A still from a video made by Russia's 24 of Snowden, Sarah Harrison from WikiLeaks, the Russian lawyer Kucherena, and an unidentified woman "leaving the airport" smiling as their mission is accomplished.
Well, some people like Zachary Keck think Putin just wants revenge -- spite, you know, over Anna Chapman et. al who were exposed and expelled as sleeper spies. Sure, that's part of it.
I personally think it's more about the grand plan for the "Sovereign Internet" which Russia has had ever since the Internet was born -- a plan that ironically actually fits with Julian Assange's notion of "sovereign groups" on the Internet.
There's no question that at world conferences and at home Putin has been strenuously fighting for a locked-down sovereign Russian internet -- Ru.net, as Kevin Rothrock is always lovingly calling it. And given the ideology of the architects of the Russian Internet, who believe in social engineering, it's easy to see how Putin might be able to coopt these people. Certainly Pavel Durov, in one sense persecuted by Putin but certainly at this point coopted by him, is anti-American and embraces Snowden as a dissident Trojan Horse that Russia should exploit to gain its own privacy. It's like the old notion of Czechoslovak consumer communism or Hungary "goulash" communism -- have a little better life, retreat to your dacha, tend your garden, even read a little samizdat, just don't encroach on the state.
This article, "Russia Seeking Snowden's Help on Data Security" received little discussion. Fred Weir, the journalist for the Christian Science Monitor in Moscow, is a self-avowed "Red diaper baby" and socialist who has certainly a nuanced view of the Kremlin -- he's "critical," but always tilts toward Moscow and bashes America. Example: His account of the Russian White House storming of October 1993 seems heedless of the violence of revanchist communists, for example. Fred has been reporting from inside Russia for as long as I can remember and that always has given his articles more texture, so he can sound more knowledgeable (like Julia Ioffe, when arguing with Lawrence O'Donnell). Even so...
This article is about a piece in the Russian press quoting Duma deputy Ruslan Gattarov which is speculative -- we don't know if Snowden is going to take the Russian Duma member up on his offer to come help this non-democratic parliament, elected under conditions not recognized as meeting the standards of democracy by the OSCE. For the Russian state "getting privacy" ostensibly for their citizens really means "battling the US" -- which some think is occupying Russia and has 20,000 grantee storm troopers at the ready.
ULTIMATE PROOF SNOWDEN IS SPYING FOR RUSSIANS?
The blogger Boston Boomer has rightly tweeted some cogent questions about this remarkable article:
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@catfitz What's your opinion on this? http://bit.ly/13KYxNl Wouldn't Snowden be using knowled of methods to protect Russia from US spying?
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@catfitz To me if he takes this job, it seems like the ultimate proof that he's a spy for the Russians.
Boston Boomer
@BostonBoomer
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@catfitz He would have to use the knowledge he gained in CIA and NSA to help them plug holes. That would clearly be aiding the enemy. I...'
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@catfitz I don't get how so many people can just overlook what's happening.
Well, exactly! I don't get it either!
But let's listen to what Gattarov has to say in the Russian article to which Weir links in the pro-Putin Voice of Russia (see him on Twitter @gattarov).
Gattarov is a United Russia senator in the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, who heads the Working Commission to Investigative the Facts of Surveillance of Russians by US Intelligence Services (!), created in response to Snowden's revelations. In sum:
o Gattarov says Google has agreed to cooperate with this commission
o Snowden himself is invited to take part in the work of the commission, which will determine how Russian citizens can be protected from American snooping
WHO'S KNEE-CAPPING WHOM?
Remember how former Googler Andrew MacGloughlin, now running a lobbying group called Access, said that the International Telecommunications Union, which tries to decide matters of the Internet, should be "kneecapped"? Remember how Russia ultimately won, although not directly?
Well, now Google has become more accommodating. Says Gattarov
"Google has agreed to cooperate with the working commission of our Federation Council to investigate the facts of electronic surveillance of Russians by US intelligence agencies," says Senator Ruslan Gattarov. "If Edward Snowden is offered temporary asylum in Russia, he also can become involved in this work," Gattarov added in an interview with Voice of Russia.
"We welcome the fact that the company Google has nevertheless changed its decision and departed from total defense and begin to build constructive relations with the Federation Council. We are counting on openness on the part of Google regarding issues related to the leak. But we are prepared to make a step ahead. And together with the company Google we are working so that such things no longer repeat. And we are counting on the fact that Google will take a constructive approach in working over all the issues, including creation of new standards of security for personal data, new standards of international communication to protect, handle and store personal data.
"Because this is a major company, it has an enormous resource. And even the fat that it is supporting this line says that the company is nevertheless not hiding from journalists and from the governments of various countries. And it is prepared to prove in deed that it really is an adherent of having personal data be very well protected. And not be handed to third parties. Only with the permission of the user or by a court decision for law-enforcement activity."
Voice of Russia asks Gattarov whether there is any technology that can determine if there has been a leak or not. He replies that there isn't anything that can detect surveillance either from the government of the US or coming from the US.
"At this point there is no such technology, unfortunately. But there is Snowden who, I hope, will obtain asylum from the USA in our country. From the government of the USA, not the country. An d he will simply provide us this data. For now it is impossible to check. But Google is taking at least the first step. Representatives of Google's leadership will visit the Federation Council tomorrow and we will have a conversation. We consider this a positive signal."
Naturally, one wonders what the "facts" were that prompted the creation of an entire special Duma commission just to research Snowden's claims, but Snowden, now that he does have political asylum can sort that out, no doubt.
And the prospect of Google reps working in a task force with Snowden supervised by a Russian Duma commission is...well, delightful, isn't it?
Of course, the Duma members say all kinds of crazy things, like that Obama gave the order to free Navalny and is occupying Russia. And it's not co-terminous with the Kremlin. Except when it is.
Asked about the statement from Kucherena's lawyer, to the effect that Snowden wants to remain and work in Russia, says Gattarov:
"Good! I believe the fact that Edward Snowden chose Russia tells us that he has chosen the most protected country that can reall provide him asylum. And he believes that he will feel safe here from the intelligence agencies of the US government. As for the fact that he's prepared to learn the Russian language, that means he can read our classics in the original language. The Federation Council in particular can cooperate with Edward Snowden regarding the protection of personal data of users, in order to make this world more safe.
Yes -- by compromising US national security, "the world" can be made more safe by having a defector with classified information help...the Russian Duma. Which is ever so protective of personal data, of course. That's why they were able to ensure that Vkontakte remained intact from Putin's depradations, right? And that the architects of the Russian Internet are tolerant of free speech, right? And that's why they passed legislation that punishes those who are believed to hurt the feelings of religious believers -- whatever that means. Or who engage in "gay propaganda" -- however that will be defined. Or "extremism" -- a very broad idea in Russia especially. The same body that produced all those wonderful laws is now -- with Google reps and Snowden (!) -- going to ensure that the Russian people will have their personal information kept secure.
I do wonder what Google has to say about this directly, and what on earth they are thinking, getting into bed with the Duma -- especially a Duma that says they are going to bring Snowden on board?!
Of course, Google probably loves the idea of Snowden defecting, and are probably just unhappy that they don't have complete control of Snowden themselves, and that he didn't defect to them. And perhaps this is how they can fix that gap in their knowledge -- in Russia.
Google goes around talking to all kinds of governments, particularly those like the EU that get in its face about its destruction of privacy. Google has plenty of engineers who have left Russia to work ta the Googleplex but who are not emigres in the sense we have known them in the past -- they remain loyal to the Kremlin and the Russian military-industrial complex and tend to be of the nationalist/patriotic sort. Those that aren't especially enamored of Putin or nationalism at least don't engage in direct dissent -- the "start-up" and "innovation" community (which the Twitter developers once thought would be the go-to place with concerns about human rights in Russia) is the last place you go to in Russia for opposition to anything -- they are plugged into state funding and state agencies that can ensure their continued existence and permissions.
Asked whether Snowden would be eligible for Russian citizenship, Gattar said he didn't see why not. As for his response to reports that the US is still trying to get Snowden back, he commented:
"They can continue the talks. There are foreign ministries, there are special envoys. There are intelligence agencies, there are people whose job it is to hold talks with our partners, rivals from other intelligence agencies, from other governments. We also hold talks with our partners and with our rivals. And you see, even Google did not want to talk to us and didn't come. But now it is ready to come. And we're open for any talks. That's normal."
PARTY OF POWER
Ruslan Gattarov is a member of the Putin-controlled party of power, United Russia. He is a member of the Federation Council's Committee on Science, Education, Culture and Information Policy.
When you talk to Gattarov, basically, you are talking to Putin. Oh, no, we don't mean that you literally talk to Putin this minute -- gosh, Julia Ioffe has explained to us that, um, "Putin doesn't control everything."
But, for all intents and purposes, well, you're talking to Putin. Russia is that kind of place. "Takoi narod, takaya pesnya," as Putin himself once phlegmatically explained when Boris Nemtsov objected to the recycling of the Soviet national anthem as Russia's anthem, explaining that people liked it.
Does that mean the Russian people aren't ready for democracy, as La Russophobe and Anatoly Karlin both believe? Of course not. Russians show their protests in a thousand ways. I think given the sentiments whipped up by the state-controlled media, and with people like Human Rights Watch who are supposed to be moral leaders capitulating to the manipulative WikiLeaks, it is hard to get people to realize what they're in for when they embrace hacker culture -- which is what Snowden represents, in spades.
We can learn from the United Russia website a little more detail about these talks with Google.
UNITED RUSSIA MP MEETS WITH GOOGLE REP
Gattarov met with Carlo D'Azaro Biondo, President of Southern & Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa Operations at Google, Inc. on July 25. Google is ready for "constructive cooperation," said Biondo.
"They asked the upper chamber to help on our side so that this process would be made more effective and more transparent," said Gattarov.
Did Sergei Brin authorize this "constructivity," or is Biondo free-lancing? That's hard to imagine, on something like this. But I don't know, because other than denying that it is providing "direct access" to the NSA, as first Snowden, then Glenn Greenwald falsely claimed, Google hasn't said a lot about all this.
I think we have reason to worry.
At the present time, says Gattarov, Google does not have the right to give personal information to law-enforcement agencies or intelligence agencies of Russia. In that regard, Russian Federation agencies send a request to the US Department of Justice, which usually makes the decision not to provide the information without an objective reason. And in fact the decision can take several months.
"Google proposes changing that procedure," says the senator. "It proposes liberalizing this procedure and making it more effective. In this situation, they stand on the side of the international community, opposing the USA."
Oh, really? Okay. No surprise there! Of course, Google has its fake "transparency report" it issues every year (which you can't criticize without fear of getting kicked off G+) which is designed to make it seem as if the US turns in the most requests to Google for user information -- as if it were a police state. Of course, Google doesn't like to admit that the lion's share of these hundreds of thousands of cases are mainly about copyright, which Google violates with abandon, mainly on Youtube. Google follows the California business model for the Internet, which is let people upload first, grab revenue from ads next to that purloined content, then fight off DMCA requests to remove it -- which they ultimately do millions of times every year.
There are over a 100 cases of Russia demanding that Google remove material or provide information -- and we don't know what they are because Mr. Transparency doesn't tell us. We can't be sure they're legit, given that it's Russia.
I don't know what "liberalizing" the procedures will involve -- more cooperation with Russian intelligence? But Gattarov is right when he says, "This is a very important aspect. There's never been anything like this." I'll say. Google cooperating directly with the ruling party and the intelligence agencies of an authoritarian state? No, except for China, which Google left.
Biondo assured Gattarov that Google only cooperates with the CIA and gives third parties information according to law. "They don't give direct access. That is their position. We understood this and we will continue to work in that direction," says Gattarov.
But wait. None other than Snowden himself, with his PRISM slides, and in the interview with Laura Poitras, said that in fact Google companies do give direct access! I think he's misrepresenting this entirely to create a sensation, but the disconnect doesn't trouble Gattarov who is happy to welcome Snowden into the arms of his commission.
KREMLIN COOPTATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
And this is how Putin has played it -- this entire fake "civil society" approach to Snowden in his "managed democracy". It isn't the ugly face of Russian intelligence that supposedly is handling Snowden, why, it's Kucherena, a prominent lawyer with many colourful clients. It's the law-enforcement veterans' union who have offered to provide him clothing and blankets and batteries and even a tablet, because it's not clear where his four laptops are (!). It's Pavel Durov, the CEO of the largest Russian social network, Vkontakte, who has offered him a job as an analyst in his company. And now it's the parliament that is providing him with meaningful public work for the good of humankind as well. See how all this works? You never have to hear a discouraging word about the GRU...
Google is said to wish to create an "international commission for the protection, storage and hangling of personal data at the UN and also to hold an international conference in Moscow on personal data."
Given how busy Russia is trying to veto any international community action on Syria or Iran at the UN, and also trying to demolish the effectiveness of the independent treaty bodies, I bet this commission they and Google are hoping to control together will work out just fine....
The Kremlin has probably long had Google in its sites as a company to coopt, given how Sergei Brin has always held enormous disdain for his homeland, calling it "Africa with snow" and never lending any lustre to Putin. This may change, over Snowden.
EVEN COOPTED NGO SKEPTICAL OF RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT
For some reason, Fred Weir didn't mention these Google talks with Gattarov, but he did go to the trouble to try to get some assessment of how to view Gattar's offer to Snowden. Of course, he got it from what is a highly co-opted group now, Amnesty International in Moscow, which greeted Snowden in the meeting at the airport and affirmed, like Human Rights Watch, that he was somehow a "whistleblower" or "human rights activist". Says Nikitn:
"You might say that it's a good idea to have a parliamentary commission asking relevant questions (about online surveillance), but it's not as though these are particularly new questions," says Sergei Nikitin, the Russia director of Amnesty International, who participated in the airport conference last month where Snowden appealed to Russian human rights activists to help him obtain temporary refuge. "The problem is that these hearings, if they occur, will be one-sided. They'll hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest. And the role of Edward Snowden will be to tell them what they want to hear."
You don't say! And Google's going to facilitate this?!
Russia's "sovereign Internet" involves the same problem Google faced in China. Weir reports:
In June the deputy speaker of the State Duma, Sergei Zheleznyak, called for urgent measures to restore Russia's "digital sovereignty" after the first of Snowden's revelations. In his view that would entail compelling big Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Twitter to keep all the data of Russian users on servers based in Russia as a condition of being allowed to continue operating in the Russian market.
Weir also quotes another Russian Internet expert:
"The idea of 'digital sovereignty' may be not good for the whole world, but it's inevitable for Russia and some other countries," says Yevgeny Yeremchenko, an expert with the Internet portal Neogeography.ru. "This idea is induced by the clumsy and rigid policy of the present American government that uses American industry as some kind of 'e-gunboat diplomacy.' It seems that 'digital sovereignty' is the only kind of sovereignty we can get in today's world; the best alternative, 'digital democracy' appears to be unobtainable due to lamentable recent developments."
Earlier this year Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new "cyber security doctrine" whose main thrust is that Russia must take urgent steps to defend itself against "informational weapons used for military-political, terrorist and criminal ends" as well as attempts to "intervene into other nations’ internal affairs" via the Internet.
Once again, I have to point out what the real context is here -- the massive propaganda campaign that the Kremlin has unleashed through RT and other organs of its agents of influence and active measure that endlessly promote WikiLeaks, every single hacker on arrested or on trial in America, Anonymous, Snowden -- and of course, Greenwald, Poitras, and Appelbaum. This orchestrated barrage is the context that Julia Ioffe would not admit when she claimed that Putin was somehow "reacting" to the event of Snowden "falling into his lap" instead of seeing it within the entire context of the Kremlin's drive for "sovereign Internet".
The other event more important context to see is the barrage of cyber-attacks Russia launches on the West, particularly in Europe, where it is responsible for the lion's share of attacks not only for piracy or industrial espionage but for political and social attacks on countries and groups contrary to its interests.
Weir also notes the attempt by Russia to take control of ICANN away from what they claim is US control (which really isn't the case, because the people who actually control ICANN, ever since Ira Magaziner in the Clinton Administration gave it away -- like Joi Ito (for a time) and others like Esther Dyson fighting the war of communism versus capitalism -- aren't representing US government interests and in many ways are antithetical to them).
When Ken Roth says the US shouldn't control the Internet anymore (through outright government control, which is actually limited, or through US corporate control through bodies like ICANN or IETF and others), he isn't qualifying that he wouldn't like Russia to take it over, either. If confronted with that choice, he might make caveats about Russia's control of media and social networks. Yet by endorsing Snowden, he's tacitly indicated that HRW is happy to see Russia batter away at the US to ultimately enable those other "sovereign groups" take over, like HRW and GNI.
Weir -- precisely because he's not just a Kremlin mouthpiece but more nuanced -- includes more comments from Andrei Soldatov, who explains that Kremlin intrusion of privacy is far worse than the NSA's, and more from Nikitin who says he doesn't expect much from
But these are bases touched in a story that overall, features Gattarov -- but not by directly interviewing him and confronting him with his official connections and obvious limitations as an "honest broker" on this issue -- and with no mention of Google's role or attempt to get a quote from Google.
As for "sovereign groups" and how this unfortunately dovetails with the Kremlin's concept:
Assange talked about this in passing in describing one of his phone calls with Snowden from Moscow (supposedly...awfully strange how Snowden could never appear himself on Skype or G+ or even Twitter or Facebook, but it was always Assange talking for him). I imagine it's contained in his book or other writings. (You can likely trace this idea to conspiracy-nut pages or in things like Wirtland).
I think basically what Assange and the rest of the crypto kiddies want are self-selected networks or collectives that can make their own airtight encrypted darknets in "sovereign groups," and not care what some other sovereign group does, even "Russia" or "China" as long as it does not encroach on them. So it's sort of like Philip Linden's ideology for the private islands in Second Life. Or like an "autonomous region" in Soviet/Stalinist thought, too. Anyway, something to be studied...
Thanks for this interesting and detailed analysis. Don't you think, though, that ultimately the entire Snowden affair is likely to turn out to be no more than some kind of large-scale media wind-up of the U.S. government by Russian state authorities and "Duma representatives"? You mention the Fyodorov interview: Gattarov's remarks - especially in Russian - sound as if they are offered in a similar vein. Snowden never appears in person to give his own thoughts: that's also an element in the psychological game.
While it's true that the prospect of Google becoming friendly with Russia's techno-elite with the collaboration of Snowden is not an encouraging one (though Google already has many links with that elite, as you point out), there's a distinct sense that the raising of such a scenario is another part of a propaganda campaign by Russian officials. For them, propaganda is more important than reality, and this is something that we as Westerners don't always understand.
There's a particularly dramatic disconnect, I would argue, between the carefully worked-out aims of Western Internet "warriors" like Assange, Greenwald, Appelbaum and others and the fantasy-bound aspirations of the Kremlin hacks and hangers-on. The former have practical plans, while the latter merely want to create elaborate mind-pictures and influence Western public opinion through media interviews and organs like RT.
Posted by: David McDuff | August 10, 2013 at 02:29 AM
No, I don't think propaganda is just the routine deflection of the Unipolar Power that is merely about keeping the masses anti-American.
I think it goes much further. It's about winning over the intelligentsia that has been pro-Western.
Perhaps you've noticed that there isn't a single Soviet-era dissident or Russian human rights activist or opposition member raising the kinds of questions we do about Snowden or WikiLeaks. From talking to some friends about this, I realize part of it is that they have no idea about the people behind WikiLeaks and hackers like Appelbaum -- RT has a barrage of positive propaganda on these people and they don't read it in reverse, or don't read it at all.
Putin has been able to tap into the kind of distrust of the addictive social media services that Americans have about Facebook or Google, and also convert it into a matter of national pride. That Putin demands that these US companies put their servers on Russian territory so he can protect users privacy is all fake of course -- that merely enables him to get at it better, because he can't now. The intellectuals moved to Facebook from Live Journal, which was originally an American company sold to Russians, and despite having a good chunk of the ownership, the Russian oligarch companies in bed with Zuckerburg apparently haven't been given users' private messages (or at least as far as we know).
I have a larger concept about all this about the simulation of civil society which I have to write up.
Posted by: Catherine Fitzpatrick | August 10, 2013 at 04:51 PM
That is, I really think this whole WikiLeaks thing is really more about a war on the Internet for the sovereign Internet, not mere political propaganda.
Posted by: Catherine Fitzpatrick | August 10, 2013 at 04:52 PM
>> there isn't a single Soviet-era dissident or Russian human rights activist or opposition member raising the kinds of questions we do about Snowden or WikiLeaks.http://rusrep.ru/article/2010/12/06/latynina/ There are also books like Nadezhda Gorbatyuk's Разоблачения, изменившие мир, which do at least analyse the structure and operation of WikiLeaks, even if they don't take a particularly critical stand.
In Russia the WikiLeaks debate seems to be more thoroughly enmeshed in state propaganda than it is in the West, but that is hardly surprising, I suppose. I'm prepared to agree that it probably does go beyond propaganda issues, though, and your assessment of the basis of WikiLeaks being a push for the "sovereign Internet" is an interesting one. I look forward to reading more about this subject on your blog.
Posted by: David McDuff | August 11, 2013 at 04:45 AM
Sorry, that comment got garbled. Here it is again:
"there isn't a single Soviet-era dissident or Russian human rights activist or opposition member raising the kinds of questions we do about Snowden or WikiLeaks."
Yet the opposition journalist Yulia Latynina has fairly frequently commented on the structure and operation of WikiLeaks in her Код доступа show on Radio Ekho Moskvy. She has been attacked for her views by Shamir and other Russian WikiLeaks members: see, for example, http://rusrep.ru/article/2010/12/06/latynina/
There are also books like Nadezhda Gorbatyuk's Разоблачения, изменившие мир, which do at least analyse the structure and operation of WikiLeaks, even if they don't take a particularly critical stand.
In Russia the WikiLeaks debate seems to be more thoroughly enmeshed in state propaganda than it is in the West, but that is hardly surprising, I suppose. I'm prepared to agree that it probably does go beyond propaganda issues, though, and your assessment of the basis of WikiLeaks being a push for the "sovereign Internet" is an interesting one. I look forward to reading more about this subject on your blog.
Posted by: David McDuff | August 11, 2013 at 04:52 AM