WikiLeaks publishes details on Russian state surveillance of citizens
WikiLeaks has published “Spy files Russia” report disclosing information on the contractors who provide the technical implementation of the Russia’s state surveillance of its citizens. The site contains more than 200 documents dated between 2007 and 2015. The first release is devoted to the St. Petersburg-based company, Peter-Service, which was founded in 1992.
The document states that the infrastructure of the System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) is developed by contracting companies in close collaboration with the Russian FSB and Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to WikiLeaks, Peter-Service is one of the Russian government’s primary partners and is “uniquely positioned” in the surveillance system, providing service providers with equipment which collects a large amount of information about users. The operators are required by law to purchase such equipment at their own expense.
This concentrated and aggregated metadata is naturally of great interest to the Russian authorities. Providing them access to this data was a primary consideration in the architecture of the surveillance system.
According to the WikiLeaks portal, the base architecture of the software from Peter Service contains components for data retention, long-term storage in SORM, IP traffic analysis and interfaces for state agencies to access the archives.
The website possesses documentation on all of these systems. The intelligence agencies interact with the instruments through a special interface based on the HTTPS protocol which exchanges data between system components.
The data retention system (DRS) is a mandatory component for operators. It stores facts about phone calls, messages and subscriber interactions for three years. A single cluster of the system can process more than 500 million connections per day. It takes 10 seconds to find all the records related to a specific person.
WikiLeaks acquired documents which show that Peter-Service is attempting to promote Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) systems, as well as its own ability to “collect, manage and analyze ‘Big Data’ for commercial and intelligence purposes”. The company’s Director of Development, Valery Syssik, spoke about this in 2013 at the Broadband Russia forum.
According to Syssik, Peter-Service already has access to a majority of all phone call records and internet traffic in Russia, and has successfully launched DPI systems. “From DPI solutions for SORM to contextual advertising, we have the experience and the solution. We are offering to coordinate a scalable national solution for control of the digital network. We strive for effective cooperation within a symbolic network alliance: operator – vendor – search engine – business – state organs.”
After WikiLeaks released the material, the recording of the presentation which Syssik had published on his Twitter account was deleted from YouTube (a copy of the presentation is still available on WikiLeaks).