Russian officials are prosecuting their first case over an ‘illegal Internet search.’ But where did the evidence come from?
The case
As of September 1, deliberately seeking out and accessing “extremist” content became a misdemeanor offense in Russia, punishable with fines of up to 5,000 rubles (about $60). The authorities began investigating their first case over an “illegal Internet search” on September 24, scooping up Sergey Glukhikh, a medical student from Kamensk-Uralsky, just hours after he looked up information about Ukraine’s Azov Regiment and the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK, a pro-Kyiv paramilitary group) while riding the bus to work.
Glukhikh’s defense attorney, Sergey Barsukov, says his client’s Internet search was “just out of curiosity.” But this didn’t stop federal agents from calling Glukhikh at work and summoning him to a local police station. There, he was interrogated and his phone was searched. Though the police released Sergey that same day, they filed a misdemeanor charge against him on October 8, for illegally accessing “extremist” content. The hearings began later that month, but on November 6, the judge sent the case back to the police, ruling that officials had failed to show Sergey acted with malicious intent.
According to the news outlet Agentstvo, the FSB likely obtained Sergey’s Internet browsing data from his mobile provider, T2. Barsukov has also suggested that the evidence against his client was transferred from a telecom operator to the FSB. However, this doesn’t quite add up for both technical and bureaucratic reasons.
What doesn’t add up?
On the technical side, a mobile operator can’t see the content of a client’s search queries if they used a search engine with a secure https connection. The popular search engines Google and Yandex both work this way.
Sergey Glukhikh’s mobile provider, T2, has also denied handing over any browsing data. “Information about T2’s role in this case is false and unsubstantiated speculation. We refute the fact of transferring a customer’s search history,” the company told Kommersant.
On the bureaucratic side, according to the recent amendments to Russia’s Administrative Code, police officers (unlike federal agents) can file charges for violating the ban on seeking out “extremist” content only in the event of “direct detection of signs of a misdemeanor offense.” That is, theoretically speaking, a tip from a mobile operator is not sufficient evidence for pressing charges.
In Sergey’s case, the police would have had to either witness him making an “illegal Internet search” while on board the bus or they would have had to examine the browser history on his mobile phone. According to his defense attorney, police did in fact go through Sergey’s phone. However, Barsukov has dismissed the purported screenshots of his client’s search queries circulating on Telegram — which show multiple back-to-back Google searches for “Azov brigade” and “RDK” — as fake.
So the mobile operator didn’t surrender any data?
We don’t know for sure. In its comment to Kommersant, T2 only denied transferring a customer’s search history.
However, this doesn’t rule out the possibility that the police requested metadata from the mobile operator to verify that Sergey Glukhikh did in fact use a search engine while riding the bus, and to check the date and time of other search queries found in his browser history.
Notably, the mobile operator would not be able to provide this information if Sergey had been browsing the Internet using a reliable VPN.
Meduza