Corporations Help Dictators Censor the Internet

In early December, Russian censors (https://wapo.st/3EO8Rw2)
scored an unexpected success: Internet users all over the country
reported that Tor, an encryption software that allows users to
bypass online government controls, was going offline.
The Russian security services have been trying to neutralize Tor
for years. They view it as the West’s censorship circumvention
tool of choice. Its creation was sponsored by the International
Broadcasting Bureau, a U.S. agency that provides technical
support to Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
The irony, though, is that Russian state scored this victory over
freedom of information with the help of Western companies.
Russia calls its system for controlling online discourse the
“sovereign Internet.” The nationwide system, whose control center
is located in Moscow, is designed to suppress traffic the Kremlin
doesn’t like. It can isolate specified sections of the Web or cut
off entire regions of the country from the Internet in case of
protests or unrest. In many ways, the effectiveness of the system
attests to the skill of the Russian engineers who designed, tested
and implemented it in the course of just two years, starting
in 2019.
Despite its name, though, the system depends to a crucial extent
on foreign technology. Its control center, in a lavishly renovated
19th-century red-brick building on the Moscow River, is powered
by 30 servers from Chinese-owned Lenovo and 30 more from
U.S. company Super Micro Computer. But that is mere hardware
that provides the system with its computing power. Even more
important is the deep packet inspection (DPI) software that allows
Russian censors to suppress Tor traffic or to slow down Twitter
across the country, as they did earlier this year.
(We reached out for comment from the companies mentioned in
this article. Only Super Micro responded: “Supermicro complies
with applicable laws and regulations, and our policies are
consistent with international principles of human rights,” said
a company representative in an email. “We act appropriately
to ensure this is the case.”)
On the censors’ orders, every Russian Internet service has to
install a package of surveillance technology provided by the
Israeli firm Silicom Ltd. In September, Russian human rights
activists called out Silicom for the company’s role in the creation
of the Sovereign Internet, but the company has made no response.
Many experts long assumed that modern-day dictatorships would
rely on each other’s help in the realm of online surveillance. This
assumption was, to some extent, based on a historical analogy -
the legacy of the Cold War era’s Soviet and Chinese arms sales
to other despotic regimes. This thinking viewed surveillance and
censorship tech as modern-day weapons — so it seemed only
logical that shipments of tanks and Kalashnikovs to these regimes
would be supplemented by software and equipment for spying on
dissidents, activists and journalists.
But that’s not how things have turned out. Of the tech used by
Russian censors in the sovereign Internet system, only some of the
hardware is supplied by the Chinese. The company Lenovo
originated in China, but Lenovo’s operational HQ is in Morrisville,
N.C. It could be described more accurately as a Sino-American
multinational. Super Micro’s headquarters is in San Jose, Calif.
DPI technology is itself a Western invention.
On Dec. 6, Russia’s Internet censors purchased several Internet
traffic analysis solutions developed by IXIA, which is part of
Keysight Technologies, another U.S. company based in Santa
Rosa, Calif.
These days, dictatorships are too smart to shut themselves off from
Western technology even if they proclaim digital sovereignty as
their national goal. When it comes to surveillance and censorship,
they need to get things done — they can’t be too fussy about who
is supplying the tools. Even Saudi Arabia had apparently little
compunction about using surveillance software from the Israeli
company NSO Group. (The company later canceled its contract
with the Saudis amid adverse publicity.)
But this also means that even as the dictatorships are busy erecting
fences, including online, something can be done from outside
to slow down their progress in suppressing human and political
rights in their countries.
The tech companies should not be left on their own when it comes
to making decisions about whether they should get into bed with
these regimes. Google correctly decided to terminate its
controversial program of designing a search engine that would
be compatible with China’s censorship regime. But there are other
lower-profile companies that seem to have few such scruples.
There are lots of experts, journalists and human rights
organizations who are fully capable of explaining what can be
done with the technology when it is used by the dark side. The
companies cannot go on helping authoritarian regimes while
claiming ignorance about the situation in those countries.