If tomorrow is a search

Interrogations, arrests and searches from political activists and not only became almost everyday line of news. The authorities intend to clean the country from everyone who is trying to resist. 5 years ago, when the “swamp business” unfolded, The New Times opened a new section - “security technologies”, in which he talked about how to protect his personal space and what you need to know and do to prepare for searches and arrests

These reference books for those in the risk zone were compiled using the knowledge of experts, lawyers, investigators, as well as the experience of politicians and civilian activists, who had already passed through these lovely joys of the current Russian policy.

So, how to save the most valuable if you have come to you with a search.

If we are talking about political affairs, then investigators and operatives, as a rule, do not have the goal of finding something specific. The most important thing for them is to remove all electronic media: so they can access your personal information.

Of course, your mail or accounts on social networks can hack remotely: an example - hacking of mail and publication on the Internet of personal correspondence of Alexei Navalny Hacker Hell. Exactly, you can also “search” your mobile phone in advance - put it on wiretapping. But people who come to you with a search have other goals.

June 11, 2012: The police arrived with a search
In the apartment of Alexei Navalny photo: ITAR-TASS

“Firstly, the removal of the computer allows you to immediately view all its contents, and not just what you are doing on the Internet,” says the lawyer now, and earlier the investigator Vadim Kobzev. -Secondly, the information found on the seized electronic medium can be issued legally, because it gets into business completely legally. The results of illegal wiretapping and remote hacking to Feesbashniki are difficult to invest in the case. Of course, they can write: "According to our information, which we will not say where we got, there is this and that." But there is no trust in such data. And so that you can present them in court, you need a search and investigative actions. ”

In addition to computers and mobile phones, all flash drives and removable memory cards, tablet computers, external hard drives and even cameras will be taken from you. “For example, I found completely ancient phones, ancient computers, all the digital garbage that I had, they carried out,” says Maria Baronova, a civil activist who is accused of calls for “riots” in the “swamp business”.

Remember that law enforcement officers will be jealous to look for everything that at least vaguely resembles extremist materials. Therefore, do not keep propaganda products. All flags and brochures were seized from the leader of the left front Sergey Udaltsov during the search. The official representative of the IC Vladimir Markin explained the interest in the means of agitation as follows: they seized "products and literature with anti -state slogans."

The lawyer and former investigator Marina Andreeva recommends not to keep the legal documents for the apartment, car and cottage at home. Investigators can pick them up, and then you will have to write statements with a request for a return - this will take time. Cash, bank cards, personal correspondence and diaries, photographs and video cassettes, DVD-disks can also withdraw cash.

If you are not embarrassed by the fact that after the search, outsiders will know about your addictions and hobbies, then it is not necessary to thinly clean the space. But those who are not inclined to exhibitionism should carefully “depers up” the apartment: “Personal, intimate things allow you to draw your psychological portrait,” says Baronova. - Such a portrait is made up to influence ordinary activists who are psychologically unstable. Everything that can make you vulnerable is better to remove - even photos of your parents. ”

When choosing a place of storage of those things that you want to hide, remember: to relatives and the closest people you can also come with a search.

Communications

Since your phone will be seized, even if you hide it in your pocket, and you may not have time to delete all calls, the SS and access to social networks through mobile applications, you should not install Antivor system on your mobile phone. “This system blocks the work of the phone when an alien SIM card is inserted into it, if a person managed to take his own and break it,” advises Timofey Zorin, security specialist Creative Telematics & Trade. - The presence of a more or less advanced “anti -Wool” allows you to remotely block and even erase all the data on a confiscated phone. Cerberus, Watchdroid and Lmaxi are able to do this. And also Avast antiviruses! Mobile Security and Eset Nod32 Mobile Security - I especially recommend the latter. ”

If the investigation group is already standing under your door, and you have not secured your phone in advance, then there are several options. First: to destroy the motherboard or memory card (if it is removable) - it is clear that the phone will never work in this case. The second option: in the phone menu you need to find the function of returning to factory settings. This is a palliative - in case the investigators are not too interested in you, but the phone will still be able to serve you when returning.

Kobzev proposes to throw the phone out the window, but: there is a chance that one of the operatives will remain on the street, fearing these actions on your part. Politician Ilya Yashin, based on personal experience, claims that the phone can be hidden in an unexpected place or simply steal from a heap of things seized if the operatives are distracted: “As you remember, Ksenia Sobchak found a rather large amount of money, and the investigators were so passionate about the calculation that I managed to pick up the seized phones and hide them in a package with a feline filler ".

Computer

The most valuable and/or personal information is stored in the computer, if you are afraid of a search, it is strictly prohibited. Maria Baronova advises to keep such information only in her head. Ilya Yashin says that he stores the most importantly on separate hard drives: “And the discs themselves must be left in bank cells. It is advisable not in your name, but in the name of some relatives. ”

If the desire to protect yourself as seriously as possible that you are ready to deal with encryption of a hard drive or a specific file with files, then Timofey Zorin recommends the following programs: Folder Lock, Advanced Encryption Packet Pro and Safehouse Personal Edition. All of them cost money, but they contain quite complex algorithms and are quite easy to use (you need minimal knowledge of the English language). Nevertheless, professionals in the IT sector believe that any, even the most difficult way of encryption is hacking. Therefore, there is another option - cloud technologies.

“Get an account in Dropbox or Google Drive without installing their virtual folders on your computer,” Zorin recommends. “An electronic mailbox that you will indicate when registering your virtual disk should be known only to you, it is impossible to use it in any correspondence with friends and like-minded people.”

If you are afraid that the search may not happen today or tomorrow, then it's time to do data cleaning. Leave all the postal accounts, facebook and LiveJournal, delete Cookies, saved passwords in the browser and a visit magazine. If there is important information on the hard drive, then you can use paid programs that professionally destroy the information. For example, Acronis Drive Cleanser or Blancco. They will quickly and reliably delete data without the possibility of their restoration or, more precisely, require such human and technical costs that investigators will think ten times whether information is worth on your computer of such costs.

If you have already come to you, but you have not installed any programs in advance, then the time that you have left until you open the door and wait for the lawyer, you can spend on the physical destruction of the hard drive of the computer. Your task is to damage the surfaces of the pancakes of the hard drive. You can do this in two ways.

Removable apartment Ilya Yashin after a search
In June 2012, investigators opened it
In the absence of a tenant photo: Ilya Yashin

If the disk is opened, inside you will see these very pancakes that you can get used to any available ways (a sharp knife is ideal). If the disc cannot be opened, it is necessary to tear off the sticker that protects the vacuum space of the disk, and then with a knife or sharp awl, these very pancakes properly scratch. “If you use modern SSD drives, your task is to destroy the microcircuit inside the disk. And already here you need nothing more than a hammer, ”says Zorin.

“The main thing is not to try to destroy something with investigators and operas,” Kobzev warns. - They may even break the article - for obstruction of the preliminary investigation. If you disfigured the computer while you were alone in the apartment, you will not be presented to you. You can say that he fell and crashed. ”

Remember that after the search you will see your computer very soon, so you should not store several laptops in one apartment at once. If your computer is parry (you have the right not to say your password), then the term of its stay in the wrong hands increases significantly. The investigator will appoint an examination and pass your equipment to specialists - taking into account the queues for examination at the FSB and the management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the leisureliness inherent in law enforcement agencies, this may take many months. For example, Alexei Navalny and his family still have not returned phones and computers seized in June last year, including a tablet and a camera of his children.

Everything found in your computer, which the investigator will consider valuable for the case, will be filed for the search protocol and used against you in court.

Advocate

The layman does not need a lawyer on an ongoing basis, but if you think that you are under close attention of law enforcement agencies for political reasons, it is better to take care of the defender in advance. “By law, you have the right to ask the investigator not to start a search until your lawyer arrives,” says Marina Andreeva. “But he will be allowed into your apartment only if you have a warrant for your defense.” According to Vadim Kobzev, to get a defender quickly when the operatives are already under the door, it is possible, but this requires serious money: for one time a search without a preliminary agreement on protection, the Moscow lawyer will take from you from 50 thousand rubles.

During the event itself, the lawyer will not be able to help you much: investigators will take everything that, in their opinion, can be related to the case, even if it is just a T -shirt with the inscription “United Russia - a Party of Croils and Thieves” (seized Navalny), vitamins (they took Mahold’s inhaler (investigators who conducted a search from Baronova, decided that it was Bulbulator). But the defender is needed for several reasons. Firstly, although investigators can hack the door without waiting for the arrival of your defender, as a rule, they avoid this. Thus, you will have an extra hour or an hour to clean or destroy the computer and phones. Secondly, the lawyer knows better than what the operatives have the right to, and for what-no, it will not allow you to put pressure on you and will make sure that you will not be thrown out of anything superfluous.

Finally, a lawyer can also be used as a storage room. You can quietly give him some small item-a flash drive or a mobile phone.

“Lawyers are not searched,” explains Vadim Kobzev. “Only a personal search of people who were inside the apartment at the time of the arrival of the operatives are carried out.”

If you do not have his personal lawyer, Ilya Yashin advises to save the Rosusznik number (non-profit volunteer project, engaged in legal protection of civil activists, telephone: 8 (917) 590-56-31, Moscow and 8 (905) 216-73-59, St. Petersburg).

Another option to gain time if you have already come to you is to pretend that you are not at home. But this, of course, only if you managed to understand who is behind the door without indicating your presence inside the apartment. “I had a case,” says Kobzev. - A person sits at home, investigators come, begin to call the doorbell, he is silent, pretends that he is not. Then they call him on the phone, they say that they came with a search. He replies that he will arrive in an hour. And he calls the lawyer himself. When I arrived an hour later, he opened the door. ”

Do not be afraid

If people are already inside your apartment, you have almost no opportunity to hide something. However, individual tricks work. So, director Pavel Kostomarov, one of the authors of the “Term” project, advises: “Suppose you have ten discs, and one of them is important for you: first you must show them the first nine. So that they are just tired and they are tired of everything. ”

And the last advice: if the visit of investigators is inspired exclusively by political motives, then the search is primarily an act of intimidation. “If the matter is political, then the investigator is afraid not to remove something,” says Vadim Kobzev. -For example, investigator Zimin, seconded from Yaroslavl, during a search of Navalny, out of fear, out of fear, he gained a bunch of unnecessary things. After a while, everyone returned. Simply, in their opinion, it is better to overdo it than to unlearn. ”

First published in NT No. 5 (274) of February 18, 2013