The Development of Mass Surveillance in Russia - Would Gorbachev have been on board?

The Idea of mass surveillance encompassed the country after the communist revolution in Russia during 1917, when agencies such as the Cheka were formed to gain a stronghold of power and avoid losing control of their new communist state. The new Bolshevik leadership focused their surveillance efforts on ridding Russian society of counter-revolutionaries and ‘purifying’ the new USSR. Priests, nobles and the Russian middle class became targets of this new mass surveillance regime, which eventually came to encompass all citizens of the USSR. Informants, spy networks and misinformation were common methods used by the communist government to observe the population and gain more control of institutions such as the church and the media (Jablonka, 2016).

This focus remained engrained within the communist leadership for decades, peaking during the regime of Joseph Stalin which was marred with paranoia and oppression. It took nearly 70 years for this mantra to even begin to change within the communist party when Gorbachev rose to power and introduced Glasnost. However mass surveillance could never truly die a death even after the fall of the Soviet Union under Gorbachevs regime. Laws such as the Yaravaya Law have allowed Russian state intelligence agencies to mass surveil it's citizens and private businesses to this day, blurring the lines between lawful interception and big brother in modern Russia (Lomas, 2017). Restaurants, libraries and other public wifi hotspots in Russia are required by law to collect passport information of their users and store the data which can be requested by the government at any time (RAPSI, 2014)(Human Rights Watch, 2016).

Since the 1990’s the Russian state has implemented ‘SORM’, the System for Operative Investigative Activities, used by the countrys security service to monitor phone calls, data and browsing activity of internet and phone users through telecommunications companies, and in recent years has spread to social media sites and online messaging apps and chatrooms (Maréchal, 2017). The data gathered by SORM can be accessed by the Russian Police, the Kremlin and the presidential security service on request, no questions asked (TheMoscowTimes.com, 2000). Modern surveillance methods have become less conspicuous since Gorbachev and his predecessors regimes but in some ways perhaps even more malicious and universal.

I question whether Gorbachev would have utilised modern Russian mass surveillance technology that is in place today to maintain control of his party and his people or would he have leaned towards modern GDPR rules and technologies to finally change the mass surveillance culture in Russia and allow freedom of privacy among the populace. Would he have been brave enough to implement the changes? Would he have been successful? Or would it be a step too far given all the changes already ushered in by Gorbachev? These questions we can only assume given the state of mass surveillance in Russia today.

Given Gorbachevs vision for a modern and open USSR, different from the totalitarian regimes of his predecessors, I believe he would have been against the use of modern technologies such as SORM and laws such as the Yaravaya Law to gain access to the private data of his citizens. These methods violate rights to privacy and invoke a state of fear among people who express opinions which are not liked by the government, which go against his policy of Glasnost. Instead I believe he would have favoured the use of GDPR to safeguard the privacy of data, creating trust with the Russian people and steering clear of the shady techniques that have been used under Putin’s leadership. The use of GDPR would have still allowed Gorbachev to access data by Lawful interception and if it threatened national security, which Russia often claims SORM is used for today (Eur-lex.europa.eu, 2016).

Gorbachev risked his political career and even his life to implement drastic changes throughout the USSR and I think he would have implemented these changes within mass surveillance too if the modern technology was present at the time.

References:

1- Jablonka, I. (2016). The Origins of Mass Surveillance. [online] Booksandideas.net. Available at: https://booksandideas.net/The-Origins-of-Mass-Surveillance.html#nb2 .

2 - Lomas, N. (2017). Wikileaks releases documents it claims detail Russia mass surveillance apparatus. [online] Techcrunch.com. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/19/wikileaks-releases-documents-it-claims-detail-russia-mass-surveillance-apparatus/ .

3 - RAPSI. (2014). Passport now required to use public Wi-Fi in Russia. [online] Available at: http://rapsinews.com/legislation_news/20140808/271879206.html .

4 - Human Rights Watch. (2016). Russia: ‘Big Brother’ Law Harms Security, Rights. [online] Available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/07/12/russia-big-brother-law-harms-security-rights .

5 - Maréchal, N. (2017). Networked Authoritarianism and the Geopolitics of Information: Understanding Russian Internet Policy. [online] Cogitatiopress.com. Available at: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/808/808 .

6 - TheMoscowTimes.com. (2000). [online] Available at: http://old.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/2000/1/article/police-get-window-of-access-to-e-mail/268089.html .

7 - Eur-lex.europa.eu. (2016). EUR-Lex - 32016R0679 - EN - EUR-Lex. [online] Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32016R0679 .