It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, September 23, 2022
Elon Musk Keeps Big Promise to Iranians Fighting for Freedom
The richest man in the world has just made a move that could change the game in Tehran.
Elon Musk continues to move the lines defining the role of a CEO.
The richest man in the world (fortune estimated at $254 billion on Sept. 22 by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index) has torn up the traditions that say CEOs should keep quiet and not meddle in geopolitical affairs to protect profits.
In a world in search of leaders, Musk sees himself as filling the void and becoming one of the champions the masses turn to when chaos reigns.
He has also become a kind of guide for world political leaders, alerting them to the issues he considers priorities for the planet.
To establish his influence, Tesla's (TSLA) CEO has mastered the social networks, where he opines and interacts on a daily basis with users, whoever and wherever they may be.
He has more than 106.7 million followers on Twitter, a platform that has a big hand in setting the daily news agendas. On the microblogging website, messaging goes the other way as well: The billionaire's fans alert him to urgent problems of the moment and he responds.
Protests
He is displaying this method right now, when many Iranian citizens and average social-media users and are calling on him for help as the government of Iran tries to crush the protests it is facing.
The protests focus on the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old Iranian woman who was arrested for wearing what the the country's morality police judged to be an ill-fitting veil. These authorities enforce laws requiring women to wear head scarves. Amini died in police custody.
"The Islamic regime is killing the people of #Iran PLEASE HELP US AND BE OUR VOICE !" a Twitter user asked him on Sept. 21. "They cut off the internet and now they are slaughtering people."
In fact, Musk has a technological tool that can be considered a weapon against governments that manipulate and repress public opinion, often by blocking sources of communications to the outside and blocking the internet.
This tool is Starlink, the satellite-internet-connection service of Musk’s SpaceX. This service guarantees secure and independent access to the internet. It is difficult to hack. Service cuts are rare.
It provides access to the internet for residents of areas that are poorly served by the fixed and mobile networks of telecom operators. Thousands of small satellites circulating in low orbit -- mainly 342 miles (550km) above Earth -- enable the service.
Musk and his company have supplied Starlink terminals to volcano-hit Tonga, in the southern Pacific Ocean, to provide internet access to isolated and remote villages.
Starlink antennas gained popularity after Musk sent them to Ukraine after Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24. They give Ukrainians independent access to the internet and enable the country to keep in touch with the outside world. The system is used particularly in remote areas as well as places that Russia has bombed.
Musk Answers the Call
No surprise, then, that the Iranians hope they can benefit from this service when the Iranian authorities seem to have blocked the phone networks and Internet.
"I'm sure you won't answer it Mr Musk, but is it technically possible to provide Starlink to Iranian people? It could be a game changer for the future," a Twitter user begged Musk on Sept.19.
"Starlink will ask for an exemption to Iranian sanctions in this regard," the tech tycoon responded.
Less than four days after that promise, Musk and SpaceX appear to have filed the exemption request to serve Iran. And they got the permission.
"We took action today to advance Internet freedom and the free flow of information for the Iranian people, issuing a General License to provide them greater access to digital communications to counter the Iranian government’s censorship," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Twitter on Sept. 23
Musk announced that SpaceX was immediately activating service in Iran.
"Activating Starlink...", the billionaire said without providing additional details. For example, he does not say if SpaceX will send antennas on site as it did in Ukraine.
While social-media users awaited the Iranian government's reaction to the move -- which undoubtedly will disrupt its efforts against the protests -- they welcomed the billionaire's decision.
"Great news #MahsaAmini," commented one Twitter user.
"That’s awesome! Your companies are truly philanthropic. All of them truly care for the betterment of humanity. Thank you, Elon, for always caring about the humanity ❤️," said a Musk fan.
"For any Iranians reading this: remember that dishes don't have to be visible to the naked eye; they can be covered by cloth, cardboard, plastic, fibreglass... anything with minimal RF attenuation (nothing metallic / conductive or overly thick)," commented another user.
How Texas' abortion ban hurts Big Oil's
effort to transform its workforce
CAPITALI$M REQUIRES A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE
By Liz Hampton and Sabrina Valle
DENVER/HOUSTON (Reuters) - As Texas officials moved to restrict abortion, promote Christianity in schools and the state's power grid teetered on collapse, oil worker Steven Beaman and his wife Hayley Hollands decided it was time to live elsewhere.
By April, Beaman had joined a communications firm in Colorado, leaving behind a more than decade-long career in oil and gas, and Hollands, an attorney, soon followed, forsaking the state over its increasingly strident politics and polarization.
"It is kind of the first time I've reckoned with the idea that I don't think I'm going to live in my home state ever again," said Hollands. She likened the climate contributing to the couple's decision to leave Texas to "death by a thousand paper cuts."
Oil companies have spent millions to counter the frayed image of fossil fuels and recruit a younger and more diverse workforce. But a flaring of political culture wars - around abortion, religion and LGBT+ rights - threaten to undo hiring and retention goals, according to interviews with more than two dozen workers and a national survey.
Over half of women between 18-44 years and 45% of college-educated male and female workers would not consider a job in a state that banned abortion, according to a survey of 2,020 U.S. adults last month by opinion researcher PerryUndem.
BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell and TotalEnergies did not comment on how abortion and cultural wars are affecting their hiring and employee retention when asked by Reuters.
GRAPHIC: Workers weight abortion bans in career decisions https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ABORTION/zjvqkrdrmvx/chart.png
RECRUITING HURDLE
"It has always been difficult to attract women into oil and gas," said Sherry Richard, a 40-year oil industry veteran most recently human resources chief at offshore driller Transocean Ltd. "When you create an environment that is unfriendly to women, it just makes it harder," she said.
Richard, 66, who now sits on the boards of two oilfield firms, said she does not plan to leave the state, but would support her son and his family if they moved.
The business risks to recruiting is especially high for oil companies, already unpopular with graduates of engineering programs, said Jonas Kron, chief advocacy officer at Trillium Asset Management. The Boston-based firm, which oversees $5.4 billion in investments outside of oil, is asking companies to take action to minimize the financial losses of a limited workforce.
"Lack of diversity is not only a problem to financial performance, which they are acutely aware of, but also one of company values," Kron said. "That is deeply concerning."
Some California members of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) have declined to attend the group's conference in Houston in October because of the state's anti-abortion law, which bans most abortions after about six weeks. The only exception is when a doctor certifies the mother's life is in immediate danger.
SWE after next year will not hold conferences for its 40,000 members in states with abortion bans due to "restricted access to women's healthcare," according to its website.
Trevor Best, chief executive of Syzygy Plasmonics, a Houston-based startup whose chemical reactors run on renewable electricity, recently had a woman job candidate from out-of-state say she would not consider relocating to Texas.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has acknowledged the state is losing workers, but does not regret the departures. "We have an exchange program going on,” Abbott said in August at a conservative political gathering. "We are getting California conservatives; we are sending them our liberals.”
SILENCE ON ABORTION
The five top oil majors have said they support travel for health treatments by employees in different states. But none named abortion in their responses, nor disclosed whether there is an internal guidance for abortion care, a concern for employees who have to administer the policies.
"The rules are not clear," said a Texas engineer who also does recruiting for an U.S. oil major in Houston and declined to be named. "Will (an employee) have to tell her manager the reason of the trip for instance? I have asked for clarity, but I received no reply."
Some workers want their employers to take a stand on abortion.
"Companies say they value employee's rights and yet finance politicians who violate my rights and wellbeing," said a 45-year-old engineer at oilfield service firm Halliburton who declined to be identified fearing reprimands. "This is hypocrisy," she said.
Oil companies contribute to politicians who advocate for free trade, tax and energy policies through political action committees (PACs). That criteria fits a majority of Republican politicians who also vote to restrict abortion rights.
A California-based Chevron engineer who is planning to have a child and also declined to have his name used said he told his boss that he could not go ahead with a relocation to Houston.
"We find it medically unsafe to carry a pregnancy in Texas," he said, adding his wife is at high risk for ectopic pregnancies. With doctors in Texas now only able to perform emergency abortions in event of immediate danger to the mother's life, "that is too close to call for me."
Dawn Seiffert, 52, and her husband, an oil company employee, returned to Texas in 2012 and planned to stay. But with Texas' anti-abortion law implemented, the mother of four is considering moving with her daughters to Maine while her husband remains to earn full retirement benefits.
Texas politics "even before Roe" were heading in the wrong direction, Seiffert said. "The public education, the grid... they're more consumed with personal freedoms versus any responsibility towards one another," she said.
(Reporting by Liz Hampton in Denver and Sabrina Valle in Houston; Editing by Gary McWilliams and Lisa Shumaker)
STATEHOOD! OR INDEPENDENCE!
With one vote, Congress can give
Puerto Ricans the right to determine
their own future | Opinion
Rafael Cox Alomar and Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus
The aftermath of Hurricane Fiona in Puerto Rico is a painful reminder that there is no such thing as a “natural disaster.” The devastating scope and magnitude of the harm from so-called natural disasters in Puerto Rico are, in reality, the aftermath of a political disaster that began in 1898, when the United States annexed Puerto Rico and made it a U.S. territory.
Before then, every U.S. territory eventually became either a state, which gave it the political power to fend for itself in Washington, or an international sovereign, which gave it the political autonomy to fend for itself on the international stage.
But Puerto Rico has languished as a U.S. territory for almost 125 years — subject to U.S. law without any voting representation in the federal government. That means Puerto Rico lacks the political power either to demand the resources to which U.S. states are entitled or bargain for the resources it needs as an international sovereign.
But for the first time ever, Congress can change all that with just one vote.
Against the odds, the Puerto Rico Status Act (“PRSA”) has been voted out of the House Committee on Natural Resources. That it is now on its way to a floor vote — and could eventually make its way to President Biden’s desk — is far from business as usual on the Hill. It is, in fact, nothing short of breathtaking.
The product of months of arduous negotiations, extensive discussions with stakeholders and broad public commentary, the PRSA offers Puerto Rican voters — for the first time — the opportunity to choose among non-territorial (read: non-colonial) status options: statehood, independence and a form of international sovereignty known as “free association.” If enacted, the PRSA would finally bring a long-overdue end to Puerto Rico’s nearly 125-year-long ordeal as a politically powerless U.S. territory.
The forces behind the PRSA, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón, R-Puerto Rico, and Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-New York, belong to different mainland political parties and have long been political opponents on the issue of the island’s status: González-Colón supports statehood; Velázquez opposes it. Last year, they sponsored competing — and diametrically opposed — bills on Puerto Rico’s status. Yet they have found common ground in their life-long commitment to ending its colonial status. With the steadfast support of Committee Chair Raúl Grijalva, D-Arizona, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer D-Maryland, they have crafted a joint bill that prioritizes Puerto Rican self-determination over political self-interest.
As residents of a U.S. territory, the 3.2 million U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico have neither voting representation in the federal government nor international sovereignty of their own. They are second-class citizens — subject to U.S. sovereignty yet unequal under U.S. law. Territorial status violates the most basic of American values: government by consent. The promise of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” rings hollow in Puerto Rico.
As a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico cannot unilaterally achieve independence. Nor, of course, can it unilaterally admit itself into statehood. Congress has an essential role to play in Puerto Rico’s decolonization, wherever it may lead. The PRSA responds to this reality exactly as Congress should: It offers Puerto Rican voters a choice among all of their non-territorial status options. It defines the options in detail, spells out the transition to each one and requires a nonpartisan voter-education campaign leading up to the plebiscite. If none of the options receives a majority, a runoff follows. Once one option wins, the transition begins. Soon thereafter, Puerto Rico would cease to be a U.S. territory — a living monument to America’s failure to abandon its colonial past.
Of course, not everyone agrees with every line in the PRSA. And no bill — let alone one that will finally release more than 3 million people from more than 100 years of subordination — can succeed without serious compromise on all sides.
The question is whether the compromises that the PRSA requires are worth the candle. In this case, the candle finally shines the light of liberty and equality on our fellow Americans who live in Puerto Rico. If that is not worth the candle, nothing is.
Rafael Cox Alomar is professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law.
Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus is the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School
In a deal announced by the U.S. Department of Justice, John Davis, the former director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, entered a guilty plea Thursday for his role in a scheme that misdirected more than $70 million in welfare funds earmarked to support the state’s neediest residents. In exchange for the plea, Davis is expected to cooperate with investigators who are seeking additional indictments in the scam.
Davis' cooperation is believed to be key for state and federal prosecutors, who are seeking information on other possible individuals involved in the various stages of misdirecting funds. Those under investigation include multiple unnamed (for now) co-conspirators with Davis.
Favre has come under media scrutiny for nearly $8.1 million in welfare funds that were allegedly doled out to entities tied to the former NFL star. Of that sum, $1.1 million directly went to Favre for public speaking appearances that he allegedly didn’t make, along with $5 million to the construction of a volleyball building at Favre’s alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, and another $2 million to a pharmaceutical startup that Favre has been tied to as an investor.
Former NFL great Brett Favre is under scrutiny for his alleged connection to a multi-million dollar welfare scandal in his home state of Mississippi. (Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images)
Favre repaid the $1.1 million for the uncompleted speaking engagements — although not the accrued interest that prosecutors sought — and his lawyer has denied the former NFL quarterback knew welfare funds were being tapped for any of his endeavors. With his plea agreement, Davis could answer any questions for prosecutors about Favre’s level of knowledge or influence, as well as shed light on any meetings regarding the funds that went to entities tied to the former NFL star.
According to the DOJ's announcement, Davis directed his office to provide “federal funds to two nonprofit organizations and then directed the two organizations to fraudulently award contracts to various entities and individuals for social services that were never provided.”
As part of his plea, Davis is expected to reveal how that alleged fraud was established and the precise individuals who benefitted. Such cooperation is considered a massive coup for state and federal prosecutors, who charged Davis as a central facilitator in the misappropriation scam. Davis had been indicted on two dozen charges for his role in the misappropriations and would have faced a potential of nearly 50 years in prison had he been convicted on all counts. Instead, with his cooperation and plea agreement to a handful of charges, he’s expected to face only a fraction of that time behind bars in exchange for cooperation that could implicate other figures.
Davis’ guilty plea is the second major agreement reached in the case by prosecutors, following nonprofit manager Nancy New, who was indicted and in April pleaded guilty to 13 felonies related to the investigation. New was accused of fronting a nonprofit that was utilized as a pipeline to move welfare funds to various projects in an enterprise that state and government authorities historically describe as a “welfare for the well-connected” plot.
Aside from Favre, prosecutors are also investigating former Mississippi governor Phil Bryant. Published reports by Mississippi Today detailed alleged texts linking Bryant, Davis, New and Favre to funds that were sought for the volleyball building project at Southern Miss. Among those materials, Bryant allegedly directed Favre in how to write a funding proposal that would be approved by the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Bryant has denied any recollection of using welfare funds for inappropriate projects.
Former top Mississippi health official pleads guilty to fraud
A former top Mississippi health official pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiracy to defraud the state of millions of dollars in federal funds as part of a scandal that also involved former NFL quarterback Brett Favre.
A Justice Department release states that John Davis, who served as the executive director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, and co-conspirators illegally took funds from two welfare programs — Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Emergency Food Assistance Program — for their own personal use.
Davis directed the state human services department to provide federal funds to two nonprofit organizations, which he then told to award contracts to multiple entities and people for social services that were never provided, the release states.
Davis also had the nonprofits make complete or almost-complete payments to those contracts near the start of the contract periods, knowing that no major service would be provided, according to the Justice Department.
Favre received a letter from the state auditor’s office in October to request the repayment of money he received as part of the scheme. Nine other individuals also received the letter.
Favre reportedly was improperly paid $1.1 million in welfare funds from December 2017 to June 2018. He repaid $600,000 in October, but the state auditor said he still owed $228,000 in interest.
Texts between Favre and former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) revealed last week that they communicated ways to use at least $5 million in welfare funds for a new volleyball center at the University of Southern Mississippi, his alma mater.
Davis pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and one count of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds.
Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 2, 2023, and he could face up to five years for the count of conspiracy and 10 years for the count of theft.
A cache of nearly 160,000 files from Russia's powerful internet regulator provides a rare glimpse inside President Vladimir Putin's digital crackdown. (Max-o-matic/The New York Times)
Four days into the war in Ukraine, Russia’s expansive surveillance and censorship apparatus was already hard at work.
Roughly 800 miles east of Moscow, authorities in the Republic of Bashkortostan, one of Russia’s 85 regions, were busy tabulating the mood of comments in social media messages. They marked down YouTube posts that they said criticized the Russian government. They noted the reaction to a local protest.
Then they compiled their findings. One report about the “destabilization of Russian society” pointed to an editorial from a news site deemed “oppositional” to the government that said President Vladimir Putin was pursuing his own self-interest by invading Ukraine. A dossier elsewhere on file detailed who owned the site and where they lived.
Another Feb. 28 dispatch, titled “Presence of Protest Moods,” warned that some had expressed support for demonstrators and “spoke about the need to stop the war.”
The report was among nearly 160,000 records from the Bashkortostan office of Russia’s powerful internet regulator, Roskomnadzor. Together, the documents detail the inner workings of a critical facet of Putin’s surveillance and censorship system, which his government uses to find and track opponents, squash dissent and suppress independent information even in the country’s furthest reaches.
The leak of the agency’s documents “is just like a small keyhole look into the actual scale of the censorship and internet surveillance in Russia,” said Leonid Volkov, who is named in the records and is the chief of staff for the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
“It’s much bigger,” he said.
Roskomnadzor’s activities have catapulted Russia, along with authoritarian countries such as China and Iran, to the forefront of nations that aggressively use technology as a tool of repression. Since the agency was established in 2008, Putin has turned it into an essential lever to tighten his grip on power as he has transformed Russia into an even more authoritarian state.
The internet regulator is part of a larger tech apparatus that Putin has built over the years, which also includes a domestic spying system that intercepts phone calls and internet traffic, online disinformation campaigns and the hacking of other nations’ government systems.
The agency’s role in this digital dragnet is more extensive than previously known, according to the records. It has morphed over the years from a sleepy telecom regulator into a full-blown intelligence agency, closely monitoring websites, social media and news outlets, and labeling them as “pro-government,” “anti-government” or “apolitical.”
Roskomnadzor has also worked to unmask and surveil people behind anti-government accounts and provided detailed information on critics’ online activities to security agencies, according to the documents. That has supplemented real-world actions, with those surveilled coming under attack for speaking out online. Some have then been arrested by police and held for months. Others have fled Russia for fear of prosecution.
The files reveal a particular obsession with Navalny and show what happens when the weight of Russia’s security state is placed on one target.
The system is built to control outbursts such as the one this week, when protesters across Russia rallied against a new policy that would press roughly 300,000 people into military service for the war in Ukraine. At least 1,200 people have already been detained for demonstrating.
More than 700 gigabytes of records from Roskomnadzor’s Bashkortostan branch were made publicly available online in March by DDoSecrets, a group that publishes hacked documents.
The New York Times built software and a search tool to analyze the Russian-language documents, spreadsheets, videos and government presentations. Five individuals directly targeted by Roskomnadzor in the files were interviewed, along with lawyers, activists and companies who have battled the agency and other experts on Russian surveillance and censorship.
Roskomnadzor did not respond to requests for comment.
“This is part of authoritarianism,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a former top government official in Bashkortostan whom Roskomnadzor scrutinized because of his criticism of Putin. “They are watching.”
Putin’s Eyes on the Internet
Roskomnadzor (pronounced Ros-com-nod-zor) was started in 2008 as a bureaucratic backwater with a few dozen employees who regulated radio signals, telecom and postal delivery. Its role expanded as Kremlin concerns grew about the internet, which was under less state control than television and radio, leading to more activity from independent and opposition media.
After social media helped facilitate mass protests during the 2010 Arab Spring and in Moscow starting in 2011, Russian authorities had Roskomnadzor exert more control, said Andrei Soldatov, co-author of a book on Russian internet censorship and surveillance.
From its headquarters in Moscow, the agency squeezed companies that provided internet access. Starting in 2012, the year Putin retook the presidency, Roskomnadzor built a blacklist of websites that the companies were required to block. That list, which grows constantly, now includes more than 1.2 million banned URLs, including local political news websites, social media profile pages, pornography and gambling platforms, according to Roskomsvoboda, a civil society group tracking the blocks.
Over the past decade, the agency also fined and penalized Google, Facebook, Twitter and Telegram to force them to remove what authorities deemed to be illicit content. In 2016, LinkedIn was shut down in Russia after being sanctioned for not storing data on Russian users in the country’s data centers.
By 2019, authorities wanted internet control to go further. Roskomnadzor ordered new censorship technology, known as a “technical means for countering threats,” installed in telecom networks around the country, including Bashkortostan, according to the documents. The agency then blocked and slowed down websites from Moscow.
Officials demanded that local internet services confirm that the censorship systems had been installed, according to the documents. Schematics showed where the censorship boxes should be placed in the network. Roskomnadzor workers visited sites to be sure the equipment was installed correctly and sent reports on the efficacy of the technology.
One early target of the blocking system was Twitter. In 2021, authorities throttled access to the social media service to a crawl. Since the invasion of Ukraine this year, Roskomnadzor has also blocked Facebook, Instagram and other websites, as well as many virtual private networks, or VPNs, which are used to bypass internet controls.
In 2020, Andrei Lipov, a government technocrat who supports a Russian internet that is more closed off from the West, took charge of Roskomnadzor. Under his guidance, the agency has operated even more like an intelligence service.
Just in Bashkortostan, an oil-rich region with about 4 million residents, Roskomnadzor tracked the online activities of hundreds of people and organizations. It gathered information about government critics and identified shifting political opinions on social media. It compiled dossiers on independent media outlets and online influencers who shared information unfavorable to the government that might gain traction with the Russian public.
“Roskomnadzor was never part of this game before of providing political intelligence,” said Soldatov, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a pro-democracy think tank. “They’re getting more and more ambitious.”
Vladimir Voronin, a lawyer who has represented activists and media groups targeted by Roskomnadzor, said the agency also became closer to the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic intelligence agency once led by Putin. The FSB operates a spy system, called the System for Operative Investigative Activities, which is used to monitor phone calls and internet traffic in Russia.
Roskomnadzor helps the FSB watch opponents and identify new threats to Putin, Voronin said. “Roskomnadzor is more of a police agency and not only monitors, but persecutes oppositionists, activists and the media,” he said.
Unlike more technologically savvy counterparts in China, where internet surveillance is more automated, much of the work of Russian censors is done manually, the documents show. But what Russia lacks in sophistication, it has made up for in determination.
In Bashkortostan, documents such as a six-page report on the regional “information space” from December 2021 summarized criticism of Putin from pundits and bloggers. In the report, officials measured sentiment with a chart showing events that increased public disapproval, such as videos involving opposition activists and news of a possible invasion of Ukraine.
At times, the assessments sound almost like weather forecasts. “Calm with separate minor pockets of tension,” one Roskomnadzor report said, summarizing public sentiment after the arrest of a local activist.
Social media was viewed by the agency as a form of “soft power” that could “influence the opinion of the masses,” according to one document. Roskomnadzor workers watched for “destabilizing subjects” such as opposition groups and “antimilitarism,” but also social issues such as drug legalization and “sexual freedoms,” according to some of the documents. Meduza, an independent Russian-language news organization, earlier reported on these specific documents.
Roskomnadzor also tracked local state-run media and political leaders so that Putin could keep an eye on both enemies and allies, said Gallyamov, who is now a political commentator living outside Russia.
In some cases, censors recorded their screens showing detail down to the movements of their computer mouse as they watched over the internet. They monitored overtly political videos and, at other times, focused on less obviously worrisome content such as a viral song by young rapper KEML. Bashkortostan is known as a hub for rap in Russia.
Roskomnadzor helped Putin centralize power far from Moscow. The regional office in Bashkortostan only shared a fraction of its work with the local government, according to one document. Many reports were instead sent straight to the FSB and other central agencies.
The scrutiny took a toll on surveillance targets. ProUfu.ru, a local news site in Bashkortostan that wrote critically about the government, said authorities pressured businesses to stop advertising with it. In the records, censors flagged ProUfu.ru for the critical Ukraine editorial written about Putin in February. The group was the subject of a regularly updated dossier about its coverage, ownership and top editor.
“Businessmen are threatened with closure for enterprises if they dare to meet us halfway,” the group, which now goes by Prufy, said on its website. “Our resources are depleted.” Prufy declined to comment.
Hunting Navalny
Navalny, the imprisoned leader of Russia’s largest opposition movement, overshadows Putin’s other domestic opponents. In Roskomnadzor’s Bashkortostan office, no mention of Navalny was too small to escape notice.
Workers flagged articles and social media comments about Navalny and websites where his name appeared in the margins as a related link. In monthly reports, they tallied online criticism of the government day by day, often alongside major news developments related to Navalny.
After ProUfu.ru published a video of an interview with Navalny in 2020, the site was charged with an administrative violation for posting information about “criminally punishable acts,” according to a record of the infraction included in the files.
The agency worked with different branches of the Russian security apparatus to go after not just Navalny but his supporters. In Bashkortostan, the main target was Lilia Chanysheva, a 40-year-old lawyer.
Chanysheva, who has been a supporter of Navalny’s for at least a decade, moved in 2013 from Moscow to Ufa, Bashkortostan’s largest city and where her parents lived. In 2017, she traded a well-paying auditing job with the international consulting firm Deloitte to start a regional office for Navalny.
“She understood that if she did not do it, no one would,” said Maksim Kurnikov, the former editor of a regional branch of the radio station Echo of Moscow, who got to know Chanysheva in Ufa.
Chanysheva planned protests and linked groups who not just disagreed with Putin’s rule but were motivated by local issues such as government corruption and environmental exploitation in the mineral-rich Bashkortostan region. She was known for volunteering time to provide legal aid to anyone in need, friends and colleagues said.
Authorities watched her closely, according to the documents. In 2017, Roskomnadzor officials sent a letter to the FSB and other branches of the national security apparatus, warning that Navalny’s team was uniting “various small oppositional regional communities into a ‘united front.’”
Chanysheva faced random searches and police arrests. During a presidential campaign by Navalny before elections in 2018, she spent more than 45 days in jail for holding unauthorized protests and other offenses, colleagues said.
With authorities fond of detaining leaders well before organized protests, she made a habit of disappearing and then materializing at the rallies, they said.
“It made them look very stupid,” said Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, who hired Chanysheva.
Authorities included Chanysheva in regular reports about the activity of opposition figures who appeared in local and social media, including a 2020 meeting with activists who fought a real estate development that would involve cutting down a forest.
Roskomnadzor confronted her with minor infractions, including violations of data-protection rules, according to the records. She topped a list on another document that suggested individuals for expanded monitoring and surveillance.
On a spreadsheet of “leaders of opinion” in Bashkortostan, Roskomnadzor officials highlighted Chanysheva’s name in dark red along with links to her social media accounts and follower totals.
In October 2020, she was placed on a list of the region’s “destabilizing sources” and was cited for “criticizing Russian federal and regional government.”
In April 2021, Navalny’s organizations were forced to disband after the Kremlin listed them as illegal extremist groups. Fearful of being imprisoned, many top operatives left Russia. Chanysheva stayed. She was arrested on charges of extremism in November.
Roskomnadzor’s censors noted her arrest “caused a resonance both among activists and users on social networks,” according to a record of the incident. They were not overly concerned. At the top of the report, they wrote: “Protest activity was at a relatively low level.”
Chanysheva, who is being held at a detention center in Moscow, could not be reached for comment. Voronin, her lawyer, said she spends her time writing letters and sorting trash from recycling. She faces a decade in prison.
The Lone Protester
In the first weeks of the war on Ukraine, Roskomnadzor censors ramped up, according to the documents. They focused not just on the war but its side effects, including the public response to a domestic crackdown on dissent and grumblings about the invasion’s effect on the rising cost of goods.
On Feb. 27, agency officials monitored the reaction to reports that a family from Ufa — including young children — was detained for protesting the war. Another report flagged an item that was spreading quickly online that described how the FSB brutally beat and electrocuted a protester.
“Some users negatively assessed the actions of law enforcement agencies,” they wrote, noting 200,000 users had viewed the news on the messaging app Telegram.
The files also showed how office life went on as normal for the censors, who are part of the security-state middle class that Putin has built over the past 20 years to consolidate power. The employees marked a national holiday celebrating women and shared memes. In a jocular video passed around the office, they joked about accidentally blocking the Kremlin website and bribing judges with alcohol and chocolate.
In March, the censors highlighted an Instagram post from a protest in Bashkortostan. The demonstrator, Laysan Sultangareyeva, stood in Tuymazy, an industrial town west of the regional capital, to decry the invasion of Ukraine.
The post showed Sultangareyeva holding a sign that read “No to Putin, No to War.” Comments were filled with emojis cheering her on.
At the protest, police arrested the 24-year-old political activist and kept her in jail overnight. Roskomnadzor censors described her arrest with terse and matter-of-fact language: “Took place, the protester was detained.”
In an interview, Sultangareyeva said police intimidated her, asked about her support for Navalny and made her take a drug test.
Sultangareyeva, whose Instagram profile once said “making delicious coffee and trying to stay out of jail,” protested twice more in April. She was arrested again. Online posts were used as evidence against her, as were photos shared in a local anti-war Telegram channel. She was fined 68,000 rubles, or about $1,100.
“The fact that Roskomnadzor monitors social networks I did not know, but I guessed that they would not leave me without attention,” she said. She recently noticed police-affiliated accounts looking at her Instagram Stories and blocked them.
‘I Thought I Knew What Censorship Was’
Roskomnadzor’s tightening grip has manifested itself in the form of outright censorship.
Three days after DOXA, a media organization run by university students and recent graduates, posted a video calling on students to speak out against Putin in January 2021, a letter arrived from the agency.
It said the video had been added to a registry of “prohibited information” that “encouraged minors to participate in activities that are dangerous to their health and lives.” Roskomnadzor ordered DOXA to take the video down, said Ilia Sagitov, a reporter for the site who has left Russia.
DOXA complied but then sued Roskomnadzor over the takedown. Sagitov said the site had been careful not to encourage protest directly in the video and argued there was nothing illegal in it.
At 6 a.m. on April 14, 2021, security forces struck back. In a coordinated raid, Russian police broke into the website’s offices and the apartments of four of its editors. They placed the editors under house arrest and forbade them from accessing the internet.
“We believe that they were tracking everything we were doing back then and desperately trying to find anything to oppress us in any way,” Sagitov said. “So they finally got it — our video — and immediately started to fabricate this case.”
Still, DOXA’s website was not blocked, and reporters continued publishing articles. Then came the war in Ukraine.
In February, the site published a guide to “anti-war disputes in the family and work,” which included 17 answers to the most common arguments justifying the war. Akin to stories in the United States that prepare people for contentious Thanksgiving dinner discussions, or how to speak to a climate-change denier, the article went viral. An illustration from the piece showed a young person debating the war with an older man.
This time, Roskomnadzor swiftly blocked each of DOXA’s three different websites. The sites remain down. Some staff have fled the country while others left the organization, fearing for their safety. Roskomnadzor has taken a similar tack elsewhere, blocking more heavily and widely than before, according to those who have been targeted.
“There’s no new level of competence, just a new bigger scale of repression — both digital and real world,” Sagitov said. “I thought I knew what censorship was, but it turned out I didn’t. Well, now I know.”
