Good enough reason for organisations to put out notice below their name
boards outside their office "We do not use proprietary software / We use
only Free Software" :-) *
*regards
Guru
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/world/europe/12raids.html?_r=1
September 11, 2010
Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/clifford_j_levy/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
IRKUTSK, Russia — It was late one afternoon in January when a squad of
plainclothes police officers arrived at the headquarters of a prominent
environmental group here. They brushed past the staff with barely a word
and instead set upon the computers before carting them away. Taken were
files that chronicled a generation’s worth of efforts to protect the
Siberian wilderness.
The group, Baikal Environmental Wave, was organizing protests against
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/vladimir_v_putin/index.html?inline=nyt-per>’s
decision to reopen a paper factory that had polluted nearby Lake Baikal,
a natural wonder that by some estimates holds 20 percent of the world’s
fresh water.
Instead, the group fell victim to one of the authorities’ newest tactics
for quelling dissent: confiscating computers under the pretext of
searching for pirated Microsoft
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/microsoft_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org> software.
Across Russia
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/russiaandtheformersovietunion/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>,
the security services have carried out dozens of similar raids against
outspoken advocacy groups or opposition newspapers in recent years.
Security officials say the inquiries reflect their concern about
software piracy, which is rampant in Russia. Yet they rarely if ever
carry out raids against advocacy groups or news organizations that back
the government.
As the ploy grows common, the authorities are receiving key assistance
from an unexpected partner: Microsoft itself. In politically tinged
inquiries across Russia, lawyers retained by Microsoft have staunchly
backed the police.
Interviews and a review of law enforcement documents show that in recent
cases, Microsoft lawyers made statements describing the company as a
victim and arguing that criminal charges should be pursued. The lawyers
rebuffed pleas by accused journalists and advocacy groups, including
Baikal Wave, to refrain from working with the authorities. Baikal Wave,
in fact, said it had purchased and installed legal Microsoft software
specifically to deny the authorities an excuse to raid them. The group
later asked Microsoft for help in fending off the police. “Microsoft did
not want to help us, which would have been the right thing to do,” said
Marina Rikhvanova, a Baikal Environmental Wave co-chairwoman and one of
Russia’s best-known environmentalists. “They said these issues had to be
handled by the security services.”
Microsoft executives in Moscow and at the company’s headquarters in
Redmond, Wash., asserted that they did not initiate the inquiries and
that they took part in them only because they were required to do so
under Russian law.
After The New York Times presented its reporting to senior Microsoft
officials, the company responded that it planned to tighten its
oversight of its legal affairs in Russia. Human rights organizations in
Russia have been pressing Microsoft to do so for months. The Moscow
Helsinki Group sent a letter to Microsoft this year saying that the
company was complicit in “the persecution of civil society activists.”
*Tough Ethical Choices*
Microsoft, like many American technology giants doing business in
authoritarian countries, is often faced with ethical choices over
government directives to help suppress dissent. In China, Microsoft has
complied with censorship rules in operating its Web search service,
preventing Chinese users from easily accessing banned information. Its
archrival Google
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/google_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> stopped
following censorship regulations there, and scaled back its operations
inside China’s Internet firewall.
In Russia, leaders of advocacy groups and newspapers subjected to
antipiracy raids said Microsoft was cooperating with the authorities
because the company feared jeopardizing its business in the country.
They said Microsoft needed to issue a categorical public statement
disavowing these tactics and pledging to never cooperate in such cases.
Microsoft has not done that, but has promised to review its policies in
Russia.
“We take the concerns that have been raised very seriously,” Kevin Kutz,
director of public affairs for Microsoft, said in a statement. Mr. Kutz
said the company would ensure that its lawyers had “more clearly defined
responsibilities and accountabilities.”
“We have to protect our products from piracy, but we also have a
commitment to respect fundamental human rights,” he said. “Microsoft
antipiracy efforts are designed to honor both objectives, but we are
open to feedback on what we can do to improve in that regard.”
Microsoft emphasized that it encouraged law enforcement agencies
worldwide to investigate producers and suppliers of illegal software
rather than consumers. Even so, it has not publicly criticized raids
against small Russian advocacy groups.
With pirated software prevalent in this country, it is not surprising
that some of these groups might have some on their computers. Yet the
issue, then, is why the police choose to focus on these particular
targets — and whether they falsify evidence to make the charges more
serious.
Microsoft also says it has a program in Russia to provide free and
low-cost software to newspapers and advocacy groups so that they are in
compliance with the law.
But the review of these cases indicates that the security services often
seize computers whether or not they contain illegal software. The police
immediately filed reports saying they had discovered such programs,
before even examining the computers in detail. The police claims have in
numerous instances been successfully discredited by defendants when the
cases go before judges.
Given the suspicions that these investigations are politically
motivated, the police and prosecutors have turned to Microsoft to lend
weight to their cases. In southwestern Russia, the Interior Ministry
declared in an official document that its investigation of a human
rights advocate for software piracy was begun “based on an application”
from a lawyer for Microsoft.
In another city, Samara, the police seized computers from two opposition
newspapers, with the support of a different Microsoft lawyer. “Without
the participation of Microsoft, these criminal cases against human
rights defenders and journalists would simply not be able to occur,”
said the editor of the newspapers, Sergey Kurt-Adzhiyev.
The plainclothes officers who descended upon the Baikal Wave
headquarters said they were from the division that investigated
commercial crime. But the environmentalists said they noticed at least
one officer from the antiextremism department, which tracks opposition
activists and had often conducted surveillance on the group.
The officers said they had received a complaint from a man named Dmitri
Latyshev, who claimed that he had been in the headquarters and spotted
unlicensed Microsoft software on the computers. The police produced a
handwritten complaint from Mr. Latyshev, dated Jan. 27. The raid
occurred the next day.
People at Baikal Wave said they had never seen or heard of Mr. Latyshev.
Located in Irkutsk recently, Mr. Latyshev said by phone that he had
filed the complaint but would not say why.
Baikal Wave’s leaders said they had known that the authorities used such
raids to pressure advocacy groups, so they had made certain that all
their software was legal.
But they quickly realized how difficult it would be to defend themselves.
They said they told the officers that they were mistaken, pulling out
receipts and original Microsoft packaging to prove that the software was
not pirated. The police did not appear to take that into consideration.
A supervising officer issued a report on the spot saying that illegal
software had been uncovered.
Before the raid, the environmentalists said their computers were affixed
with Microsoft’s “Certificate of Authenticity” stickers that attested to
the software’s legality. But as the computers were being hauled away,
they noticed something odd: the stickers were gone.
In all, 12 computers were confiscated. The group’s Web site was
disabled, its finances left in disarray, its plans disclosed to the
authorities.
The police also obtained personnel information from the computers. In
the following weeks, officers tracked down some of the group’s
supporters and interrogated them.
“The police had one goal, which was to prevent us from working,” said
Galina Kulebyakina, a co-chairwoman of Baikal Wave. “They removed our
computers because we actively took a position against the paper factory
and forcefully voiced it.”
“They can do pretty much what they want, with impunity,” she said.
*A Company’s Pollution*
The paper factory is located on Lake Baikal, the world’s oldest and
deepest lake, which is home to hundreds of species that exist nowhere
else, including a freshwater seal. Over the years, the factory has
spewed mercury, chlorine, heavy metals and other pollutants into the water.
Baikal Wave rejoiced when the factory closed in 2008, having succumbed
to sizable losses, as well as pressure from environmentalists. But after
the financial crisis hit, the Kremlin worried about unrest from
unemployment. In January, Mr. Putin reopened the factory, which has
employed as many as 2,000 people, saying that it no longer polluted the
lake.
Baikal Wave, which was founded in Irkutsk, one of Russia’s largest
cities, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, began planning a protest.
That was when the officers showed up.
In a statement, the Irkutsk police said the raid was proper. “The
inspection of Baikal Environmental Wave was intended to protect
intellectual property and had no connection whatsoever with the
activities of the advocacy organization,” the statement said.
It said a forensic
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/forensic_science/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> examination
of the computers in February showed that several contained illegal
software that would have cost more than $3,300. Baikal Wave said the
examination was fraudulent.
Prosecutors say they are now weighing whether to press charges against
Baikal Wave or its leaders. It is possible, though unlikely, that they
could face jail time if convicted.
Neither Microsoft’s Moscow office nor its local lawyer contacted Baikal
Wave to hear its side. The lawyer did provide testimony to the police
about the value of the software that Baikal Wave was accused of
illegally obtaining.
Baikal Wave sent copies of its software receipts and other documentation
to Microsoft’s Moscow office to show that it had purchased the software
legally. The group said it believed that the authorities would be under
pressure to drop the case if Microsoft would confirm the documents’
authenticity.
Microsoft declined to do so. In a letter to Baikal Wave, the company
said it would forward the materials only to the authorities in Irkutsk,
which already had copies of them.
“A determination of the actual circumstances of this case and the
question of whether a violation of the law took place is the duty of the
court,” Microsoft said.
The company also told Baikal Wave that it was willing to have its
specialists assist the police in Irkutsk in evaluating the computers.
In response to written questions, Alexander Strakh, Microsoft’s chief
antipiracy lawyer in Moscow, said that in all these cases, Microsoft
assisted the authorities only as called for under Russian law.
Mr. Strakh was asked whether Microsoft believed that these raids were a
tool to suppress the opposition. “We have no direct knowledge of
decisions by authorities to use investigations in that manner,” he said.
Microsoft has hired numerous private lawyers across Russia who represent
the company in piracy cases. Several of the lawyers have cropped up in
these politically sensitive inquiries.
This year, prosecutors in the southwestern city of Krasnodar brought a
piracy case against an immigrant rights activist named Anastasia
Denisova. She said in an interview that she was surprised at the
aggressive posture of Microsoft’s local lawyer.
In an official document, the Interior Ministry said the case against Ms.
Denisova was begun “based on an application” from the lawyer.
(Microsoft’s Moscow office said that statement was not correct.)
Ms. Denisova said the lawyer overestimated the value of the allegedly
pirated software. As a result, the accusations were more serious.
“The Microsoft lawyer was very active, coming to the court all the time,
even though he was not summoned,” she said. “He also claimed that he was
going to sue me, despite the fact that Microsoft had publicly stated
that it would not do so against an advocacy group.”
In May, after Ms. Denisova had spent several months under the threat of
a prison sentence, the charges were dropped. Prosecutors acknowledged
that the investigation had been mishandled.
Samara, in Russia’s industrial heartland, has been a focal point for
these raids. In May 2007, when Mr. Putin was holding a summit meeting
there with European leaders, the police sought to prevent protests by
seizing computers from several organizations, including Golos, an
election monitoring and human rights group, and the local edition of
Novaya Gazeta, the country’s most influential opposition newspaper.
Last year, they took computers from another newspaper, Samarskaya
Gazeta. According to case records, the police conducted that search
based upon a complaint from a man who admitted that he had never been in
the newspaper’s offices or seen its computers.
Mr. Kurt-Adzhiyev, the editor of both newspapers, said Microsoft’s
lawyer in the case regularly appeared at court hearings to back
prosecutors and the police. He said the lawyer testified that seized
computers contained pirated software even though it was later shown that
the computers had never been examined.
“Microsoft says publicly that they have no claims in these cases, but
then their lawyers come into the court and say whatever the police want
them to say,” Mr. Kurt-Adzhiyev said.
*The Damage Is Done*
Prosecutors eventually dropped or suspended the charges against Mr.
Kurt-Adzhiyev after he was able to discredit them. But he said the
damage was done. He said the newspapers lost computers and data, and he
spent an enormous amount of time ensnared in legal proceedings. The
local edition of Novaya Gazeta had to close.
Mr. Kurt-Adzhiyev said he now realized that the authorities were not so
much interested in convictions as in harassing opponents. Even if the
inquiries are abandoned, they are debilitating when they require months
to defend.
Microsoft’s Moscow office said its lawyers had conducted themselves
properly in the cases in Krasnodar and Samara.
In Irkutsk, Baikal Environmental Wave has also struggled to recover from
the raid. It located some old computers and was still able to hold
protests against the paper factory.
The seized computers were not returned by the police until July, five
months after they were removed. Their hard drives had been inspected by
police experts in February. The environmentalists do not know whether
all their data remain, and they are sure that files were copied.
Ms. Rikhvanova, one of the group’s co-founders, who has been fighting to
defend Lake Baikal since the 1960s, was unable to use her computer. When
she got it back, she discovered that it had been disabled by a virus.
--
Gurumurthy Kasinathan
IT for Change | www.ITforChange.Net | Tel:98454 37730
What is Public Software? see http://public-software-centre.org/node/31
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