Russian Authorities 'Secretly' Shut Down Moscow's Mobile Internet: Report

Authored by forbes.com and submitted by AdamCannon

Moscow, Russia - August 3. Getty Images

Unsurprisingly, online reports of issues with Moscow's mobile internet on two recent Saturdays—27 July and 3 August have now been attributed to actions by the country's law enforcement agencies. Unsurprising because on those same days, mass protests were held in the center of the city. The city's three main network operators—MTS, MegaFon and VimpelCom—explained this was due to "overcrowding." But the suspicion was that it was something more nefarious than that.

Back in April, Moscow's CIO Eduard Lysenko told me that the city's goal is to "use technology to provide citizens with better services." Clearly, that goal diminishes if those citizens are protesting against President Vladimir Putin. Almost 700 people were arrested in the protests on August 3, as thousands of demonstrators came face to face with heavy-handed police tactics and with hundreds of officers flooding the city.

BBC Russia claims to have seen an internal letter to call center employees in one of those operators that substantiates suspicions that the mobile internet was deliberately jammed by the city's authorities. "Colleagues," the letter says, "in the Presnensky and Basmanny districts and in the center of Moscow, a number of base stations are disabled at the request of law enforcement agencies."

The letter added that this information was not to be publicly disclosed, there would be a subterfuge instead. "The company does not recognize the presence of an incident in these areas of Moscow." Customers asking what had impacted their internet were to be told "there were no difficulties in providing services on the part of the company."

The disruption began as the protests were about to start; voice calls were unaffected but the mobile internet ceased to function.

Of the three operators, only MegaFon responded to a BBC request for comment, saying "they had not received any requests from law enforcement agencies to restrict communication services." Neither MTS nor VimpelCom (operating as Beeline) offered any comment. Unofficial responses blamed overcrowding in the city. Russian operators are subject to federal laws that mandate the suspension of communication services at the request of security agencies or the regulator Roskomnadzor. Those same laws prohibit any disclosure that such a request has been made.

"Unfortunately," Megafon told the Moscow Times, "sometimes the presence of a large crowd of people in a limited space leads to an overload of existing 4G networks, which have their own limit on the number of subscribers in one cell and the size of the data transfer channel." Separately, a VimpelCom spokesperson told a Russian broadcaster that "temporary overloads" had impacted its network on August 3

Russia’s Internet Protection Society has said that this is the first state-mandated shutdown of Moscow's mobile internet in this way. The suspensions lasted for between 7 and 11 hours and were likely effected by switching base stations to "GSM-only" mode. There was a similar suspension in the republic of Ingushetia in October, during a protest against a border deal with Chechnya, but this was a first for the capital.

NetBlocks also confirmed "technical evidence of a targeted internet shutdown in Russia on Saturday 3 August 2019 as demonstrators took to Moscow’s streets."

The state control of Russia's internet has generated headlines in recent months as the government seeks to take more control. There have been restrictions placed on internet companies within the country and a framework introduced into law to enable the Russian internet to be separated from the world wide web if required to maintain national security. The legislation allows the government to mitigate "threats to the stable, safe and integral operation of the Russian Internet on Russian territory" by centralizing "the general communications network," formalizing plans for an alternative domain name system (DNS) for Russia such that it can be severed from the World Wide Web. Internet service providers can also be ordered to disconnect from foreign servers, shifting services to Russia's DNS instead.

This has drawn obvious parallels with the state control over the internet in China. There, recent demonstrations in Hong Kong have seen signifiant state interference in online platforms to monitor and control protests.

The linkage between the approaches to technology and the internet in Moscow and Beijing has been a wider theme this year as a technology "Cold War" has emerged. Now those linkages seem to be growing stronger, with Russia perhaps learning lessons from China's levels of state internet control.

cr0ft on August 8th, 2019 at 12:09 UTC »

Protesters should probably be using something like Firechat. That would allow for communication channels phone to phone at least.

pm_social_cues on August 8th, 2019 at 12:07 UTC »

Yeah, to “frustrate” them. Glad it’s not censorship.

benji_tha_bear on August 8th, 2019 at 10:31 UTC »

New headline: Russia ‘secretly’ posts to reddit, requesting ad blockers turned off and injects malware on cell phones