours before the so -called folk gathering in support of the inhabitants of Crimea, which was supposed to take place in Moscow on the Vasilievsky descent, the anonymous ones published an event. The highlight of the publication was a list of the names of organizations that sent their employees to the gathering of the order.

But truly alarming materials appeared on the site on April 14, when military operations have already begun in the southeast of Ukraine. The “Anonymous International” posted a whole array of data with the correspondence of pro-Russian volunteers, as well as coordinators, political strategists and PR specialists from Moscow, who discussed what needs to be done in eastern Ukraine. It also contained the details of the preparation of the Crimean referendum, as well as detailed information about the defense minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic Igor Strelkov-Girkin, who, as it turned out, also a native of Moscow.

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“If this game ends sad for us, then you will learn about it from the news, if it ends sad for the current regime, then from there”

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It was here that Shaltay Boltay was spoke in the press as a Russian Wikileaks.

Further compromises followed one after another. On May 26, documents appeared on the site regarding Evgeny Prigozhin, called Putin’s personal cook*, and on June 6 - about the “Cooperative“ Pine ”**, the first investigation of which at the end of 2013 published another Fund for the fight against the corruption of Alexei Navalny.

In the press and social networks, they began to assume that these “leaks” are the result of a subcover struggle in the Kremlin. But the anonymous people are just joke when they are asked about the "conflicts of the Kremlin towers."

In a conversation with The New Times, Shaltai and Boltai characterized the power structures in the country as a ziperkalie. Russia itself, according to their admission, reminds them of the world of the planet Saraksh from the novel "Inhabited Island" of the Strugatsky brothers, where after the nuclear explosion the war of everyone began.

They speak vaguely about their political views. The current government, according to them, lies a lot and does a little. The second motive of their actions is "boredom in the media space, there are few intrigues and continuous PGM." PGM - on network jargon, both “Orthodoxy of the brain” and “Putin of the brain” at the same time mean. What from this they have in mind Shalotai and chatter - they did not answer. But to the question "Is it worth it to wait for compromising evidence for the first person of the country?" - They wrote directly that they would not touch Vladimir Putin, because he is “uninteresting to them”. Who is interesting? "Higher dignitaries."

Who are the sources of the "anonymous international" and how do they find them? The answer was strange: “We ourselves find our sources. We do not cooperate with the "initiative". One of the few “correct” traditions that were in the past GDP service, ”that is, you need to understand - in the KGB. Did Shalotai and chatter in the presidential administration or other power structures work? In response - jokes and jokes.

However, to the question of checking information before its publication, Shaltai answered unequivocally: "We duplicate the minimum of two sources."

And finally: what do they want to achieve?

“We alleviate the task of the investigation organs,” says Bolty. -If for a search and wiretaps they need some reason, and it is difficult to get this on many of our heroes. We just reveal to them all the secrets with documents. ”

Well, so far no law enforcement agencies have touched a single hero of their publications.

Cooperative "Pine". A picture with a drone. Autumn 2013 /Photo: provided by the Corruption Fund Alexei Navalny

Where the legs grow from

Former and current employees of the Presidential Administration, with whom the New Times, relate to the Shaltay Boltay project with undisguised contempt and neglect.

The ex-head of the domestic policy of the Presidential Administration, and now the head of the civil society development fund, Konstantin Kostin, said that he would not comment on the “pirate-mesh barrels” and “contribute to the popularization of black compromising evidence”.

The source of The New Times on Old Square at first also said that he would not discuss “dubious stories”, but then he still advised to pay attention to the selectivity of the information they published: “These guys in one of the interviews claimed that they have access to the documents that have a very narrow circle of people. If their sources of this level, then it is strange for me that they took up Evgeny Prigozhin, and not people more higher. ” He also added that the “anonymous international” for the most part “works on personalities”, that is, he publishes compromising on specific people. “And when they work on personalities, the first thing that comes to mind is an order. Apparently, just someone is dealing with someone, it is possible that even in the administration, ”the source says.

Other interlocutors of the magazine also drew attention to the fact that hackers are very selectively approaching their work, and it looks strange. For example, the lawyer Damir Gainutdinov, who at the Agora Association leads the project to protect the Internet freedom, recalled that WikiLeaks or Slivmail *** laid out the information on the information indiscriminately, and the journalists had to “dig out” on their own, which deserves attention from this. The “Anonymous International” publishes the information very dosed - that is, either their sources have limited access, or these sources have their own specific interests, experts say.

“The authors of Shaltay Boltay do not have a voiced ideological position, and for me it will iron as a subcutional war between the clans,” Arseny Bobrovsky, who collaborated with the safe Internet, is confidently known as the Roissa Prozun, Kermlinrussia, the author of the ironic twitter. Bobrovsky assumes that most of the documents merge to hackers per one, a very specific reader: “For example, some businessman wants to make it clear to some official, conditional Volodin, that he violates the rules of the game: he cut the power racket and does not give the money taken. In general, ordinary stories. It’s just that, within the framework of the corruption game, such people cannot publicly blame each other, they carry out all the things among themselves outside the legal field, so they give each other such signals. ”

But in the Pirate Party, they believe in the disinterested motives of Shali and Chatting, the political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky also believes them, who himself worked for the Kremlin for a long time.

"When they work on personalities, the first thing that comes to mind is an order"

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A member of the Pirate Party Stanislav Shakirov told The New Times that at one time the Pirates had their own sources in Roskomnadzor-just some kind of “kind people” who, on their own initiative, warned the party about the new anti-pirate initiatives of the department. According to Shakirov, such people, as a rule, are simply “dissatisfied with the leadership or general policy”. Pavlovsky added that it is likely that people who are driven by the interests of society make the project, and they receive information “from the twilight periphery that is formed around the administration - all these consultants, political strategists. With such a number of papers in this gray zone, the drain is simply inevitable. After all, people who work there respect the authorities little, it is only a source of liquidity for them. ”

Quite serious resources are also used by Shaloty and Chatting-such as the BuzzFeed and Russian Forbes superpopular American Internet portal. The New Times contacted both of them, however, they categorically refused to talk about the “anonymous international”: “Too dumb topic”.

And finally, the last and quite obvious question: if the hump and chatting do not work for the FSB or the Kremlin (which, in general, is almost the same), are they not afraid for their safety?

Answer: They took care of the ways of retreat before the start of the project. But they admit that “all the traces are impossible”, and they say that they are ready to sit at Ecuador's Embassy in London, as the WikiLeaks coordinator Julian Assange (June 19 will be two years old, as Assange is at a party at the Equador Ambassador) until they have expelled.

“If this game ends sad for us, then you will learn about it from the news, if it ends sad for the current regime, then from there,” wrote Bolty and added Smile. “But we think that it (current power. - The New Times) will change suddenly. It is difficult to predict the deadlines, but before many now think. ”