The most open country

3.5 billion leaked personal data of Russians is already a “digital Apocalypse”

Isolation, repression, state secrets around every corner, crowds of censors monitoring bloggers and the media, a mutilated Internet... And, paradoxically, Russia is in full view. If you believe the data of Sber Deputy Chairman Stanislav Kuznetsov that “90% of the data of adult Russians is in the public domain,” then the majority of citizens live behind transparent glass. Today this is a catastrophe for which there is no solution. 3.5 billion lines, according to the same estimates, have already leaked into the public domain. And this is not only passport data, but also, for example, medical records.

Previously, everything was a little more complicated. The chaos and corruption of the 90s also provoked numerous leaks and leaks of databases, but accessing them required some effort. The algorithm of those years is best shown in the film “Brother-2”, when the heroes go to the legendary “Gorbushka”, the center of Russian piracy, and buy several discs with different sources of information. As a result, the enemy's full biography is shown cinematically on the computer screen, including the child's age and place of education.

Then it became even easier. Muscovites and guests of the capital remember how, in the eternal traffic jam opposite the Ministry of Foreign Affairs high-rise, they sold traffic police databases, which could be used to identify the owner of any car. This all happened almost openly, it seemed like a familiar setting and did not raise any questions.

The resulting material was used for the most part quite harmlessly. Finding out the history of transport, the biographies of debtors and the lives of jealous wives. There was no global fraud, no fight against corruption and no major investigations then.

The spread of the Internet has facilitated the process and given it new dimensions. At first, single databases became available online: finding out who a city phone number was registered to began to take minutes, then the databases began to be stitched together, combining information. And if desired, it was possible to collect a good dossier on a person who had been exposed in one way or another, including administrative and criminal cases, if there were any. It is curious that all this happened long before the appearance of the State Automated System “Justice”. The black market coped with digitalization faster than the state.

When the network completely became widespread, the noticeable chaos ended. Attempts to release mass services were thwarted. The latest example is “Eye of God,” a telegram bot that made it possible to find out data by photo, car number or phone number, existed for less than a year and was eventually blocked.

But the endless databases did not go away; they simply moved to the darknet, an anonymous part of the network, where they became an object of trade. There you can always find fresh leaks or get an extract on the desired character for a modest amount.

The migration is understandable; the efforts of law enforcement agencies were aimed primarily at protecting themselves. What people do there for fun is not that important.

The total digitalization of all industries has added fuel to the fire, or rather, added to the volume and range of data that has become publicly available. From border crossings to medical research results. The medical record, tests, everything related to interaction with the state - everything turned out to be leaked, and moreover, given that the data is not static and is constantly updated - the black market responds in kind, periodically supplying fresh and relevant information.

I would like to blame everything on evil hackers or, for example, a business - this is clearly manifested when registering a legal entity. The documents from the Federal Tax Service have not yet been received, and the phone is already ringing off the hook with offers from banks and specialized services, but the main culprit in any case is the state, as an unpunished collector of numerous information about its own citizens.

And this is understandable. Once you see the interface of the Palantir system, which allows you to search, find dependencies and issue dossiers on people from all over the world, and it works exactly as it is demonstrated in Hollywood cinema, it is difficult to overcome the temptation to build the same thing.

In theory, big data means not only big money, but also completely peaceful analytics, the results of which can improve any industry: from retail to medicine.

I stitched together a million ultrasounds or x-rays, taught the neural network to find discrepancies or anomalies - and now searching for an illness takes minutes. And there are tons of such examples. In the literal sense of the word - all this applies to numerous traffic flows.

In practice, when in the wrong hands, such decisions lead to both personal and collective misfortune.

The topic of fraud, despite its volume, is already quite boring. The problem has not gone away, and I don’t want to discuss even bright stories in the third round. Let's do something more serious - for example, blackmail. This is precisely what threatens a massive leak of medical data.

Despite the fact that the topic of health is quite relevant in the conversations of adults, I’m not sure that most people are ready for the fact that their visits to a psychiatrist, tests with positive results for sexually transmitted diseases, or anything else like that, will become public knowledge.

And many will be willing to pay dearly so that this information does not become public.

And this is just the beginning. Until recently, data gluing was undertaken by enthusiasts; now the state is taking over the matter, which, in an attempt to subjugate everything, will significantly make the life of criminals easier and create an increasing threat to citizens. We are talking about the initiatives of the government and the Ministry of Digital Development to collect data from all available enterprises and create a so-called state lake - a megabase where endless logs and statistics will be merged.

It is already possible to time the time until third parties gain access to this private information. And how they will use it is a matter of imagination.

The law on the protection of personal data for the end consumer was expressed in a piece of paper on consent to the processing of information, the value of which is, at most, litter for a cat in the toilet. Businesses are punished with minimal fines, which, as we see, does not lead to any results.

The state is not officially involved at all, although all these initiatives create a gigantic hole and endless opportunities for abuse and crime. Encryption is prohibited by intelligence agencies. Total hopelessness.

And the main thing is that in the current conditions nothing can be done about it. Investments in security and data protection are now clearly not a priority, the fight against numerous departments laying claim to a valuable information asset is pointless, resistance has long been replaced by submission. But an ordinary person is simply forced to show his passport or take tests. I want to live.

Considering that hoping for the best is a poor analytical argument and the darkness is gathering, we should all stock up on popcorn. The date apocalypse is just beginning. And its riders will be hundreds and thousands - according to the number of bases where everything is told about us.

PS
Since the beginning of the year, more than 100 million records of Russians have been “leaked” into the public domain, Roskomnadzor has calculated. Of these, November 6 alone—almost 9 million.