Prominent Russian journalist attacked, FSB tracking messenger apps – weekly news digest

Yelena Milashina, a prominent Russian investigative journalist for Novaya Gazeta, was violently attacked and beaten while on a reporting trip in the Russian republic of Chechnya.

Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov were ambushed and forced out of their car by a group of armed men while travelling from the airport to cover a high-profile trial, in an apparent attempt to hinder their reporting. They were badly injured as a result of the attack. 

Chechen authorities led by warlord Ramzan Kadyrov have been notorious for their human rights violations over the years. While Kadyrov claims he has tasked law enforcement agencies with investigating the attack, he had previously openly threatened Milashina, and the level of press freedom in Chechnya is extremely low even by deteriorating Russian standards. 

The incident follows a grim pattern of attacks on reporters for Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s leading independent publishers, including in connection with their investigations into human rights abuses in Chechnya. Most notably, journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow in 2006.

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A new investigation by The New York Times highlights how Russian law enforcement agencies have expanded their digital surveillance capabilities and acquired tools that allow monitoring of some activity on encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal, as well as Telegram.

The authors write that Russia is catching up with other authoritarian regimes like China in using advanced tech to crack down on opposition and entrench the power of the ruling regime (and selling tech solutions abroad). Police and the Federal Security Service (FSB) have access to “simple-to-use software that plugs directly into the telecommunications infrastructure [and] provides a Swiss-army knife of spying possibilities”, often produced by low-profile private technology firms, NYT notes.

The materials obtained by NYT do not show that Russian authorities can intercept the content of messages sent via services like Telegram and WhatsApp, but they “can identify when people make voice calls or send files”, as well as “determine whether someone is using multiple phones, map their relationship network by tracking communications with others, and triangulate what phones have been in certain locations on a given day”. Because the surveillance relies on data from internet service providers, there’s little messaging services can do to prevent this tracking. 

Bonus — Three more stories you might want to check out:

• The Verge: Instagram’s Twitter-like Threads app looks set to launch July 6th
• The Guardian: Russia may be open to prisoner swap for jailed US reporter Evan Gershkovich 
• RFE/RL: Moscow court sentences self-exiled media manager Ilya Krasilshchik to eight years in prison 

Source of the cover photo: https://depositphotos.com/home.html

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