Bugs and prints

The head of the international human rights organization "Agora" Pavel Chikov and legal analyst Damir Gainutdinov published a report "Russia under surveillance" - about the methods of surveillance of Russian citizens by special services

Law enforcement agencies report that billing data (details of mobile phone conversations - Ed.) helps to solve up to 90% of criminal cases of murder. However, the control system is also used against civil activists and human rights defenders, and not only for criminal prosecution, but also for searching for compromising evidence. This is evidenced by the publications in the pro-Kremlin media of telephone conversations of opposition politicians or films on central TV channels like "Anatomy of a Protest" or "Kasyanov Day", which show covert video footage of oppositionists.

The surveillance system was formed in Russia already in the mid-2000s, the authors of the report write, confirming the conclusion of Nizhny Novgorod human rights activist Sergei Shimovolos: back in 2007, the police removed him from trains, suspecting that he was heading to an opposition event, so the human rights activist was repeatedly forced to return previously purchased tickets and buy new ones immediately before the train leaves. Shimovolos filed with the ECHR - during this process it turned out that since 2000, the internal affairs bodies of Russia have been using the Search-magistral database. It includes those wanted by Interpol, foreigners suspected of committing crimes in Russia, Russians suspected of transporting ammunition, antiques, murders and terrorist attacks, and leaders of criminal gangs. And since 2005, a new section has appeared in the database, Surveillance Control, about potential extremists. Shimovolos was added to the Human Rights Defenders section. According to various estimates, Surveillance contains the names of 3,800 to 6,500 people, according to the report.

Chikov and Gainutdinov analyze only known and undoubted cases of surveillance by the authorities, assuming that in fact there are many more of them. They recall September 2014, when at least four delegates to the UN World Conference on Indigenous Issues were unable to fly to New York:

one had a page cut out of his passport right at the border at the airport; another covered the door of the apartment with glue, so that she missed her plane;

the third was stopped at a traffic police checkpoint, and a man in civilian clothes attacked him, trying to snatch a bag with documents.

But obstruction of movement is only one of the methods of control used against activists. How activists' phones are tapped, the authors of the report analyze by examples of when wiretapping "surfaced": in December 2011, Lifenews published recordings of Boris Nemtsov's telephone conversations with other opposition politicians. In 2014, during the Olympics, the police in Sochi detained activists Olga Noskovets and David Khakim, who were planning a picket, at the place of their meeting, discussed by phone. And a year earlier, from the materials of the well-known “Kirovles case”, it became clear that the telephone conversations between Navalny and Ofitserov were recorded long before the start of the official investigation. The legislation leaves a lot of loopholes for uncontrolled wiretapping of any person, the authors of the report note.

Not only suspects have the right to eavesdrop, but also all those who may have information related to the criminal case.

Although the secret service officer must obtain permission for wiretapping in court, he is not obliged to present it to the telecom operator. Moreover, the court that gave permission for wiretapping cannot control its execution. From 2007 to 2015, courts in Russia granted 4.5 million requests to control and record telephone and other conversations, as well as limit the secrecy of correspondence. This fact is also recognized by the ECtHR.

Both Agora employees themselves and employees of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation in different years found “bugs” in their offices, films denigrating the opposition, for example, Ryzhkov or Kasyanov, were created on the basis of hidden camera videos. Covert audio and video surveillance, the authors of the report note as another way of surveillance. An alternative to phone tapping is hacking of correspondence, accounts on social networks: the last case occurred literally at the end of last month: activist Oleg Kozlovsky and Georgy Alburov, an employee of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, simultaneously discovered that their Telegram accounts had been hacked.

Finally, the activists detained on administrative cases were repeatedly fingerprinted, and the refusal to fingerprint was repeatedly regarded as disobedience to the requirements of the police - that is, an independent administrative article. Chikov and Gainutdinov remind that the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, regularly advocates the universal forced fingerprinting of Russians and the collection of DNA samples. At first it was about the inhabitants of the North Caucasus, then about migrants, and later about all Russians. As an argument in favor of these measures, he cited situations with the identification of those killed in catastrophes and natural disasters, the authors write.

Over the years, not a single illegal case of hacking mail and social networks, interception of correspondence, telephone conversations, covert recording, surveillance has led to the trial and punishment of the perpetrators. The ECHR recognized in the Shimovolos case in 2011 that the way the Surveillance Control database operates does not imply even minimal guarantees against abuse.

Agora comes to the conclusion that the private life of Russian citizens is not protected by anything: they can be monitored by special services without legal grounds and with impunity.