Wikileaks Publishes “Spy Files Russia” Expose Russia’s Mass Surveillance Program
(The AEGIS Alliance) – WikiLeaks just recently released a lot of documentation below the heading “Spy Files Russia.” The documents recommend that Moscow utilizes a sophisticated state surveillance program to spy on Russian sites and cellphone customers.
Ironically, this release comes after many claims created by the public and mainstream media that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange are influenced or controlled by Russia, as the organization had been previously focusing mainly on exposing United States secrets.
Whether this is a transformation of the regime in an effort to refute these allegations or not, WikiLeaks’ most up to date details about the dump has surely shed some light on how tiny of privacy Russian citizens actually have.
NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted about it, which you can view beneath:
WHAT DOCUMENTS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN THE WIKILEAKS “RUSSIA SPY FILES”?
WikiLeaks claims the files prove that a Russian software program corporation is installing infrastructure all over around Russia, thanks to the government’s approval, which allows Russian state agencies to spy on citizens’ online and their electronic activity. It’s no wonder Snowden tweeted about the matter, given that the NSA utilized a similar surveillance system to spy on U.S. citizens.
The 34 WikiLeaks documents, dated to involving 2007 and 2015, all pertain to a St. Petersburg-primarily based corporation named Peter-Service, which is the alleged contractor installing the mass Russian surveillance program.
WikiLeaks states:
PETER-SERVICE is uniquely placed as a surveillance companion due to the outstanding visibility their goods give into the information of Russian subscribers of mobile operators, which expose to PETER-SERVICE worthwhile metadata, like telephone and message records, device identifiers (IMEI, MAC addresses), network identifiers (IP addresses), cell tower details and a lot extra. This enriched and aggregated metadata is of course of interest to Russian authorities, whose access became a core element of the program architecture.
So, what types of data does Peter-Service have on Russian citizens? Well, it’s a bit of a “Big Brother” situation happening. WikiLeaks reported, “PETER-SERVICE claims to have current access to a majority of all a phones get in touch with records as easily as Internet traffic targeting in Russia.” One document revealed that the Peter-Service has access to distinct detailed information about your phone and online payments if you live in Russia.
One of the systems covered in the WikiLeaks dump, referred to as Traffic Data Mart, “records and monitors” IP traffic targeting for all cell phones registered with the organization.
It’s necessary to note that the WikiLeaks documents do not necessarily refer to Russia’s spy agency, or the FSB, whatsoever, but only reference “state agencies” alternatively. This could be implying that law enforcement just uses the data for legal purposes, but the documents also don’t mention what other state agencies use the data.
Some people have been fast to criticize the released documents, claiming that, even though they discuss a national system of online surveillance called System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) that had been recognized currently to the public, there weren’t sufficient new details within the documentation to make them worthwhile or noteworthy.
All of the documents are on the WikiLeaks website here.
FINAL THOUGHTS
A lot of the claims made about WikiLeaks having ties to Russia were part of the DNC/mainstream media’s doing to convince the public that Russia hacked the U.S. election. However, an FBI whistleblower stated with details that it was former DNC employee Seth Rich, who’d later been murdered, and allegedly leaked the documentation to WikiLeaks.
The DNC and much of the public believed that the DNC email leak produced by WikiLeaks was to blame for the demise of the DNC celebrations and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. election. Instead of taking the blame for their actions, the DNC was fast to blame “Russian hackers” for sending the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, when in reality they’d been allegedly sent from within the DNC.
People criticize WikiLeaks, but we probably ought to focus on the functions the entity has been carrying out in exposing some truths that are difficult all more than the planet. Although, lots of their publications do, truthfully, relate to the U.S. government.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
