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It has been claimed that Internet operations by Russian secret police services include a variety of "active measures" to influence the world events, including denial of service attacks, hacker attacks, dissemination of disinformation over the internet, participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, internet surveillance using SORM technology, and persecution of cyber-dissidents. According to investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov , some of these activities are coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB but has been formerly a part of 16th KGB department, but others are directed by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. This point is, however, disputable (see below).

Propaganda and disinformation

According to former senior Russian intelligence officer Sergei Tretyakov, who defected in the United States in 2000, he often sent his servicemen to branches of New York Public Library where they got access to the Internet without anyone knowing their identity. They placed propaganda and disinformation to various web sites and sent it in e-mails to US broadcasters . The articles or messages were not written by the intelligence officers, by prepared in advance by Russian experts, often with references to bogus sources. The texts were mostly accurate but always contained a "kernel of disinformation". The purpose of these active measures was to support Russian foreign policy, to create good image of Russia, to promote ant-American feelings and "to cause dissension and unrest inside the US". Tretyakov did not specified the targeted web sites, but made clear they selected the sites which are most convenient for distributing the specific disinformation. During his work in New York in the end of 1990s, one of the most frequent disinformation subjects was War in Chechnya.

According to Soldatov, one of the Russian teams, who called themselves GRU officers, was actively involved in a disinformation campaign prior to US invasion of Iraq.

Cyberattacks

Some believe that Russian secret police services organized a number of denial of service attacks as a part of their Cyber-warfare against other countries, most notably 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia and 2008 cyberattacks on Georgia and Azerbaijan. One of young Russian hackers said that he was paid by the Russian state security services to lead the hacker attacks on NATO computers. He was majoring computer sciences at the Department of the Defense of Information. His tuition was paid by the FSB According to Soldatov, a hacker attack on his web site Agentura was apparently directed by the secret services in the middle of Moscow theater hostage crisis.

Russian state security teams

Russian intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov made the following points when asked by Yevgenia Albats about "internet brigades":

• Russian state security teams actively disrupt work of certain political blogs;
• One of the teams, who called themselves GRU officers, was actively involved in a disinformation campaign prior to US invasion of Iraq;
• The teams are also involved in hacker attacks, and they have probably attacked his own web site during the Moscow theater hostage crisis;
• Some of the "internet brigades" are coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB and has been formerly a part of 16th KGB department;
• There are also such teams from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Persecution of cyber-dissidents by the FSB

When Russian president Vladimir Putin called on his nation's women to have more children, journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov published a satiric article on the Internet calling Putin "the nation's phallic symbol". Rakhmankov was found guilty and fined by the court. Journalist Boris Stomakhin and director of Russian-Chechen Friendship Society Stanislav Dmitrievsky were convicted in 2006 for publishing articles on the internet.

Disruption of political blogs

The appearance of Russian state security teams in RuNet was described in 2003 by journalist Anna Polyanskaya (a former assistant to assassinated Russian politician Galina Starovoitova), historian Andrey Krivov and political activist Ivan Lomako. They claimed the appearance of organized and fairly professional "brigades", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who were working in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy Internet forums and Internet newspapers of RuNet..

Behavior

According to Polyanskaya and her colleagues, the behavior of people from the Internet brigades has distinct features, some of which are the following:

• Propaganda of the Communist ideology, and constant attempts to present in a positive light the entire history of Russia and the Soviet Union, minimizing the number of people who died in repressions.
• Boundless loyalty to Vladimir Putin and his circle.
• Respect and admiration for the KGB and FSB. The key word which "will force them to reveal their true colors is lustration"; the brigade will cry out in a choir about "bloody repressions by democratic murderers" and "witch hunts" after mentioning this word.
• Hatred of dissidents and human rights organizations and activists, political prisoners and journalists, especially Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Kovalev, Elena Bonner, Grigory Pasko, Victor Shenderovich, and Valeria Novodvorskaya.
• Anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism.
• Accusation of Russophobia against everyone who disagrees with them.
• Tendency to accuse their opponents of being insane during arguments.
• Round-the-clock presence on forums. At least one of the uniform members of the team can be found online at all times, always ready to repulse any “attack” by a liberal.

Tactics

• Individual work on opponents. "As soon as an opposition-minded liberal arrives on a forum, expressing a position that makes them a clear "ideological enemy”, he is immediately cornered and subjected to “active measures” by the unified web-brigade. Without provocation, the opponent is piled on with abuse or vicious “arguments” of the sort that the average person cannot adequately react to. As a result, the liberal either answers sharply, causing a scandal and getting himself labeled a “boor” by the rest of the brigade, or else he starts to make arguments against the obvious absurdities, to which his opponents pay no attention, but simply ridicule him and put forth other similar arguments."
• Accusations that opponents are working for “enemies”. The opponents are accused of taking money from Berezovskiy, the CIA, the MOSSAD, Saudi Arabia, the Zionists, or the Chechen rebels.
• Making personally offensive comments, especially of sexual nature.
• Remarkable ability to reveal personal information about their opponents and their quotes from old postings, sometimes more than a year old.
• Teamwork. "They unwaveringly support each other in discussions, ask each other leading questions, put fine points on each other’s answers, and even pretend not to know each other. If an opponent starts to be hounded, this hounding invariably becomes a team effort, involving all of the three to twenty nicknames that invariably are present on any political forum 24 hours a day."
• Appealing to the Administration. The members of teams often "write mass collective complaints about their opponents to the editors, site administrators, or the electronic “complaints book”, demanding that one or another posting or whole discussion thread they don’t like be removed, or calling for the banning of individuals they find problematic."
• Destruction of inconvenient forums. For example, on the site of the Moscow News, all critics of Putin and the FSB "were suddenly and without any explanation banned from all discussions, despite their having broken none of the site’s rules of conduct. All the postings of this group of readers, going back a year and a half, were erased by the site administrator."

Russian agents in Polish web sites

According to claims of unnamed "Polish experts on Russian affairs", reported by the Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny in 2005, at least a dozen active Russian agents work in Poland, also investigating the Polish Internet. The source also claims that the agents scrutinize Polish websites (like those supporting Belarusian opposition), and also perform such actions, as—for instance—contributing to Internet forums on large portals (like Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, WP.pl). Labeled as Polish Internet users, they incite anti-Semitic or anti-Ukrainian discussions or disavow articles published on the web, according to the source.

"LiveJournal fighters"

A member of National Bolshevik Party Roman Sadykhov reported about "LiveJournal fighters", directed and paid from the Kremlin and instructions given to them by Vladislav Surkov, a close aide of Vladimir Putin Surkov allegedly called Livejournal "a very important sector of work" and said that people's brains must be "nationalized" . He instructed "LiveJournal fighters" that

"We are losing in the Internet in that respect. It is always easier to break down things than to do something positive. What you are doing are jokes and minor infractions. Not only methods, but also goals must be radical. We must blow this romantics out of them . It is important not only to protect the authorities - this is understood, but we need to attract young people who can work creatively in the Internet. This is an important communication place of young people. Make them interested in conversations with you."

Comments by Russian government officials

Alexander Yusupovskiy, head of the analytical department of the Federation Council of Russia (Russian Parliament) published in 2003 an article "Conspiracy theory" in Russian Journal with criticism of theory of web brigades.

His points included:

• Authors exclude from their interpretation of events all other hypotheses, such as internet activity of a group of some "skinheads", nazbols or simply unliberal students; or hackers able to get IP addresses of their opponents.
• According to Yusupovskiy, authors treat "independence of public opinion" in spirit of irreconcilable antagonism with "positive image of Russia".
• Although Yusupovskiy himself has a list of claims against Russian security services and their presense in virtual world (as "according to statements of media every security service is busy in the Internet tracking terrorism, extremism, narcotic traffic, human trafficking and child pornography"), his claims are of different nature than those of Polyanskaya.
• Yusupovskiy himself didn't take Web brigades theory seriously, "naively" considering that officeers of GRU or FSB have more topical problems than "comparing virtual penises" with liberals and emigrants. His own experience at forums also did not give him a reason proving the theory.

In popular culture

The alleged FSB activities on the Internet have been described in the short story "Anastasya" by Russian writer Grigory Svirsky, who was interested in the moral aspects of their work. He wrote:

"It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one does not see a disfigured body or the eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, the human soul lives by its own basic laws that force it to pay the price for the virtual crime in his real life".

See also

• Internet police
• Web brigades

References

1. ^ State control over the internet, a talk show by Yevgenia Albats at the Echo of Moscow, January 22, 2006; interview with Andrei Soldatov and others
2. ^ Pete Earley, "Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War", Penguin Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-399-15439-3, pages 194-195
3. Cyberspace and the changing nature of warfare. Strategists must be aware that part of every political and military conflict will take place on the internet, says Kenneth Geers.
4. Andrew Meier, Black Earth. W.W. Norton & Company, 2003, ISBN 0-393-05178-1, pages 15-16.
5. State control over the internet, a talk show by Yevgenia Albats at the Echo of Moscow, January 22, 2006; interview with Andrei Soldatov and others
6. "GLASNOST DEFENSE FOUNDATION'S DIGEST No. 298". 2006-09-26. Retrieved 2007-05-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. Russia: 'Phallic' Case Threatens Internet Freedom
8. U.S. Media Watchdog Criticizes Russia
9. Media freedom watchdog condemns conviction of journalist in Russia
10. Russia: Activist’s Conviction Hurts Freedom of Expression statement by Human Rights Watch
11. KAVKAZ-CENTER WRITER APPEALS JAIL SENTENCE - by Jamestown Foundation
12. Articles by Anna Polyanskaya, MAOF publishing group
13. Template:Ru icon "They are killing Galina Starovoitova for the second time", by Anna Polyanskaya
14. ^ Commissars of the Internet. The FSB at the Computer by Anna Polyanskaya, Andrei Krivov, and Ivan Lomko, Vestnik online, April 30, 2003 (English translation)
15. Operation "Disinformation" - The Russian Foreign Office vs "Tygodnik Powszechny", Tygodnik Powszechny, 13/2005
16. Template:Ru icon Interview with Roman Sadykhov, grani.ru, 3 April, 2007
17. ^ Military wing of Kremlin (Russian), The New Times, 19 March, 2007
18. ^ Conspiracy theory, by Alexander Yusupovskiy, Russian Journal, 25 April, 2003
19. " Grigory Svirsky Anastasya. A story on-line (Full text in Russian)
20. Template:Ru icon Eye for an eye

• Orphaned articles from February 2009
• Cyberspace
• Public relations techniques
• Psychological warfare techniques
• Internet in Russia
• Conspiracy theories