Monitoring of the Monitors

Several independent Russian media outlets simultaneously published investigative reports in February 2023, based on a large-scale data leak from Roskomnadzor (RKN), the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. These materials revealed how the censorship machinery in RuNet is currently configured and provided insight into the RKN's plans for its future operation in the coming years. The concept involves assigning responsibility for identifying prohibited content on social networks and videos to neural networks, while another AI system forecasts the location and timing of potential protests.

Each media outlet has released its own series of articles detailing how the censorship system operated by Roskomnadzor functions. All of this material is founded on a data leak arranged by the "Cyber Partisans” from the General Radio Frequency Centre (GRFC), the effective executive branch of RKN.

We are featuring an excerpt from the Svoboda.org investigation because of its unique content. Svoboda.org was the only media outlet to uncover the Russian authorities' prioritization of election observer surveillance. Among the threats to its existence, the current system built by the Kremlin puts observers in an honourable second place after "celebrities, journalists, media and bloggers".

This time, not only the Golos Movement, which has been under pressure from the authorities for many years, but also Citizen Observer, Observers of St Petersburg and Sonar have been subject to secret surveillance. Even if the activity of the group as a whole was minimal, the participants were under surveillance in their private capacity.

Such a rating is self-exposing. Ordinary non-public citizens of Russia become threat number two once they acquire knowledge related to the electoral field and touch the sphere where one of the fundamental myths of the regime is created: the myth of nationwide popular support.

Daniel Belovodiev, with input from Anton Baev (Sistema Investigations Project) for Svoboda.org

In November 2022, the Belarusian hacker group Cyber Partisans breached one of Roskomnadzor's entities, the General Radio Frequency Centre (GRFC). The hackers provided Sistema's journalists with an archive of documents and emails that they had downloaded from the centre's servers. The documents prove that a relatively unknown company plays a vital role in the comprehensive state surveillance of Russians on the internet, censors independent media, compiles and submits reports to the Ministry of Justice on potential 'foreign agents'. The centre's experts gather 'fake news' about the Russian army on social media, including in the occupied territories. They assist Yandex in removing information about Russian military atrocities in Ukraine and train neural networks to detect offensive remarks about Vladimir Putin, as well as caricatures that depict the president as a vampire or a crab. The GRFC has developed a secret messenger that is used by all members of the security services bloc to facilitate spying on citizens.

…

On 15 July 2021, the Russian General Prosecutor's Office recognised the investigative media outlet Project as an "undesirable" organisation. On the same day, its editor-in-chief Roman Badanin and four other Project journalists were declared "foreign agents", as were two editors of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Open Media (Maxim Glikin and Yulia Yarosh) and Radio Liberty journalist Elizaveta Maetnaya. A week later, the Ministry of Justice recognised another Open Media employee, Ilya Rozhdestvensky, as a "foreign agent", and in early August, Roskomnadzor blocked the media website itself.

After examining the leaks from the GRFC, Sistema found out that the company's staff had prepared "the foreign agency reports" on Project and Open Media as well as on the journalists mentioned above back in December 2020 (in the case of Maetnaya, in November). That is, more than six months before the repression against them. At the same time, the GRFC compiled similar reports on The Bell media, which the Ministry of Justice recognised as a "foreign agent" exactly two years later, as well as on Novaya Gazeta, Kholod magazine and its editor-in-chief Taisia Bekbulatova, who was recognised as a "foreign agent" in December 2021.

On the other hand, on 16 December 2020, the GRFC compiled a "foreign agent" report on human rights defender Lev Ponomarev - and within two weeks, he was one of the first individuals to be added to the "foreign agents" list.

Beginning in 2021, the GRFC has broadened its efforts to encompass the reporting of potential foreign agents.

In February, the organization's staff, among others, compiled reports on Redaktsiya, a YouTube channel, and its founder Alexei Pivovarov. In April, they prepared reports on Alexei Venediktov, the former head of Ekho Moskvy radio station, as well as legal entities associated with Ekho, which was liquidated at the beginning of the conflict. Specialists from the GRFC compiled the report on Meduza just two days before the media outlet was added to the list of 'foreign agents' on April 23, 2021. During the summer elections to the State Duma, the GRFC increased its pace to the point of compiling reports based on entire editorial office and public organization staff lists. Between June and August alone, the centre's specialists prepared 346 reports of this kind.

As of mid-October 2020, the GRFC started compiling reports on 'foreign agency'. One year later, the number of such reports had grown to 704. During that time, 71 individuals and legal entities mentioned in the certificates were already included in the 'foreign agents' register.

On October 18, 2021, Sistema discovered a detailed table containing GRFC reports, coinciding with the total number of certificates reaching 704. This list categorizes individuals and organizations into sub-groups based on the specific threats they pose.

• Author of a foreign agent media; Foreign media
• Opposition media employee/author; Opposition media
• Founder/owner of an opposition media outlet
• Journalist, blogger and famous person
• A staff member of an election monitoring organisation; Election Monitoring
• Human rights defenders
• Social and civil society activities
• Cooperation with bloggers
• LGBT topics
• Other

The GRFC report, based on the table, reveals that the centre's staff was unable to discern the Ministry of Justice's criteria for including individuals and organizations in the 'foreign agent' register. Despite receiving requests to prepare reports on members of the Golos Movement and opposition publications such as Project.Media and Important Stories, not all of them were ultimately included in the register.

The GRFC report on 'foreign agents' concludes that the determining factor [for recognition as a foreign agent] may be opposition activity, a conflict between the publication and an official, or other similar factors.

The report and table cite the declaration of VTimes, a business edition founded by former employees of Vedomosti, as a 'foreign agent' in May 2021, using it as an example of a 'conflict' that may have contributed to the designation. The table cell next to the VTimes name notes 'conflict' in the comment box, while the explanatory document specifies that VTimes is the media outlet 'whose journalist has been sued by Rosneft'.

In 2022, the GRFC staff began compiling "foreign agent" reports on Telegram channels as well: Sistema found in the leak documents about the Siren channel, created by Alexei Navalny's associates from the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and about the We Can Explain channel (made based on Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Open Media channel).

Copyright (c)2022 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

This excerpt was translated from English to Russian by REM. The complete Russian and the abridged English versions of the investigation are available on the website of Svoboda.org.