In southwest Moscow in a 19-story gray-and-white high-rise block lies the heart of the Russian Internet.
Known as MSK-IX, it is the oldest and largest information exchange in the nation and has been used since the mid-1990s. Today, almost half of Russia’s Internet traffic passes through its doors.
Amongst the servers, entangled by yellow-and-gray fiber optic cables, are boxes marked “SORM” — System of Operative Search Measures. These small boxes are essentially backdoors onto the Internet, allowing the Russian security service (FSB) to intercept all the traffic passing through.
SORM, which was initially developed to monitor traditional telephone lines in the late 1980s, has been constantly updated, first to intercept mobile calls and now to monitor the Internet.
SORM is one of the most ambitious and intrusive surveillance programs in the world
The FSB has also installed SORM boxes in the buildings of every Russian Internet service provider in the nation to catch the traffic that does not come through the capital — making the program one of the most ambitious and intrusive in the world.
As a result, Russian activists, journalists, opposition leaders and non-governmental organizations prefer to use Internet services located beyond Russia’s borders — Gmail, Facebook and Twitter — in an attempt to keep their communications out of reach.
However, the Kremlin has put an end to this: In July last year, Moscow adopted a law prohibiting the storage of personal data anywhere but on Russian soil.
The law was supposed to be enforced in September, but in late August the Russian authorities said that they would not check for compliance until next month, rumored to be because they were not certain that any companies would obey.
In September, Kommersant reported that Apple had rented space in Russia to house the data of Russian citizens. By October, messaging app Viber also announced the relocation of some of its servers to Russia. Soon it was reported that Ebay, PayPal and Booking.com had decided to comply with the Kremlin’s demands too.
Yet during these months, the largest players — Twitter, Google and Facebook — have stayed silent, at the same time allegedly sending high-level representatives to host private talks with the Kremlin.
If these three largest firms open their doors to Russia’s security services, they could lose control over their information and it would seriously devalue the “global government request reports” used to track who is asking Facebook and others for information about their users.
If they give in to Russian demands, the FSB would be able to help itself to whatever they want.
Another concern is that they would be able to get their hands on the technology companies are using to protect and encrypt communications.
If they comply, activists might be forced to migrate to other platforms, in the same many were forced to abandon Skype after it was bought by Microsoft, which was fully cooperating with Moscow.
On Monday last week, desperate users, worried about their privacy, launched a petition on Change.org addressed to the global Internet companies, pleading with them: “Don’t move our personal data to Russia.”
The petition, launched by Leonid Volkov, opposition journalist Alexei Navalny’s right-hand man, is meant to force Internet giants to explain themselves.
More than 30,000 people have signed it.
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