Media: FSB may have gained access to BlaBlaCar servers

An anonymous former employee of the French service BlaBlaCar told the Agency how the company provided the Russian FSB with access to its servers due to its inclusion in the register of organizers of information dissemination (ORI).

As the publication notes, BlaBlaCar was included in the ORI in 2018. This means that the company is obliged to store voice, text and any other information for six months and provide it to government agencies “carrying out operational-search activities or ensuring security.”

FSB officers demanded that the company develop a “plan for the implementation of technical means” so that the special services would have access to the company’s data. The FSB sent a corresponding letter to BlaBlaCar in July 2018.

The FSB letter named four employees with whom BlaBlaCar employees had scheduled a meeting. “They warned us that there should be no ‘foreign elements’ [at the meeting], only Russian citizens,” an anonymous source told the Agency.

At the meeting, as the Agency writes, one of the FSB officers gave a "patriotic lecture" on the importance of the ORI and the fight against terrorism in Russia. According to an unnamed source of the Agency, the special services employees made it clear that if BlaBlaCar did not connect them to its servers, the company would be banned from operating.

The plan to involve the FSB in data control was agreed upon by 2019. At the same time, access to the company's data for intelligence officers was to be maintained until SORM, the system for supporting operational investigative activities, was installed.

FSB officers demanded that BlaBlaCar purchase all equipment to provide access with its own funds. Its cost could reach several million rubles. In addition, the FSB was asked not only to provide access to client data, but also to send them English-language documents, which the company's employees sent to the head office in Paris.

The Agency notes that the publication's anonymous source left the company in the summer of 2019, so it is not known for certain whether BlaBlaCar signed the plan to provide access to the data or not. He admits that the FSB did gain access to the information.

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