Russia is tightening internet censorship ahead of this weekend’s elections that are all but certain to give President Vladimir V. Putin another six years in power and limit political activity, independent information and freedom of speech. One of the last remaining spaces is shrinking further.
Russian authorities have stepped up a crackdown on digital tools used to circumvent internet blocks, restricting access to WhatsApp and other communication apps in certain areas during protests, civil society groups and researchers say. affected businesses and expanded the program to block websites and online services.
They say Russia is looking beyond established practices of hacking and digital surveillance and taking a more systematic approach to changing the way the country’s internet functions. In doing so, the country is drawing on techniques pioneered by China and Iran, creating an authoritarian model of regulating the internet that stands in contrast to the more open approach of the United States.
Mikhail Klimarev, a Russian telecommunications expert and executive director of the Internet Protection Association, a civil society group, said Russia “has reached a new level of blocking in the past six months.”
Russia has been tightening internet censorship for more than a decade, but the scale and effectiveness of the latest block surprised even technology experts. This approach further strengthens the repressive infrastructure Mr. Putin has built to keep protesters and dissidents in check and provide state propaganda to the country.
The move is crucial for Putin, who has been grappling with the memory of the Kremlin’s fiercest critic, Alexei A. Navalny, who died in a Russian prison last month and the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine. It was held at a certain time. . As Russians began heading to the polls on Friday to vote in a presidential election that is all but certain to be won by Mr Putin, the tightening of internet restrictions shows the government is not willing to take any risks.
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s main internet regulator, did not respond to requests for comment.
In ramping up its internet crackdown, Russia has taken cues from China, where the internet is severely restricted and social media is closely monitored.
In 2016, Fang Binxing, the father of the Great Firewall, the system used to censor the internet in China, met with Russian officials. The relationship has evolved since then, according to leaked meeting notes reviewed by The New York Times. The documents show internet officials from both countries met in 2017 and 2019 to share information on combating encryption, blocking foreign sites and suppressing protests.
The lessons learned from the discussions are now being put into practice in Russia.
In January, as protests rocked the country’s industrial region of Bashkortostan, authorities succeeded in restricting access to messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram in the region. Similar shutdowns have recently occurred in the regions of Dagestan and Yakutia, said Klimarev, who tracks Russian online censorship and runs a company called VPN Generator.
Other restrictions followed after Navalny’s death last month. During Navalny’s funeral in Moscow, mobile phone networks in nearby areas slowed down, making it difficult to post videos and images to social media, Klimarev said.
In recent weeks, Russian tech companies and online activists have also reported new government efforts to identify patterns in Internet traffic from virtual private networks (VPNs) designed to circumvent blocks.
Roskomnadzor has identified and disconnected VPNs large and small, closing many of the last loopholes that allowed Russians to access global news sites and social media sites like Instagram. This approach is believed to be more sophisticated than previous tactics, requiring specialized techniques, and mimics what China is doing at politically sensitive moments.
Some VPNs are still available in Russia, but they are becoming harder to find. A law that took effect on March 1 banned advertising of such services.
“If you look back at the beginning of 2022, it wasn’t so difficult to find a VPN,” said Stanislav Shakilov, technical director of Roskomsvoboda, a civil society group that supports an open internet. He added that this shows how quickly his abilities improved. Improved.
Russia is also changing the way it censors websites and internet services. Researchers say authorities have relied primarily on carriers to block sites on published blacklists, but now they are using centralized controls to more carefully block and delay traffic from Moscow. They say they seem to be becoming more dependent on technology.
Authorities are balancing a desire for internet control with technological limitations and concerns about angering the public by restricting popular online platforms such as YouTube and Telegram used for news, entertainment and communication. It seems like it is. The government has also faced technical challenges, including earlier this year when many major websites were taken offline for about 90 minutes, which experts say was caused by a failed test of a new blocking system. Pointed out.
Experts said authorities were likely preparing for an event that could affect this weekend’s election. Mr Navalny’s supporters are calling on people to go to the polls at noon on Sunday to vote against Mr Putin, hoping that footage of long lines will show the world the extent of their discontent. If the images can be stopped from spreading, the government could nullify the plan.
This method is based on Chinese-inspired strategies and has been refined over the years. High-level talks between China and Russia in 2017 led to Russian officials blocking websites, restricting access to the global internet, and creating a government-controlled internet similar to the Great Firewall, according to records and notes from the talks. He asked for advice on how to build it. These were published online by DDoSecrets, a group that publishes leaked documents.
Discussions focused on how to deal with the rise in encrypted data flows, how to target large mainstream messaging apps, and what services like VPNs can do to circumvent blocks. During the exchanges, China emphasized the use of real-name registration, a system that requires the use of government IDs to register for mobile phone services and social media, as a means of keeping people in check.
China and Russia “need to establish the necessary relationships to jointly counter current threats in the cyber environment,” former Roskomnadzor chief Alexander Zaroff said, according to a leaked copy of the speech. In 2017, he spoke to visiting Chinese officials.
In recent months, Russia has gone further than ever in blocking VPNs.
“The level of blocking we’re seeing in Russia far exceeds the level we’re seeing in China,” says Windscribe, a Canadian VPN provider used to circumvent internet blocks in Russia. said Mr. Egor Sak.
When it comes to WhatsApp and Telegram, Russia has taken a different approach than China. After years of largely neglecting the service, authorities recently moved to block access to the app at a critical moment of political unrest. In Bashkortostan, a manufacturing and mineral center with a large indigenous population, authorities temporarily blocked access to Telegram and WhatsApp in January in response to protests that began after the arrest of a local environmental activist. did.
Meta, which owns WhatsApp, declined to comment. Telegram did not respond to a request for comment.
The outage was so problematic that people left messages on local politicians’ social media pages urging them to resume essential services, according to a post on Russia’s main social media site VK.
One user said, “I can’t go to school, and I can’t talk to my doctor or relatives.” “Give me back WhatsApp and Telegram,” another wrote.
Ksenia Ermoshina, an expert on Russian censorship and surveillance technology, said the block was “very important” because messaging apps used by millions of people were considered much more difficult to disrupt. It is said that He said the carriers likely cooperated in accordance with government orders.
This experiment suggests that the rise of political movements may be limited by the growing capacity available for use in future moments of crisis.
“People protest when they see others protesting,” Hermosina said. But the ability to shut down entire regions would allow the Russian government to “better control regionalist and separatist movements” and prevent the spread of demonstrations and other anger.
The entry points for unregulated Internet traffic are gradually being closed off. Analysts say the government is requiring companies to install new surveillance equipment at communication points where cross-border internet cables enter Russia.
“The Soviet Union is back,” said Mazai Banzaev, operator of the Russian VPN Amnezia. “With this, full censorship is returning.”
Anatoly Kurmanaev Contributed to the report.
