Writing for the New York Times, Krolik, Mozur, and Satariano have published new details about the state of Russia’s telecommunications surveillance capacity. They include documentary evidence in some cases of what these technologies can do, including the ability to:
- identify if mobile phones are proximate to one another to detect meetups
- identify whether a person’s phone is proximate to a burner phone, to de-anonymize the latter
- use deep packet inspection systems to target particular kinds of communications metadata associated with secure communications applications
These types of systems are appearing in various repressive states and are being used by their governments.
Similar systems have long been developed in advanced Western democratic countries which leads me to wonder whether what we’re seeing from authoritarian countries will ultimately usher in the use of similar technologies in higher rule-of-law states or if, instead, Western companies will merely export the tools without them being adopted in the countries developing them.
In effect, will the long-term result of revealing authoritarian capabilities lead to the gradual legitimization of their use in democratic countries so long as using them is tied to judicial oversight?
Excited Pixels 