 Well, we'll get started. Welcome, everyone, to the Corning Endowment. I'm Eugene Rumor, director of the Russian Eurasia Program here, and my task here is really minimal. Delighted to introduce the panel tonight, Andrei and Irina, the authors of a new and very important book, a book that is really literally right out of the press, and of course David Hoffman, a longtime friend of the Corning Endowment, and a longtime student of Russian Affairs. I want to warn everybody that this event is being live streamed, so please turn off your electronic devices. David will moderate the conversation, and then we'll open the floor to a question from the audience. I also want to say that we'll have a reception, starting at about 7.30, and there will be books available for purchase and signing by our authors. Again, Andrei, Irina, David, welcome to Corning Endowment. Delighted to have you here. Thank you. Gene, thanks very much. I want to reassure everybody that we are going to have this discussion, but then we're going to leave a lot of time for questions, so we're not going to present all evening. We're just going to try and get it started. So if you have some, just hold on to them for a bit because I'm going to try and have an evening where everybody's question gets answered. But I just like to say about Andrei and Irina. I've worked with them for about five years on two separate projects, and you have, before you, authors who really deserve our respect for something that I have long hoped would happen in Russia. As a journalist who was the Washington Post bureau chief there and someone who's paid attention to the press in Russia, Andrei and Irina are really examples of this post-Soviet generation of independent journalists who really had ideals about what journalism meant, independent inquiry, discovering things, writing about them in the best sense of what we wanted to see in that time. It's obviously gotten different and in some cases much more difficult, but this particular book is filled with real reporting and fascinating stories. What I like about this book is that these are stories of our time, of a period of time that was very important for Russia. It's not a book of ideology or of some particular points of view, it's a book of reporting. And on this particular subject of how the digital revolution is changing the world is how it affects countries, particularly how it changes the world in authoritarian environments, I think this book is at the cutting edge. So I hope we'll open the covers a little bit to you tonight and illuminate some of it, answer your questions and I really hope you get a chance to read it because books like this coming out of Russia written by Russian authors is really what we want to see. A lot of us, myself included, have spent time walking streets in Russia thinking we're so smart and we know it all. But actually this is a book that could not have been written by foreigners, could not have been written by foreign correspondents, but is written by Russians about their own country with real experience. And I'm just really pleased that Carnegie is hosting us tonight and giving us a chance to bring it to you. So Andre and Marina, thanks for coming. Thank you for having us. And without further ado, the really big question to me about this book is does the internet make you free? And what did the Russian experience, the one that you chronicle here, tell us, how does it answer that question? Is the digital revolution enabling democracy or not? That's a rather difficult question given the gloomy atmosphere in Moscow today. But we think that eventually it helped all of us to feel free because well, for many years from the 1990s to almost 2012, the internet developed in Russia as free and uncensored space. And many things that actually existed only on the internet. We all know what happened with journalists in traditional medias in the beginning of 2000s. A lot of these journalists were expelled from the media and the only place to express their opinions, to write something critical was the internet for many years. And even now when we got lots of repressive legislation on the internet, we got the internet filtering system, we got full blacklist about almost everything. We got surveillance and Russian system of surveillance is extremely totalitarian. Nevertheless, we still have people who are ready to use the internet and we actually use the internet to expose the government lies. We got these things about Ukraine. We got these things, the latest example about Syria. What we know about, for example, the military involvement of Russia in Syria and in Ukraine, we know thanks to the internet. So, Irina, sometimes you said you have a more optimistic view about the internet and what it might mean for Russia. What do you mean by optimistic? What's their good going to happen from? I mean that nowadays is very roomy because of the political pressure on activists, businessmen, just average people are huge and people feel that they lost all the hat, all the freedom that they had in the 90s. 90s. And they don't feel that the internet can help them in any direction, but I think that is a big mistake because the government and Putin are saying that the internet is the same as other things in the world and it is ruled by some guys on the top and it could be suppressed at the same way, to put pressure on the guy at the top. But so far he thinks so. There is a huge chance to use the internet as a tool for spreading information and censoring it. And there is no means how authority can prevent this because they are mistaken understanding of the nature of the internet. So what is their mistake to think that there is a hierarchy and somebody is in control and who thinks that? I mean you think that Putin himself really understands the internet and how it works? It's not only about Putin himself. He is surrounded by people, by so-called siloviki and they, even in the 1990s they presumed that the internet posed a threat to the national security of Russia. I was present at the very first hearing at the State Duma about the internet and a deputy director of Russian Electronic Intelligence Agency said, internet is a threat to national security because he thought that the internet is based on American technologies built by Americans. That means that Americans can do something with Russian telecommunications and content online. And they still have this idea that because the internet was built by Americans it's a mannequin tool. And of course it's a mistake because, well, it's extremely difficult to find one organization which is in charge of everything on the internet. The Kremlin tried, and one of the examples of how the internet tried, the Kremlin tried to change the rules, is with the idea of going after ICANN, the essentially American non-government organization. But of course people around pushing, they don't believe in anything that in the United States might be a truly non-government organization. So who do they think is behind it? Well, Putin said it. He called the internet as a CIA project. So he says, so he says that CIA is in charge of the internet. That is a really mistake. Right. So he has that point of view. But in fact, I think you've said there are 80 million internet users in Russia today. I mean, there's millions, right? It seems to me that that must be a positive force. Is there any way that the authorities in Russia can control what those 80 million people do online? Well, the first of all, we should understand that there's 80 million people, they went to the internet not to read political news. Of course they are mostly interested in entertainment. They're mostly interested in YouTube, think back back, and some cats maybe. And only a few of them actually are interested in real information. Otherwise, the picture in Russia, I mean, how successful Russian propaganda now is, would be completely different. And we should actually admit that propaganda was extremely successful mostly because even these users on the internet, they are not ready to get and to check information and to understand how to distinguish real information from propaganda. It's also easy. All right, but Andrei, even if most people are watching YouTube, there are people who are getting some information. There are many of them. Does Russia and do the Russian authorities attempt to control this at the individual level? No. So where do they try to control it? The idea, as Irina said, Putin got his approach to the internet. He was inspired by his success in suppressing press freedom. And then his approach was not to deal with journalists, but to deal with editors and media. Just to place the most important media in the hands of pro-Kremlin oligarchs because it's cost-free. And you just give this task to oligarchs. And in this case, it would be really difficult to say, oh, it's all happened because of the criminal pressure. It's all about business disputes. And they remember the story about Anteva. It's always was portrayed by the authorities as some sort of business dispute. And Putin tried to do the same with the internet. He goes after organizations. In this case, it was against Yandex, against Vkontakte. And the most spectacular example is, of course, what happened with Vkontakte. So just explain to them what is Vkontakte and what happened to it. Vkontakte is the most popular social network in Russia, which is very similar to Facebook. They even use the same color. But it's extremely popular. And, well, what happened with Vkontakte that in the spring of 2014, Pavel Durov, a young entrepreneur who founded Vkontakte, he was forced out of the country and he was replaced by a new CEO. And this CEO has the name of Boris Dabradi, which is symbolic. Because Boris Dabradiov, he's the son of Oleg Dabradiov, sorry for all this confusion, Russian names. But it's important. He is his father. He is the CEO of the Russian state television empire called All Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Corporation. So what we got? We got a father to control the Russian state television, a son to control the most popular Russian social network. And, well, for a time, the Kremlin feel happy that they can control social networks just by the same way they control the television. I don't understand. Explain to me. So they put their man in charge of Vkontakte, right? That's the company. There are still millions of users today. How do they control it? Can't people say what they want on Vkontakte? I know, actually, that's what happened. They thought that they might control the company. When we got the crisis, and that crisis was the war in Ukraine, and we got something fascinating. We got lots of soldiers who were supposedly sent in secret to Ukraine to fight, a boasting of their exploits of Vkontakte. Oh, so in other words, the state didn't admit that they were in Ukraine. But then, Irina, you told me that some of the soldiers themselves revealed this. How did that happen? In the summer, you know that Russian authorities denied their military involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. But already in the summer of 2014, journalists, both sides of Ukrainian and Russian, found a lot of profiles of Russian soldiers who boasted of their exploits in Ukraine. They posted a lot of information about themselves, their names, names of their units, even their locations. And that's always found. And it was extremely helpful to find the truth. So the network helped. So here's a case, again, where the internet set people free. It brought information that the state wasn't going to give them. So isn't that a good sign? What does it matter who's on the top of the Vkontakte if it's being used by these soldiers? Yeah, I guess the soldiers had no ideas about the problem with leadership of Vkontakte. I guess I don't know who is Pavel Durov and Debra Deyov, but just posted their pictures. So this is an example of how they failed to control the internet? Absolutely, yeah. So we got some sort of crisis. The content was generated by users, immediately as an approach to deal with companies failed. So are there other examples that we should be concerned about where they have controlled the internet? And I wonder if you could start answering this by telling me about the black box. Every internet provider has a black box. So this is a physical thing. It's a real method. What is the black box? What's it called? Well, black boxes, actually, are of the size of VHS video player. Well, it's essentially a Russian technology to intercept all kinds of telecommunications. We discovered that this technology, this approach to interception, was actually invented and designed in the late 80s. So actually, then we still had the key GB. And firstly, it was to deal with phone conversations. It was firstly introduced in 1992 to deal with phone conversations. To intercept the phone call. Absolutely. And it was, even then, it was absolutely totalitarian in its nature because the idea of black box is to provide direct and unrestricted access to all kinds of information on networks. To who? To the FSB. So it's about black box and the line to the headquarters of the local office of the FSB. And this system is replicated all over the country. Every Russian internet service provider, every Russian telecommunication company, every office should install these things. So does the FSB have to have a court warrant before they can listen in on that? Yes, we have this requirement because, as I said, the very first version of our song was introduced in the 1990s, which means that the FSB tried at least to pretend that they play along the rules. And that's why we got this requirement to get a warrant. The problem was that the FSB was not ready to change the technical scheme they got and then designed it in the late 80s. So we have now, we got a very peculiar situation. An FSB officer in charge of interception is required to get a warrant. But he has no right to show his warrant to anyone except his senior. So the telecommunication company personal has no right to ask to see his warrant because we have no security clearance. So it's not really a check? No, absolutely. It's not. It means that officers at the headquarters of the FSB could type any name or IP addresses and got all information from this IP address on phone conversation, emails, and all pictures posted on social networks and so on. So do you assume that all digital communications inside the Russian Federation go through this system? Everything? Absolutely, because the thing is that it's cost free for the FSB. What does it mean? Already in the 1990s, the FSB forced the companies to pay for these equipment. And what does it mean? It means that every Russian internet service provider should not only to install these black boxes, but actually it's sometimes it's crazy because you might find one line of communications between two cities. And you might find thousands of black boxes because every small internet service provider is required by the law to install its own black box. We found some amazing thing. For example, you have the university. And inside of this university, there is a local internet network. So according to the legislation, the local small internet service provider should install its own black box. I guess with all this black boxes around, I'm sort of tempted to ask, are people being picked up, arrested? Are there people, prisoners, political prisoners, who were arrested because of something they said on the internet? Is that happening? Yeah, it's happening now. And now we've got some examples. And the very recent one was two weeks ago. Irina, tell us about this. Two weeks ago, one guy in Tatarstan, his name is Kasharov, was arrested after posting on, was arrested at the center prison really for three years after posting on his, on Vkontakte, his opinion on what's going on in Crimea. And it was considered by the authorities as extremism. But in reality, he just wrote that he called Russian soldiers occupants and wrote something like, go away from, Russian occupants go away from Crimea, something like that, nothing like that. There was a radical opinion, nothing more. And he got three years in prison. And for comparison, in Russia, for average term, for a merger, he used seven years usually. So three years for an opinion and seven years for a merger. But it seems to me that there are a few cases like this. But the gist of your book is that while the FSB has these technical abilities, black boxes everywhere, that's not how they actually work. That there is a different way to try and influence the population by example, by fear. Explain what you mean by that. That system is not technically very sophisticated. And we found out what is direct legacy of the Soviet past. When we started researching the book, we thought, as everybody, that KGB was all powerful and we have this famous expression in Russian, this is not a phone conversation. So which means that even my parents used this and they still use it. So everybody presumed that their conversations might be under control. But we found out to our surprise that even in 1991, so you might say, at the height of power of the KGB, the KGB was capable to intercept, only 300 phone lines simultaneously in Moscow, which is almost nothing. Even in comparison with Stasi, it was a very small amount of conversations and data. Nevertheless, everybody was convinced that the conversations might be intercepted. And people were very cautious. And we have the similar picture now. Actually, we don't have mass repressions online. We don't have lots of people sent to jail. We don't have the situation, for example, comparable with Turkey, where thousands of journalists suffered because they expressed their opinion. Nevertheless, the system, because it's based on intimidation, is very successful. What do you mean? How does that work when you say it's based on intimidation? The idea is that they send a message, what your conversations might be tapped and then they might be exposed online. And that actually happened, for example, with Boris Nemtsov. I think it's a very good example. His phone conversations are tapped by, we don't know whom officially because there is still ongoing investigation. But nevertheless, his conversations were tapped, recorded, leaked to pro-government media just before one of the biggest Russian opposition manifestation. And, well, everybody got this message that all conversations of all leaders of opposition are tapped and might be used against opposition leaders. You have an example when a guy, Rudolf Sofa, his conversations on Skype, again was intercepted and he was sent to jail. What happened? One guy was killed in prison. Yeah, sent to prison. So, these examples are ways in which the whole population sees it could happen to you. But I also know, and from your book, and listening to you, that Facebook has a huge following in Russia and it's getting bigger. And I wondered why Facebook? Do people think they're safe there? There are two reasons. Historically, Facebook was the preferable place for Moscow intelligentsia and experts community and journalists, just because it was a way to keep, well, to keep communication with your friends who are based abroad. I joined Facebook just because I wanted to keep in touch with my friends who are based in Britain and the United States. But when we got the protest and immediately it was clear that Facebook is a very, it's a great tool because you can launch these protest groups and you might gather lots of people and they might just sign on that they would come and they actually can't. Don't go too fast, because this is really interesting to me. Facebook played a role in the protest in 2011 and 2012. You have a whole chapter of the book devoted to how this happened. Just to explain to us briefly, how did it happen that something like Facebook led to protests? Did it enable them? Who did what? Just tell me that little story of how that came about. Well, the main guy in this story was a Yakhlishan. A journalist, now he's an editor of the website of TV Dost, a very famous and only independent TV channel. When he was just a young journalist and he went to one of the very small protests in Moscow, people started protesting actually even before big protests because we were not very happy with the decision of Vladimir Putin to get back to the Kremlin. But this particular group, this particular manifestation was very small. It was about 200 people and Klishan thought that he actually already knew all these people because it was really small. But he overheard some conversation that some people wanted to keep going and to organize something bigger. He got home, started, well, he opened his laptop. He opened his MacBook. MacBook, right, MacBook. On his IKEA table. Absolutely, yeah, he did. I just wanted you to have the flavor of this moment. He's a hipster. And he just sent a message on Facebook, look, he tried to find a group or some sort of information about the new manifestation and he felt, so he posted a message, look, anyone, well, maybe someone already started a protest group. The answer was no. When he was contacted by his, actually, admirer and this guy told him, look, yeah, maybe we can start something. And this just started a group on Facebook which was designed not to start protest but to celebrate something. For example, if you have, I don't know, family celebration or party, well, Facebook provided a very useful tool. You can start the group. Had a little RSVP bug. Absolutely, yeah. So what he did, he started with RSVP group and in a few hours, he went to Tibet in the morning. He found out that it's now, it's more than 30,000 people signed it to- 30,000 people overnight? And then what happened? Well, that was, well, that very moment, some other opposition leaders, they were summoned to the Moscow government office to talk about- So they went to the mayor's office, basically. Actually, yeah, and on Tverskoy. And they wanted to talk about, well, the problem is that you need to sanction manifestation. A permit, you need a permit. And the problem was that the authorities were not ready to give them, you need to actually to write how many people you expect. And, well, the authorities, of course, tried to say, look, maybe 2,000 people, maybe 200 people, well, it would be unsignificant. So the mayor's office tried to give them a permit for 2,000 people? Something like that. It was about a very small number of people. And the problem was that when you are given this, when you admit that it would be about 2,000 people, well, the place for the manifestation would be very far from the center and in some outskirts. So they might get some back lot far away. That's the usual strategy. So what happened? Well, Sergei Parhomenko, Russian journalist, he, fortunately, he brought with him his iPad. So Parhomenko brought his iPad, and what did he do with it? He just showed the numbers. But what did he do? He opened it to Facebook? Yeah, he opened it to Facebook. He showed the mayor's office what? The numbers of people who signed it on this protest group. And how many people were there? It was about 30,000 people. And what did the mayor's office do there? They approved. And they gave them a better place, right? Well, that's complicated because there was a big class where we actually, David, it's really complicated. Still, there's a big, yeah. But eventually, we got the place. You get the point. And I urge you to read this chapter in the book, the whole book, but you do see how this channel, this ability to communicate, and certainly 30,000 people overnight hitting a Facebook RSVP button, saying they'll come to a protest, may have changed the course of history a little bit. Anyway, we've touched on some of the big subjects in the book, and now I want to get to questions. I hope there are a lot of them because if you don't ask them, I'll keep asking them. So I'll call on people, or Jean, should I call on people? You should call on people. Well, Jean, because it's your show, you get the first one. You document in the book the events that you just described in the story, but also events in Ukraine have had a really profound effect on the establishment, on the Kremlin. And after the Maidan Revolution, I think after the demonstrations in 2012 in Moscow, it's pretty obvious that you can't control the internet. So the question is this. Putin is surrounded by smart people. Some of them, again, are profiled in your book and are advising him on how to manage this beast. So are they misleading Mr. Putin, or are they just in the best bureaucratic tradition telling him that if you do this, if you adopt another piece of legislation, everything will be fine? Or is there something more sophisticated that they're developing that actually will enable them to achieve their goal when they need to? In reality, the Putin's approach to the internet was defined by the people from the security services. And they had the same point of view that the internet was created in the United States, was ruled by the CIA, and should be suppressed by any means. And they tried to implement this policy even in the late 90s, but there was no success because Putin didn't believe in the internet at that time. He thought that the internet was just a toy for intellectuals and couldn't be used by masses. But after 2012, these people came to Putin. They had a clear strategy how to operate. And China also was a very good example for them. And they tried to implement the restrictive legislation and started to block websites. And actually, it's not so, well, maybe we sounded over-optimistic. But the problem is that some of the measures taken by the Kremlin were really successful. We got, for example, the system of internet filtering and all internet companies, including international ones, very swiftly accepted the idea of internet filtering. Now we have this big problem, looming problem of relocation of servers, which is a very big problem because what does it mean? It means the Russian authorities try to force companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google and others to relocate their service to Russia to get access to data. And not only to data, but also to technologies used by these companies. And the problem is that many of these companies seem to be very hesitant to clearly say what they think and how they will react. Actually, what we got, we got only Facebook refusing to comply. All other companies are very secretive. All of them sent the top-level officials to Moscow to have some secret talks with the Kremlin. And the problem is it's still there. The legislation came into force this September. Immediately, the Russian authorities say that they would not check by the big companies comply with the law until January. So we have this transition period until January. But nobody knows what might happen. In January, just three days ago, we got the news that Viber, which is extremely popular messenger in Russia, decided to comply. So it's a battle, it's a war, which is not yet decided. OK, I see a lot of hands. We'll sort of work from the front back. Go ahead. You have a mic? Hi. Can you address trawling, please? The government supported phony participants and social networks. What is the scope and how effective is it? Effective inside the country because their task to disrupt the discussion. And we have a lot of free discussion even on the internet. And when you want to participate in discussion and you are immediately attacked by these people, the discussion is disrupted because nobody wanted to be offended even on the net. So they're very successful inside Russia. But in the West, I think the trolls failed because they were easily identified by Western users and the attempts to pretend to be women from success who are posting some pleasant stuff about putting on the website of the Guardian failed because these people were identified by audience. And the same happened here in the United States. But another thing is the Eastern Europe where some right-wing people supported the point of view that trolls disseminated. But that's not the problem. Of course, this problem with trolls is a really big problem in Eastern Europe because they try to convey this emotional message. And they try to play on the feelings of resentment against the West. And because we have this thing and lots of people live in big cities, even in the middle classes. Not all of them, but many of them share this idea of disillusionment with the West, that the West promised to provide prosperity and democracy and failed. And this idea that West is too hypocritical is very popular. And trolls, they just need to play on these feelings and they will be successful. Looking forward, you hear a lot of hysterical chatter among the Moscow intelligentsia that the Kremlin is going to shut off Facebook or Twitter. Looking forward, do you see that happening or what do you see happening? The trajectory from 2012 has certainly been more restrictive. Well, I think that now, right now, this year, is a very interesting time we have. Because until now, the Russian approach to control information on the internet was based on putting pressure on companies rather than putting pressure on users. And it was always about pressure. It was not about technology, it was just about pressure. And they were successful in a way. But now, we are coming to the point that we need to find a technical solution because lots of things which prevent them from controlling the internet now are used by users. Just to give you an example, the Russian authorities have a big problem with Tor and their circumvention tools. Does everybody know what Tor is? Tor is a very famous circumvention tool which helps you to bypass the filtering. And when the websites are blocked, Tor is a tool to access these websites because Tor helps you to pretend that you are not in Russia and someone else and that is the way to get access. And can Russia block Tor? It's impossible because the thing is the Russian authorities are contemplating the idea of banning Tor for two years. They got lots of reports that they want to. But the problem is Tor is still not banned in Russia because the Russian authorities have no technical solution. The Russian authorities are also very unhappy with the standard called HTTPS. HTTPS? HTTPS? Yes, to explain that is a kind of encryption, right? It's, well... Protocols are used by Facebook or... By most of online services, by Google. Yeah, by everybody, by Wikipedia, for example. But the problem is it's not used only by companies, it's used by websites and by users. What does it mean? It means that Russian authorities try to put pressure on Wikipedia recently. And we felt because Wikipedia refused to comply and to disable HTTPS. And, well, they just don't know what to do. So right now, the Russian authorities need to find a real technical solution to this problem. And it seems they are very hesitant because it's tough. Okay, let's keep moving on over here. Thank you. I'm interested more in what's happening in other regions of Russia, not St. Petersburg and Moscow. How easy is the access to the internet in those regions and how much is internet used there for information and not for entertainment? Thank you. Well, if you look at statistics, you might find that lots of internet users in regions they use are internet on their smartphones, which means that they do not read news. It's mostly about entertainment. It's mostly about social networks, contacts here, on the class, these kind of things. But it's not about real information and news. And, of course, it's a big problem because it's not really understandable how to get these people interested in real information. So far, yeah. Okay, we have some back here. Go ahead. Thank you for a brilliant presentation, Andrey Irina. I look forward to reading your book. You mentioned that these black boxes basically are everywhere. And I wonder if you can tell us a couple of words regarding the internet FSB processing capacity because based on what you said, it's million, million or thousands or whatever it is, multiplied, triple, doubled. So how is it even possible for FSB to process all that? It's just outside of human capacity, it seems. You're absolutely right. It's impossible. And this is a very big secret for the FSB. They don't want to talk about this, but they have big technical problems in analyzing large amounts of data. Russian security services are not very good at producing software to deal with databases. Even the database, the internal database of the FSB is based on oracle technologies, which means that they still, they told us quite frankly that we are not very happy with export limitations and which you have in the United States because we need these technologies from the West to deal with large amounts of data. That's why what we have in Russia is not mass surveillance. It's targeted surveillance. They don't have capacities to analyze this data. And the problem is that it seems they don't need to right now because the system is based on the approach that we focused on few troublemakers. And they're still focused on few troublemakers. And these people are already identified. They have this list of people and these people are spied on, but they don't need to control everybody because the system is based on intimidation. It sounds like you're saying their reach exceeds their grasp. They have a lot of capability, black boxes everywhere and they can't possibly process it. Absolutely right, yep. Okay, there's one more next to you and then we'll move. Thank you, I have three but very short questions. So the first one is, can personal messages on Facebook be compromised by the FSB? Can personal messages on Telegram be compromised by the FSB? And since now Viber is considered to be the safest message application, if they relocate their servers to Russia, can it be safe? Can it still be safe? In other words, where are we safe? Particularly these three applications. About Facebook, so far I've listened to a lot of conversation among people who are involved in the process of legal interception in Russia. I mean, not only secret offices of security services, but also employee of telecommunications companies. And they all said that they have an ability to intercept information on Facebook, but they can't decrypt it. So because they use HTTPS on Viber, Viber never been never been safety because that's Israeli, Belarusian product so never considered as safe. Okay, but what about the other two? She asked about Telegram and BlackBerry. Telegram is very questionable. It's quite good, but the problem is that the team behind Telegram is extremely secretive. The only way to prove that your technologies are secure is to open your codes and to give activists access and to give them the ability and the option to check whether your technologies are really secure. And as far as I understand from cyber activists and from human rights organizations in this field, they are not entirely happy with Telegram because Telegram refused to explain and to actually give access and to explain how they secure communications. And that's why it's a very big question. What about BlackBerry? Really, there's only way to be safety on the net and to encrypt your information. All sense of information. So applications that are encrypted are probably beyond the reach. That's right. So that's really the answer for any application. Is it encrypted? Yeah, that's right. Okay, Erin. So the black boxes, hi, that you're talking about sound really similar to some of the back doors that the US is trying to, or has gotten a lot of the phone companies and stuff to put in. So I'm wondering, how has the discussion around surveillance in the US affected the discussion in Russia and where does Snowden fit into all this? Well, that's a very good question because just a few months ago, we got Citizen 4 in Moscow and it was a very big event and it was promoted by Russian state television. Actually, the license for the Citizen 4 was bought by RTR for, it was... By Russian state government. By Russian government money. And we were present at the very first screening of this movie. And surprisingly, people around us when they exchange their views, they all tend to think that, well, it's an NSA problem. So it's not, well, the idea is, look, it's awful, we have this American agency spying all over the world and we need to do something with NSA. But it was very, very focused only on NSA. So there was not a word about, that might be there are some security services a bit closer to Moscow than NSA. Unfortunately, it didn't provoke a debate on privacy, but it just gave another justification for the authorities to implement all restrictive legislation in terms of relocation service into the Russian soil. And also, if you remember, Mr. Snowden, when he asked his question to Vladimir Putin a year ago, he said that he wanted to have, that his question would provoke public debate on Russia about privacy. And firstly, we thought, we were very critical of Snowden all the time and we thought, look, maybe finally we need to give him some credit. Maybe, really, it might provoke some debate. Unfortunately, it never happened. So that debate has never occurred in Russia. Are people, you say they're intimidated, they're worried, they know that they can be surveilled, but you say they're not having a public debate about it. Absolutely, and we have this cynical approach that, well, because we know that KGB was after us and that FSB has the same, and now it's NSA, so why to care? It's very cynical and very... Very passive. Very passive, yeah, I approach. Okay, I wanna keep getting some more. Go ahead. No, yeah, that's right, you. Thank you for your talk. You talked a lot about how the opposition has used the internet to mobilize people. Has the government tried to use the internet to mobilize people like it's used television as a way to mobilize people in terms of patriotism? Well, it seems it's an opposite process because it seems that in the middle of 2000s, when the Kremlin was really frightened by color revolutions in Ukraine, in Georgia, and they thought then that we need some mass youth movements to have someone to send to streets in case of some sort of crisis. So they mobilized youth, pro-government youths, and these people were mobilized to go to the streets, but actually never had, well, we got no mass manifestations until 2012. So the Kremlin faced a problem to find a youth for all these people. And they came up with a very, I think, smart idea in 2007 to use some of these people to launch DDoS attacks on countries like... DDoS attacks is what you're talking about. DDoS attack, okay. Denial of service attacks. Through attacks, right? And the problem was that it was an extremely smart move because in this case you got not security services attacking Estonia or Georgia. You have patriotic youth attacking countries because of these countries because they are outraged by some, I don't know, by some things. And what happened next? We got 2014 and we got the idea of trolls. And again, these people already mobilized. We used it to take part in a trolls campaign. Many of these people who are identified, who work as trolls, and even with troll fabrics and sample silk work, we have some traces and we have some connections and we have pro-government youth movements. Okay, let's go back over to the side. Go ahead. Thank you for your presentation. My name is Patrick Maldrey. I write on the topic of cybersecurity for a think tank in Estonia. So just to continue on this discussion, we also know that Russian offensive cyber capabilities have increased dramatically since the attacks in 2007 and 2008 against Estonia and Georgia. A lot of security companies have been publishing exposés on these tactics and procedures and interests and so on. But they never can exactly figure out if what particular agency is behind it. And it's well known that the FSB and other Russian security services have ties to the organized crime factions in Russia. Could you speak from your perspective from the inside as to whether offensive operations are conducted by Russian security services or whether they're contracted out to organize crime elements? Well, it seems that again, once again we have this very useful tool in terms of pro-government youth movements. And when you have security services attacking someone, it means that it would be extremely difficult to deny responsibility. So what we got instead, we got pro-government youth movements which are actually, we have no connection with security services. They mostly have connections with the administration of the president. And these people are given task to find some groups of hackers to launch attacks. And as far as we know, when the FSB tried directly to find a contact to hacker communities, well, these hackers were not entirely happy because it means that today, a lot of problems for them. Yeah, you might work today for the FSB, tomorrow it might be completely, well, you might be exposed. But it's much more safe when you work for pro-government youth movement because you just get some money and most of these hackers are motivated by money. And you have no direct connection with the state. You can't preserve this distance. And that also helps the state because you know that it was completely impossible to attribute all these attacks. We have some Russian words and quotes which means nothing because we have what we are talking about. We are talking about Russian hackers, Russian speaking hackers, living where? Moscow, Kyiv, Israel, Baltic countries, it's just impossible. So I think it was very, in a way it was very smart. Okay, in the back there, yeah. Yeah. I'm curious about what I've heard in the media about Putin having a popularity amongst the Russian people of about mid 80% that's since Crimea and Ukraine invasions and the downing of Malaysia Airlines. None of the media that I've read have reported on the methodology or the reliability of those numbers. So the first part of my two-part question is, is that a reliable poll number mid 80% amongst the Russian people? And two, considering the intimidation that has occurred and continues to occur, do you expect that there will be any liberalization in the near future on the use of the internet or any of the social media? About 90%, it's very difficult to estimate cause the pollsters are not honest in the country, but it seems that people are support all this version about MH17 and their belief, really belief in state propaganda so far. But you know that they're still not have a huge economic crisis, economical crisis in the country and situated but there are some problems but not so huge and situation can be easily changed if economics started to lower it faster than now. But and this 87, 86% could be shifted to 26% very fast. But unfortunately we have other numbers, we have the most recent opposition rally in Moscow which gathered no more than 4,000 people, which is of course the proof that unfortunately majority of the Russian population believe in propaganda, but we think that it's not that the propaganda is so skillful, it's not about changing someone's mind, it's about to provide full for people who are already convinced in something. And the problem is that we have this clear division, we have people who are already convinced that Putin is always right and there are some conspiracy things inspired by the West and there are people, small minority, who are very critical and this propaganda is not intended to change someone's mind, it's just intended to fill, to fit with expectations and to provide more full. So that's why it's looks for outsiders are crazy, sometimes all these stories about dead people put on the plane and shot down by CIA, the problem is the task is not to try to convince someone. Okay, over here. First, thank you very much. My question is, what do you think are the prospects for so-called internet kill switch in Russia? And if such a thing is possible, how would that actually be used in practice? I didn't get your question. The question of internet kill switch, like can you switch it off? Okay, last week we got a very optimistic news on this topic, one of the owner of ISP said that Russian military exercises, how to... Not military, it was the Russian communication ministry. But communication, but there was a huge presence of security services on these exercises. This guy said that these exercises was reported as very successful and they said that internet could be isolated in Russia and operated from the west. But this guy said that these exercises failed because information finds a way to go out from the country. They failed to suppress all flow of information. Of course, it's a big problem because the national infrastructure of telecommunications in Russia provokes them to think that they can't control the internet because it's still very centralized and the biggest Russian national-operated Rostelecom still is in charge of more than 50% of Russian traffic. We have very few internet exchange points in the country. For example, in the United States, you have more than 80 internet exchange points. In Russia, it's about 12 or 13. And the biggest one, MSK9, is based physically on the premises of Rostelecom, which is in turn under government control. And also, we have very few directions to the west. So the country, if you just imagine the map of Russia, is connected with the west, with the outside world. Actually, there's only four, actually three and a half directions. There is a well-established direction to Finland. There's a small line to Frankfurt. There is a connection to Iran, which poses no problem in terms of internet security. And there's a connection to Japan, that's all. So that provokes our forces to think that if we can control national operators and these cables and internet exchange points, that would be enough. The problem is, again, it's a failure to understand that if you need to control the internet, it's not about 80% of traffic, it's about 100%. You need to control 100%. And they failed. When you said they failed, no, they did try to flip the switch, but they just couldn't stop it? Yep. Couldn't stop the fault. That's why. They're trying to cut off the internet from outside internet and they failed. But isn't that an alarming thing to you that the authorities are running an exercise to try and cut off the internet? I don't imagine Obama's having a similar exercise, right? That's not why. Well, to be frank, as a pretext for that. Obama doesn't believe that the internet is a FSB connection. But seriously, isn't it alarming that they would try? Well, the pretext provided by the authorities was so hilarious that it was immediately understandable that it would fail. The pretext was that because of sanctions, lots of Russian people might suffer because, well, one day Obama might decide to cut off the internet connection to Russia. As an example, which we provided, they provided the situation in Crimea. And we were at the B conference in the summer when Russian officials very seriously said, but you know what happened in Crimea? Russian users of Warcraft were cut off by Americans. They can't get access to Warcraft. And that was presented as a pretext to all these exercises. Cutting Russia off to save itself. Right, yeah. Okay, are there more questions? We've got a couple more. Okay, right here. You mentioned that the regime has a list of troublemakers and I was wondering if the two of you are on that list. So have you received the kind of pressure, intimidation, surveillance personally that you've described the regime using? Well, the authorities are not so stupid to end their actions against people who dissent. So frankly speaking, we have now a possibility to walk for any Russian media. And we were fired from the last, we were fired in 2008, even from Nova Gazeta. So that's not only intimidation, walks. There are a lot of measures that could be very useful. And I don't know, we've summoned it some time. Interrogated. Summoned it to the FSB, interrogated. Our computers was grabbed from the editorial office. It wasn't just back to 2002 and then in 2007. But we feel quite under pressure, always, every day. But I don't know, the best way to sell us a journalist after killing them, it's to deprive them from war. Andre, you wanna add something? Well, just one thing that since 2009, when we were, when it was clear that we cannot work for Russian publications, we developed a very strange way to get to our audience. So now, if we have something sensitive to publish, we need to find a Western publication to get it published. And then something happened and the Russian media might pick up some pieces of this. For example, when we investigated surveillance in Sochi because of the Olympics, we published our story in the Guardian. And some Russian publications after that, they come to us and said, look, we can't translate some stuff, but can we please save one thing? Can we save this by line? But firstly, it was published by the Guardian. And the same happened with our books. Our books are first published in the West. And with the new ability, our first book a year passed after it was finally published in Russia. And immediately, the FSB sent people to, for some reason, to Printing House. They went to the Printing House? Yes, not to publisher, but actually to the Printing House. And they asked it very strongly, and it's a very strong voice, who paid for printing? And they thought, well, by publisher. And so, but to be honest, it was the fall of 2011. And very soon, the Russian authorities had other things to do and to care. And of course, nobody knows what might happen next. Well, I want to thank both of you, Andrei and Irina, and recommend to all of you to please read this book. I think there's a lot of original material in it, and a lot we can learn. Thank you very much. And Andrei, and please, if you'd like to say hello to them, Andrei and Irina will be around for a while in the back, and grab a book and something to drink. Please have a drink by the book.