In the lead up to the US presidential elections, the US government formally accused Russia of political hacking. The US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that the stealing and leaking of emails from the Democratic National Committee and other institutions was intended to interfere with the election process. Posted on WikiLeaks and other websites that publish classified information from anonymous sources, the leaks led to suggestions that these online platforms are linked to senior Russian officials.

But did Russia actually launch ‘cyber warfare’ on the US, and how grounded are the C.I.A.’s conclusions? Join us for a discussion on what the hacking debate has revealed about relations between the two countries and the new role of cyber conflict in international relations.

Chaired by journalist Andrew Jack. Andrew Jack has worked as a journalist at the Financial Times since 1990. He currently runs the curated content team, which guides busy readers through the best news and analysis from the FT and the rest of the web. He was previously deputy editor of the analysis section, pharmaceuticals correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, Paris correspondent, financial correspondent, general reporter and corporate reporter.

Speakers:

Luke Harding is an award-winning foreign correspondent with The Guardian, who has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and  covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. He is the author of Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia, and A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Account of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia’s War with the West.

Victor Balagaddde is former editor of Kommersant UK, the only Russian language newspaper focusing on business and politics in Great Britain. He has also written for New Style, a Russian language magazine published in London and the Ukrainian Kharkovsky Courier.

Edward Lucas is a British journalist working for The Economist, the London-based global news weekly. He was the Moscow bureau chief from 1998 to 2002, and thereafter the central and east European correspondent.

Roland Oliphant covers Russia and the former Soviet Union for the Telegraph. He has reported on the Ukrainian revolution and civil war from Kiev, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine

Nigel Inkster has worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) since 2007. His current title is Director of Future Conflict and Cyber Security. His research portfolio includes transnational terrorism, insurgency, transnational organised crime, cyber security, intelligence and security and the evolving character of conflict. Before joining IISS he served for thirty-one years in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) retiring in 2006 as Assistant Chief and Director of Operations and Intelligence.

On Wednesday 14 October a packed audience convened at the Frontline Club, eager to discuss worldwide censorship and the extent to which technology has increased the scope of surveillance. The event, titled Spies, Lies and Secrets, was held in collaboration with Index on Censorship – the international organisation that promotes and defends the right to free expression worldwide – to coincide with the release of their latest quarterly magazine. 

L-r: Robert McCrum, Xiaolu Guo, Rachael Jolley, Ismail Einashe and Stephen Grey

The distinguished panel included award-winning British investigative journalist and author Stephen Grey, whose recent book The New Spymasters looks at spying in the digital age and how it has evolved since the Cold War; Xialou Guo, fiction writer, filmmaker, political activist, and an outspoken critic of communist oppression in China; associate editor of the Observer Robert McCrum; and freelance journalist and associate editor at Warscapes Ismail Einashe. Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley chaired the event.

Grey introduced the event: “It’s quite chilling to know the amount of information that can be unearthed about you [due to the internet], and not just about you but also your friends and family.”

He then questioned whether or not censorship was ever justifiable. “We want to stand up for freedom of expression but some censorship does seem logical. We want to stop our children from being taken into gangs or lured off to Syria.”

Robert McCrum responded to a question about censorship during the Cold War and in the present day: “The difference is that in those days it was simple, you knew who the enemy was and you knew what the enemy did. The big change now is this extraordinary explosion of global consciousness.

“The founders of this magazine were trying to defend literary freedom in the cold war. Now we’re trying to defend freedom of speech and thought and expression across the globe – that’s the big difference.”

Great debate on censorship @frontlineclub tonight with Robert McCrum, Xiaolu Guo @StephenGrey, @IsmailEinashe Rachael Jolley #indexfrontline

— Jacqueline Pietsch (@jjpietsch) October 13, 2015

The discussion moved onto the question of the internet and the impact it has had on freedom of expression and censorship.

Guo said: “The internet has great advantages because it de-centralises the power. There’s no one boss in the internet world – there are many controllers.”

Guo then commented on the strict internet controls enforced in her home country, China. “There are currently at least 2 million internet police there – cyber control in China is vast.”

Continuing on this topic, Grey said: “The freedom that the internet brings puts the fear of God into governments (…) They can’t defend some of the means that the internet provides.”

Einashe responded to an audience question on whether censorship has seen an increase in recent years. “I feel that in different East African countries that I know about that censorship has certainly increased, states are able to censor much more.”

He continued: “The link between social movements and online activity is really important too because you can’t really affect social change solely on the web – you have to connect to social movements too.”

“This is not a phone conversation…”

                                                                        – Soviet saying

Introducing his new book The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries at an event at the Frontline Club on Tuesday 29 September, co-author and founder of Agentura.Ru Andrei Soldatov began by saying that to understand modern Russia you must first understand the mentality and historical relationship between citizen, state and surveillance.

“The saying – ‘this is not a phone conversation,’ used by soviet citizens – is still in use today and reflects a continuity of some habits we inherited from the soviet past.”

The impact of this soviet legacy is mirrored in the methods and the principles of the FSB’s modern communication interception systems, as well as the “strange” and complicit relationship between the state military industrial complex and the telecommunications industry in Russia.

Soldatov continued: “The most important principle for the Russian system of surveillance is the back door to all Russian communications, which provides direct access to all servers, all networks on Russia soil.” The country’s revolving door policy between state and private sector results in a “complete lack of resistance, even collusion from the industry itself.”

Furthermore, said Soldatov, the “surveillance mentality” seen today derives more from the soviet approach to control, which prioritised intimidation and self-censorship, than from the use of technology.

“Russia’s system of online surveillance is not very sophisticated. The problem is that the Russian state is extremely skilful in sending a message: ‘You might be spied on… Be careful.’ And in a country with a very recent totalitarian past one needs to be only reminded of what might happen and that is enough.”

@AndreiSoldatov @irinaborogan presenting new book the Red Web in @frontlineclub #russia #putinAtWar pic.twitter.com/jI9W7OnBq0

— Agne Dovydaityte (@AgneDovydaityte) September 29, 2015

Co-author Irina Borogan acknowledged the problems of this soviet legacy and suggested that while the strategy President Putin has tried to apply to the internet is similar to that he successfully used to suppress traditional media in the early 2000s, his basic misunderstanding of how social media works post-Arab Spring leaves room for optimism.

“Once again, the Kremlin’s approach was based more on intimidation than mass oppression or technology. Putin believes that all things exist in a hierarchical structure and if you exert pressure from the top you can rule all things. But this fails to understand the internet as a network, which we all know has no centre – everyone can participate without authorisation.”

For Privacy International researcher Edin Omanovic, from the perspective of the state it is less a problem of a soviet citizen mentality than Putin’s worldview shaped by KGB/FSB surveillance policy.

“It is the narrative between how the horizontal approach to new technology is changing the world and being a force for liberation, versus how new technology is actually a force for oppression.”

Omanovic added that this is not merely a problem confined to Russia, but one that involves the billion-dollar private surveillance industry throughout the world, where cooperation between surveillance manufacturers and state defence contractors is often implicit.

The future of #Russia's internet: walking on the knife's edge – one kept purposefully obscure. http://t.co/LmzbEczf8m

— oDR (@opendemocracyru) September 14, 2015

For the BBC’s former Moscow correspondent and event moderator Daniel Sandford, while the KGB tactic to focus solely on dissident leaders and “well known trouble-makers” combined with often high levels of incompetence led to a certain lack of control, there is a concern that the FSB’s increasing professionalism – and a better organised and resourced state surveillance programme than existed in the 1970s and 80s – will see the state bring the internet under its control as it has done with other traditional media outlets.

Borogan, however, disputed this suggestion, claiming that what differentiates today from the soviet era is that “technology is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time and to install an all-powerful surveillance network throughout the entire country is ever more difficult.”

The widespread nature of internet networks will, in essence, beat Big Brother.

For Tonia Samsonova, foreign correspondent for Echo Moskvy, it is the actual goal of decision makers who are establishing the surveillance state that is the issue.

“One part of [these people] are actually working for the government, for the security of the regime, the others think of their job as a business. So one might ask what are the real goals of those guys? Are they to protect Putin, protect themselves as a class or to make as much money as they want?”

For Samsonova the danger lies not in the cynical surveillance measures of today, but in data departments and analytical models which can be used to predict issues and trends before they happen and to preemptively target potential trouble-makers.

In addition to being the only film with exclusive access to the Ulbricht family, Deep Web features the core architects of the deep web; anarchistic cryptographers who developed the deep web’s tools for the military in the early 1990s; the dissident journalists and whistleblowers who immediately sought refuge in this seemingly secure environment; and the figures behind the rise of Silk Road, which combined the security of the deep web with the anonymity of cryptocurrency.

Directed by: Alex Winter
Produced by: Marc Schiller
Year: 2015
Runtime: 90′
Country: USA

On Tuesday 7 July 2015, the Frontline Club hosted a discussion on the problem of protecting journalistic sources in the age of digital surveillance.

Hosting the panel of experts was journalist and president of the Foreign Press Association Paola Totaro. The discussion touched upon issues of the law, journalist’s ethics, state transgression and best practices in protecting your sources.

The panel included journalists Julie Posetti, Jonathan Calvert and Paul Myers, as well as Gavin Millar QC, a specialist in media law.

Left to right: Gavin Millar QC, Jonathan Calvert, Paola Totaro, Paul Myers and Julie Posetti

The problem, Posetti said, is clandestine surveillance undercutting the legal protections of sources. “It’s all very well to say I can stand up in court and protect my source, but if my source has been exposed in a clandestine manner it becomes quite problematic,” she said.

Posetti, is an Australian journalist and academic and has been working on a UNESCO commissioned study on the protection of sources in the digital era. She told the Frontline Club that digital surveillance changes so quickly, working on the UNESCO report was “like working on a breaking story for a year and a half.”

“[Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian] said to me that he felt that dealing with the threat to the protection of sources in the digital age was a lot like fighting zombies,” Posetti said. “Every time you think you’ve solved a problem… another one will pop up, another door will open.”

Legal frameworks protecting journalists are being increasingly strained.

“They are increasingly at risk or erosion, restriction and compromise… [representing] a direct challenge to the established universal rights, human rights, to freedom and privacy,” said Posetti.

Importantly this is not just an issue for the UK. “In many states the consequence for an investigate process being revealed are severe.”

Millar told the Frontline Club that most of the legal protection for journalists against digital surveillance actually originated from the European Union. He echoed Posetti’s concerns of state agencies subverting the law.

“There was an understanding, misplaced, that [state surveillance] didn’t go on where the purpose of exercising the power was to identify journalistic sources… That’s all gone down the pan in recent years unfortunately,” said Millar.

There is a lack of judicial oversight in the UK, said Millar, particularly with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Introduced in 2000, this law was designed to security services in counter terror however is being used by the police as a way to bypass the need to go through a judge

“The law enforcement agencies had got into the habit of the self help remedies that are available under RIPA and [authorise surveillance powers] without a judge being involved,” said Millar, who cited the Chris Huhne and the so called plebgate cases.

Gavin Millar QC (Left) and Jonathan Calvert

“There’s a strange correlation between political embarrassment and abuse of state powers when it comes to journalistic sources,” said Millar.

This abuse of surveillance powers, said Millar, is so ingrained in the working culture of law enforcement and intelligence agencies that the legal reforms proposed by Posetti and her UNESCO report would be ineffective if policing culture did not change with it.

“The principle is all fine and dandy, but it ain’t gonna be worth a hill of beans if they [the police and security services] don’t play ball, if the culture within those organisations is not… strictly and enthusiastically rule of law compliant,” said Millar. “I don’t even know to what extent they’re sidestepping even RIPA.”

What can be done by journalists to protect their sources in the meantime? First and foremost, said Calvert, is to always be aware that you can’t always protect your sources.

Currently the editor for The Sunday Time’s Insight Team, Calvert is an investigate journalist who has been working in the industry for decades. “I’ve sort of always have been aware that private detectives, government agencies can get access to my material,” he told the Frontline Club.

Paul Myers

Where possible, Calvert said that using low-tech methods is key to avoiding surveillance. “For year’s we’ve been doing things like going to internet cafés, using any old Hotmail address, using several Hotmail addresses, making sure we’re never connected to our IP address [a number unique to every computer]. And even this is not fool proof.”

There are online tools that can be used as well, said Myers, an internet research specialist at the BBC. Security can be cumbersome so first and foremost you need to know how at risk you are from surveillance and act accordingly.

It is also important to understand how your computer can leave a trail. “You could visit [a] website and leave a footprint from the BBC’s IP address, or you could set up a Hotmail account not realising that Hotmail betrays the fact that you used a BBC computer,” said Myers.

As for encryption; “You’re dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t,” said Myers; using too much encryption can cause suspicion. “It’s like kind of walking into a bank wearing sunglasses, a fedora and a fake beard; they don’t know who you are but they know you’re up to no good,” he said.

It’s important to remember, however, that despite the risks digital journalism has also made investigative journalism easier in other respects. “The Swiss leaks, offshore leaks, Luxemburg leaks, a whole range of leaks that have been in part, you know, depended on this age of reporting that rely on digital interaction with sources,” said Posetti.

“We are like cockroaches as investigative journalist,” Posetti said quoting Janine Gibson of Buzzfeed: “we must survive this, we have to keep going… I’m optimistic because I think ultimately we can establish the vital importance of investigative journalism.”

Acts of journalism should be shielded from targeted surveillance, data retention and handover of material connected to confidential sources. This is a key early finding from a recent study commissioned by UNESCO on the state of journalistic source protection in 121 countries.

Early findings from the study, Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age, authored by Australian journalist and journalism academic Julie Posetti, indicate that legal source protection frameworks in many of the countries studied are outdated and need strengthening. It also shows that they are being eroded by national security and anti-terrorism legislation; undercut by surveillance – both mass and targeted; and jeopardised both by mandatory data retention policies and pressure applied to third party intermediaries to release data.

UNESCO commissioned the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to undertake the study and Posetti led the project in her capacity as WAN-IFRA Research Fellow.

In an event in partnership with the Foreign Press Association, we will be joined by the author of the study and other experts to discuss the implications of the findings and what needs to be done to ensure journalists can fully protect their sources.

Chaired by journalist, writer and Foreign Press Association President, Paola Totaro.

The panel:

Julie Posetti is an Australian journalist and journalism academic. A former news editor, presenter and political reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Posetti is currently based in Paris as a research fellow with the World Editors Forum and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. She is completing a PhD on “The Twitterisation of Journalism” at the University of Wollongong, Australia, where she teaches social journalism, radio, TV and multimedia storytelling. She recently completed a major UNESCO-commissioned study of journalistic source protection in the digital era in 121 countries for WAN-IFRA.

Gavin Millar QC has a broad practice spanning media, information, public, criminal, employment and discrimination law. He is a noted specialist in all areas of media law including defamation, privacy, breach of confidence, publishing contempts and reporting restrictions. He often represents media outlets, journalists and politicians in both civil and criminal proceedings.

Jonathan Calvert is the longest serving editor of the The Sunday Times’ Insight team in its 50 year history, having held the job for a decade. His first scoop for the team was exposing the cash for questions scandal as an undercover Insight reporter in 1994, and he soon after became investigations editor at The Observer where he oversaw a string of major exclusives. Since returning to The Sunday Times he has headed a long line of exclusives – most recently the Fifa files investigation which made waves around the world.

Paul Myers is a BBC internet research specialist. He joined the BBC in 1995 as a news information researcher. He also runs The Internet Research Clinic, a website dedicated to directing journalists to the best research links, apps and resources. His role in the BBC Academy sees him organise and deliver training courses related to internet investigation, data journalism, freedom of information, reporting statistics, working with social media, web design and image production. He has worked with leading programmes like Panorama, Watchdog, national news bulletins, BBC Online, local & national radio and the World Service.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

On 8 March 1971, the night of the legendary boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, eight ordinary citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. The members of the self-proclaimed Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI picked the lock on the door, took every file in the office, loaded them into suitcases and walked out the front door.

Mailed anonymously, these documents started to show up in newsrooms, unleashing fierce debates on whether or not to publish them. Despite demands by the Nixon administration to suppress the story, The Washington Post went to press, uncovering the FBI’s vast and illegal regime of spying and intimidation of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.

For the first time, the members of the Citizens’ Commission come forward and speak out about their actions. Through a combination of exclusive interviews, rare primary documents from the break-in and investigation, national news coverage of the burglary and dramatic reenactments, filmmaker Johanna Hamilton tells the story of the Citizens’ Commission. This is a story with haunting echoes to today’s questions of privacy in the era of government surveillance.

Directed by Johanna Hamilton
Duration: 79′
Year: 2014

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/russias-surveillance-state

The surveillance culture in Russia is well documented. In the digital age as we see more protests on the streets of Moscow and elsewhere the FSB (the successor to the KGB) are developing new surveillance technologies.

Towards the end of last year as debate about the draft Communications Data Bill was raging in the UK, in Russia advanced internet-censorship and monitoring technologies were introduced. In reaction to this Privacy International, Agentura.Ru, the Russian secret services watchdog, and Citizen Lab have joined forces to launch a new project entitled Russia’s Surveillance State.

We will be joined by those involved in this new project and other experts to discuss the surveillance practices in Russia and how they are developing.

Chaired by Misha Glenny, an investigative journalist, author and broadcaster. He is one of the world’s leading experts on cybercrime and on global mafia networks. He is author of McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime and DarkMarket: How Hackers Became the New Mafia.

With:

Edward Lucas is international editor of The Economist and author of Deception: Spies, Lies and how Russia Dupes the West. He has covered Russia and Central and Eastern Europe for more than 20 years.

Andrei Soldatov is an investigative journalist and editor and co-founder of Agentura.Ru, an information hub on intelligence agencies. Soldatov regularly makes comments on terrorism and intelligence issues for Vedomosti, Radio Free Europe and the BBC. He authored a chapter on Russia’s secret services in the PSI Handbook of Global Security and Intelligence: National Approaches and is co-author of The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB.

Irina Borogan is an investigative journalist and deputy editor and co-founder of Agentura.Ru. She covered the NATO bombings in Serbia, and the Lebanon War and tensions in West Bank and Gaza Strip for Novaya Gazeta. In 2009 she started a series of articles investigating the Kremlin’s campaign to gain control of civil society and strengthen the government’s police services under pretext of fighting extremism, the series was published in Ezhednevny Journal and on Agentura.Ru.

External event held at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Abermarle St, London W1S 4BS.

Recent government proposals to allow increased police and intelligence agencies’ monitoring of email and social media communications have angered civil liberties campaigners who claim they are a breach civil liberties.

A new report by the think-tank Demos examines “the ethical, legal and operational challenges involved in using social media for intelligence and insight purposes”. Co-authored by former GCHQ director and ex-cabinet office security and intelligence chief Sir David Omand, it argues that police and intelligence agencies need to use social media as a form of intelligence but that laws need to ensure a balance is struck between security and intelligence work in this new environment.

Join us as we discuss to what extent security services should be able to monitor our cyber activity. Is this form of cyber surveillance a threat to the public’s civil liberties or necessary to keep them safe? Can a balance be struck?

The Demos report, entitled #intelligence can be downloaded here.

Chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent and author of the blog, dot.rory. Twitter:@BBCRoryCJ.

With:

Isabella Sankey, the Director of Policy at Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) which she joined in November 2007. She leads Liberty’s parliamentary lobbying and policy development, working in particular on the protection of human rights in the context of counter-terror policy. As such, she was heavily involved with Liberty’s successful Charge or Release campaign against holding terror suspects for 42 days without charge. She is a non-practising barrister and previously worked for the Legal & Constitutional Affairs Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations. In 2008 he resigned his seat and his position in the Shadow Cabinet to fight a by-election to highlight the Government’s undermining of civil liberties. After winning with a large majority, he returned to Parliament.

Jamie Bartlett, head of the violence and extremism programme at Demos. His primary research interests lie in terrorism, radicalisation and extremism, conspiracy theories and integration policy. He is the co-author of #Intelligence and in 2011 undertook the first ever survey of Facebook fans of far-right parties in Europe. Twitter: @JamieJBartlett.

Professor Anthony Glees MA MPhil DPhil, a professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS). He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence issues and has written and lectured on aspects of the history of British intelligence, on the Stasi, on Islamism, on terrorism and counter-terrorism, and on subversion in western democracies both today and in the past.

Additional panelists to be confirmed.

In association with:

This event will take place at the Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, W2 1JG.

Recent government proposals to allow increased police and intelligence agencies’ monitoring of email and social media communications have angered civil liberties campaigners who claim they are a breach civil liberties.

A new report by the think-tank Demos examines “the ethical, legal and operational challenges involved in using social media for intelligence and insight purposes”. Co-authored by former GCHQ director and ex-cabinet office security and intelligence chief Sir David Omand, it argues that police and intelligence agencies need to use social media as a form of intelligence but that laws need to ensure a balance is struck between security and intelligence work in this new environment.

Join us as we discuss to what extent security services should be able to monitor our cyber activity. Is this form of cyber surveillance a threat to the public’s civil liberties or necessary to keep them safe? Can a balance be struck?

The Demos report, entitled #intelligence can be downloaded here.

Chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent and author of the blog, dot.rory. Twitter:@BBCRoryCJ.

With:

Isabella Sankey, the Director of Policy at Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) which she joined in November 2007. She leads Liberty’s parliamentary lobbying and policy development, working in particular on the protection of human rights in the context of counter-terror policy. As such, she was heavily involved with Liberty’s successful Charge or Release campaign against holding terror suspects for 42 days without charge. She is a non-practising barrister and previously worked for the Legal & Constitutional Affairs Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations. In 2008 he resigned his seat and his position in the Shadow Cabinet to fight a by-election to highlight the Government’s undermining of civil liberties. After winning with a large majority, he returned to Parliament.

Jamie Bartlett, head of the violence and extremism programme at Demos. His primary research interests lie in terrorism, radicalisation and extremism, conspiracy theories and integration policy. He is the co-author of #Intelligence and in 2011 undertook the first ever survey of Facebook fans of far-right parties in Europe. Twitter: @JamieJBartlett.

Professor Anthony Glees MA MPhil DPhil, a professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS). He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence issues and has written and lectured on aspects of the history of British intelligence, on the Stasi, on Islamism, on terrorism and counter-terrorism, and on subversion in western democracies both today and in the past.

Additional panelists to be confirmed.

In association with: