FSB and the Nationalization of Cyberspace

Not exactly new information to anybody here, but it’s still scary nonetheless.  From Mishy Glenny, author of McMafia, in the Financial Times:

Cyberspace is being nationalised rapidly. In some parts of the world, this has been going on for a while. Russia has been running a programme known by the delightfully sinister acronym Sorm-2 (System of operational investigative activities) since the late 1990s. This ensures that a copy of every single data byte that goes into, out of or around the country ends up in a vast storage vault run by the Federal Security Service. You can read about atrocities committed in Chechnya if you wish but you can be confident that somebody will be looking over your digital shoulder.

That’s simply a colossal amount of information to process, and just imagining the human resources required to do surveillance on the entire country’s internet usage – even if targeted to the opposition or persons of interest – is breathtaking.  But you can be sure they are watching … today we even received noticed of an FSB agent who had friended Amsterdam on Facebook named “Valera Minin.”  How flattering.