Does the FSB have the right to read VKontakte correspondence. The Ministry of Internal Affairs can read the correspondence of Russians on the Internet and listen to telephone conversations. How does it work


Information periodically appears on the Internet that messages in the WhatsApp messenger and on the VKontakte social network can be read by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the special services of the Russian Federation. Such data annoys users. They want to be sure that their private messages are their world, their secret. However, is it really so. This can be well understood.

There is an opinion on the Internet that the special services can read every correspondence on social networks if they need it. However, it should be noted that private messages are protected by law and without a court decision, reading messages is illegal.

Can the FSB read private messages on WhatsApp


In the personal blogs of users, you can read that supposedly the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB have long been reading correspondence in r and other messengers. Of course, these are not expert opinions and they are not supported by an evidence base. That is, Internet users at the level of intuition believe that the special services are watching the correspondence, that's all.

As for the opinion of experts, back in 2016 it was proved in the USA that it would not be difficult for attackers or special services to read WhatsApp correspondence. Experts assure that everyone can get the encryption key at the time when the user changes it or the messenger itself does it.

The FSB has repeatedly stated that it can read users' correspondence, but this is done only by a court decision. An application is submitted, the court makes a decision. It is sent to the owners of the messenger and they are required to provide data on the accounts that are specified in the document. Another question is whether the user will know that he is being read. Most likely no.

Can the Interior Ministry read VK correspondence


Social networks believe that the Ministry of Internal Affairs can read the correspondence of users on VK. There are a lot of arguments in favor of this argument that are considered convincing.

For example, it is believed that the social network would not work in Russia if it refused to provide the Ministry of Internal Affairs with access to correspondence. Also, users noticed that after Pavel Durov left VK, the new management of the social network stopped arguing with the FSB and other bodies about providing access to information. In their opinion, this indicates an agreement to provide all the necessary information upon the first request.

If we talk about legal means, no one can have permission to read correspondence or other information without a court decision. However, Internet users are not sure of this, since more and more bills appear in the State Duma that indicate that they can still read the correspondence. Russians complain about the emergence of control on the Web, where a citizen is not sure about the reliable encryption of his information.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs can read the correspondence of Russians on the Internet and listen to telephone conversations


The State Duma is developing bills to which society reacts negatively. For example, the so-called "Yarovaya package". According to the document, from October 1, 2018, all telecom operators are required to store user data for 30 days, including messages, photos, video and sound files.

The media reported that all this data is with the operator, but he must provide them to the special services at the first request. This means that the FSB and other services can read the correspondence and listen to conversations if the subscriber comes into their field of vision, and for this you just need to go to an uncoordinated rally or appear at a large protest rally several times.

Users who do not break the law can sleep well, but they are still concerned about this topic, since it is unpleasant to know that someone can read your personal correspondence. Even if there is not even anything illegal in it, these are still personal messages that only the addressee has the right to read.

Today in Yekaterinburg the FSB's capacities allow to listen simultaneously to 25-50 thousand subscribers. They definitely listen to the Governor, his inner circle, and the city's top officials. Deputies of the Legislative Assembly and the City Duma are unlikely, only if someone was ordered by competitors.

How Ural politicians suffer from surveillance and try to escape

"Not on the phone." "I'll call you back from another number." "Let's go outside, take a walk, it's better not to talk here." Such phrases have become firmly established in the life of the Russian establishment, and after all, a few years ago, those who complained about wiretapping of phones and offices were mistaken for half-mad people, like those who wear foil hats and believe in the zombie rays of the KGB. Today everyone knows: they listen to everyone, they listen without regard to the law and the materials of these wiretaps are often used not in court, but in political intrigues, denunciations, and provocations. Znak.com spoke with one of the e-intelligence shadow market professionals to find out how the field works.

Who is listening

In the language of law enforcement agencies, wiretapping and control of Internet traffic are called the abbreviation "SORM" - "System of technical means for ensuring the functions of operational-search measures." SORM-1 is a set of measures aimed at wiretapping mobile communications, SORM-2 - mobile Internet traffic. Today, such investigative techniques are coming to the fore, eclipsing traditional forensic approaches. Accordingly, the units responsible for SORM are becoming more and more influential within the internal affairs bodies. In the Sverdlovsk region, for example, the bureau of special technical measures (BSTM) of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Sverdlovsk region and the operational-technical department (OTO) of the FSB for the Sverdlovsk region.

By law, wiretapping of phones and control of Internet traffic is possible only by a court decision. True, the law allows investigators to “turn on the recording” without it, if the case is urgent and wiretapping is necessary to prevent an impending crime. According to approximately the same principle, investigators "as an exception" are allowed to conduct searches, receiving a court order after the fact. As in the case of searches, law enforcement officers often use this rule to gain uncontrolled access to other people's secrets.

There are also ways to legalize illegal wiretapping by putting the name and phone number of the person in question on a long list of suspects in a criminal case. According to sources in the authorities, judges almost never delve into how this or that surname is connected with a criminal case, and sign the permission "in one fell swoop." Such court decisions are classified as "secret", and citizens will never know who was on the "wiretapping" lists.

However, experts engaged in wiretapping say: today more and more citizens are "put on record" and without any court decisions at all. Each telecom operator has equipment that allows law enforcement officers to gain access to the conversations of any client at any time (the operators are required by law to do this). And in the regional department of the FSB there is a remote access terminal with which you can start listening to any mobile user in a few clicks.

By law, several special services have the right to wiretap. In addition to the FSB itself, this is the Ministry of Internal Affairs, FSKN, GUFSIN, customs, FSO, SVR. But control over the equipment itself, which ensures the operation of SORM-1 and SORM-2, is in the hands of the FSB. As experts explain, in order to put this or that number on a wiretap, employees from the police bureau of special technical measures do not have to run to the FSB and ask to press a button: the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other bodies conducting operational search activities have their own access terminals. But they are connected "through the FSB", that is, the main key is still in the possession of the Chekists.

“Therefore, for example, in the case of Roizman's wiretaps, it will be difficult to transfer all the arrows to the police and pretend that the FSB has nothing to do with it,” says the source of Znak.com. According to him, in any case, two departments are responsible for the unauthorized wiretapping and its leak.

"Why do you need so many phones?"

How to protect yourself from wiretapping? Almost nothing. Firstly, it is useless to change SIM-cards: it is not a mobile number, but a unique telephone number (IMEI), which is put on the wiretap. Whatever SIM card is installed in the phone, it will still be “live”.

Many representatives of the establishment and businessmen carry several phones with them, believing that one "ordinary" listens, while others - "left" - do not. “It's naive,” says a source to Znak.com. - If a person is tapped, the officers of the authorities constantly receive information about the whereabouts of his phone. To do this, the phone does not need to have a GPS module installed, the location of even the simplest and cheapest handset is determined by base stations with an accuracy of one meter. And if you carry several pipes with you, according to the geolocation data, you can see that next to your "main" number there are always 2-3 others. They are also immediately put on wiretaps, so walking around with a bunch of phones is completely pointless. "

However, there is a small trick with two pipes, which allows you to relatively reliably keep the secret of negotiations. “Let's say there are two devices - A and B. A is used constantly, and there is reason to believe that it is being listened to. B - for confidential conversations, registered to another person. In this case, A and B should never be turned on at the same time and side by side. If you need to make a call on the "secret" phone B, you turn off A, move away, into the coverage area of \u200b\u200banother base station, then turn on B, make a call. Then you turn off B, again go to another base station and then turn on A, ”says our interlocutor. Another way is to keep the "secret" phone permanently in some hidden place, every time you come to it with the "main" mobile phone turned off.

Particularly careful victims of wiretaps prefer to turn off the phone during an important conversation or hide it somewhere far away. The interlocutor of Znak.com confirms that the possibility of recording via the phone in standby mode exists, but this technology is rarely used. “In these cases, the so-called. microphone effect. This can only be done if a team of specialists is working in the immediate vicinity of the interlocutors. The signal receiver and the recording medium must be somewhere nearby, ”he explains.

How does it work

The usual wiretapping is another matter. It can be massive. Today, in Yekaterinburg, the FSB's capacity allows you to listen to 25-50 thousand subscribers simultaneously, in Moscow - hundreds of times more. The main problem is not how to write the information, but how to decipher and process it. In the MIA General Administration for the Sverdlovsk Region, for example, there is a special department of "analysts" who are busy with simple transcription of recorded conversations, converting audio into text. Now the Sverdlovsk law enforcement officers, using preparations for the 2018 World Cup and Expo 2020 as an excuse, set themselves the task of increasing the wiretapping hardware. And to create more advanced systems for processing the information received is already a task for the security forces not only at the Russian, but also at the world level. The latest scandals in the United States show that the Russian special services are far from the only ones involved in illegal or semi-legal “monitoring”.

The world leader in the creation of data analysis and processing systems for intelligence services is the American company Palantir Technologies. According to the interlocutor of Znak.com, both American government organizations, such as the CIA, and Russian ones, including the FSB and the information and analytical center of the Russian government, use Palantir technologies. “The latter can hardly fit in my head. It turns out that the entire volume of government information, including classified information, goes through the American system. It's like Barack Obama to install "1C" ", - ironically the source of Znak.com

Avicomp Services is also one of the largest suppliers of "analytical" software for special services in Russia. And hardware solutions and programs for "monitoring" (that is, wiretapping) are actively sold by the Novosibirsk company "Signatek". Its website says that it offers "subjects of operational-search activities" "systems for monitoring the communications of objects: telephone conversations, facsimile sessions, video calls, SMS messages, DVO, ICQ, e-mail", as well as "Monitoring systems for the movement of objects with visualization on map ".

The product catalog contains examples of how the program interface for "monitoring" looks like:

What’sAppor Viber?

With the analysis of the Internet traffic of suspicious citizens (SORM-2), the security officials are doing a little worse so far than with wiretapping. Although telecom operators provide the intelligence services with any information in the same way, the analysis of this data itself is rather complicated. “Any smartphone is constantly downloading and sending a huge amount of data. Until recently, there was a huge problem in isolating information of interest from all this mass, for example, correspondence in Skype or WhatsApp. However, now this problem has been generally resolved and even in the regions they have learned to read Internet messengers, ”says our interlocutor.

He calls the popular What’s App an extremely unsafe messenger - the information sent is not encrypted in it. Such encryption is available in Skype, and it would be reliable if the owners of the service, having entered the domestic market, did not share the decryption codes with the Russian security forces. Therefore, today the most reliable communication can be considered Viber, in which all data (both correspondence and voice calls) are encrypted and are not yet available for domestic special services (“That is why they are trying to ban Viber in the first place,” our interlocutor is sure). The Znak.com source does not trust the Telegram service, which is declared as a "super reliable" messenger, "like everything that has been done in Russia, including Pavel Durov."

Another relatively reliable way to chat is by using BlackBerry phones that have their own messaging service, BlackBerry Messenger. Data in it is encrypted even more securely than in Viber, Russian security officials do not have access to them, and, perhaps, this is why BBM is banned in Russia. To use it, you have to buy a phone in the USA and "unlock" it from Russian specialists.

A major developer of programs and equipment for SORM-2 in Russia is the MFISOFT company, which supplies software for the FSB. The description of the hardware-software complex "SORMovich", given on their website, says that it can put users under control by account name, phone number, email address, IP and ICQ number. The complex provides "detection and interception of mail messages by e-mail address", "interception of files transmitted via FTP", "wiretapping of IP telephony", etc.

Who is being followed

Perhaps the security officials would like to “listen to everyone,” but in reality there are only 200-300 people in Yekaterinburg under constant supervision, the source said to Znak.com. Most of them are suspects of extremism (primarily of the Islamist sense) and terrorism, members of the organized criminal group being developed, participants in large-scale opaque financial transactions (“cashiers”, etc.). Only no more than 10% of the total mass of "supervised" listens on a political order, the source of Znak.com believes.

“They are definitely listening to the governor, his inner circle, and the city's top officials. Deputies of the Legislative Assembly and the City Duma are unlikely, only if someone was ordered by competitors. But this is a rare case, no one has said anything important on the phone for a long time, and not many are ready to spend 70 thousand rubles a day to wiretap a competitor, ”says our source.

Recently, another proven way to become a victim of wiretapping has appeared - to regularly criticize the current government or go to protest demonstrations. Of course, all participants in street actions will not be tapped, but the most active ones will. Yekaterinburg has long listened to Yevgeny Roizman and Aksana Panova as opponents of the Sverdlovsk governor Yevgeny Kuyvashev. The governor's entourage does not hide the fact that printouts of their conversations are regularly placed on the table of the head of the region.

FSBuk

Recently, an increasingly important role in the structure of SORM has been played by the analysis of information collected in social networks. Intelligence agencies have access to all correspondence conducted in Russian social networks, according to the source of Znak.com. With Facebook, the situation is more complicated, but even here the secrecy of communication is not guaranteed. “A relatively safe way of communication is through Western mail services: Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo,” says the source of Znak.com. - The Tor network is also effective, guaranteeing users anonymity. With her help, among other things, American journalists communicate with their informants. "

To exchange information, more and more people and organizations use cloud services like Dropbox, Yandex.Disk, Google disk and others. Law enforcement agencies are also interested in them. Of the popular services, Google's offer is considered relatively reliable, but our source advises paying attention to Wuala: an encrypted storage with servers in Switzerland. True, if you are saving your secrets not from the Russian special services, but from the American ones, nothing will help you. A few days ago, another "ultra-secure" cloud service Lavabit was mysteriously closed and all its users lost their information. Apparently, the fact is that the Lavabit mail was used by former CIA agent Edward Snowden.

Under the hood

A rare Russian businessman and politician today discusses on the phone something more important than fishing and football. Therefore, in addition to analyzing the actual texts of negotiations, electronic intelligence professionals are engaged in processing large amounts of data, identifying mathematical patterns, implicit connections, building on this basis hypotheses about the interaction of certain groups or persons. The material for this can be telephone calls, emails, banking transactions, operations to register or liquidate legal entities, etc. Large circuits are obtained, similar to the one given in one of the presentations of the already mentioned company Avicomp:

Perlustration of electronic correspondence, monitoring of telephone conversations have gone as far as the authors of dystopian novels never dreamed of. Probably, the power of SORMs often helps to prevent genuine terrorist acts or real crimes. But the public is much more noticeable when electronic intelligence methods are used for political persecution and have nothing to do with legal procedures. At the same time, not only oppositionists, but also politicians loyal to the Kremlin suffer from uncontrolled surveillance. Compromising materials collected by electronic means often become a weapon of the elite struggle against those who, until recently, ordered wiretapping of their enemies. In this sense, electronic intelligence has become a danger from which no one is immune.

Our reference: How Ural politicians suffer from surveillance and try to escape

Everyone suffers from illegal wiretapping. Aleksey Tabalov, director of the Legal Mission Foundation for the Support of Civil Initiatives (Chelyabinsk), told Znak.com that “all his telephone conversations are being tapped,” and he was convinced of this many times. Yuri Gurman, the chairman of the board of the Golos-Ural foundation, also assured us that in his organization, the special services listen to telephones and look through the correspondence to e-mail. “I know that they are listening, and let them listen. Although it is getting disgusting, ”he says.

Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Perm Territory Vladimir Nelyubin told Znak.com that at the entrance to some high offices it is now customary to hand over the phone to the secretary. The banker himself uses classic Nokia, does not recognize modern instant messengers and is not going to defend himself against wiretapping. And the former head of the administration of the governor of the Kama region, Firdus Aliyev, is convinced that it is impossible to protect oneself from wiretapping. “There are no such measures, this is an illusion. Only personal communication allows us to exclude leaks as much as possible, so we have to fly [by meetings], ”he told Znak.com.

In the "Tyumen matryoshka" only in the South, in Tyumen, they have accustomed themselves to messengers like Viber and WhatsApp: in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, 3G coverage is much worse and it is expensive to use them. On the other hand, northern officials are actively using hardware against wiretapping. For example, in the office of one of the high-ranking officials there is a "jammer" behind the curtain, which he turns on during important conversations. As they say, the sound of this device makes an eerie, so talking for a long time when it works is just physically difficult.

The same manager tells absolutely fantastic stories about mobile communications. According to him, today the Chekists have equipment that, once having recorded the timbre of your voice, in case they need to write you in the future, will automatically turn on, no matter what phone you speak. Therefore, it makes no sense to change numbers and devices. The official is rather suspicious of Apple products, although he has been using them since the time when Dmitry Medvedev became president, who introduced fashion among civil servants on the iPhone and iPad. However, he taped the camera lenses on both gadgets with black tape. The official is confident that cameras can be monitored for the owner of the devices.

One of the governors of the "Tyumen Matryoshka" was watched without any iPhones. The video camera was found directly above the first person's bed in the service residence. Who was the customer of the surveillance (FSB or private individuals) has not yet been found out.

In the Tyumen North, in order not to become a "find for spies", a few years ago they used the old old-fashioned methods - they liked to change mobile phones and SIM cards. One of the leaders of a large company told the Znak.com correspondent that there is a place near the Irtysh coast in Khanty-Mansiysk, passing over which a boat could run aground, so many phones are drowned there.

The smartest officials and businessmen will always prefer personal conversations to telephone conversations. Moreover, as one of them admitted, the most reliable way of communication is to write on a piece of paper, after which this piece of paper is simply burned ...

Information periodically appears on the Internet that messages in the WhatsApp messenger and on the VKontakte social network can be read by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the special services of the Russian Federation. Such data annoys users. They want to be sure that their private messages are their world, their secret. However, is it really so. This can be well understood.

There is an opinion on the Internet that the special services can read every correspondence on social networks if they need it. However, it should be noted that private messages are protected by law and without a court decision, reading messages is illegal.

In the personal blogs of users, you can read that supposedly the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB have long been reading correspondence in r and other messengers. Of course, these are not expert opinions and they are not supported by an evidence base. That is, Internet users at the level of intuition believe that the special services are watching the correspondence, that's all.

As for the opinion of experts, back in 2016 it was proved in the USA that it would not be difficult for attackers or special services to read WhatsApp correspondence. Experts assure that everyone can get the encryption key at the time when the user changes it or the messenger itself does it.

The FSB has repeatedly stated that it can read users' correspondence, but this is done only by a court decision. An application is submitted, the court makes a decision. It is sent to the owners of the messenger and they are required to provide data on the accounts that are specified in the document. Another question is whether the user will know that he is being read. Most likely no.

For example, it is believed that the social network would not work in Russia if it refused to provide the Ministry of Internal Affairs with access to correspondence. Also, users noticed that after Pavel Durov left VK, the new management of the social network stopped arguing with the FSB and other bodies about providing access to information. In their opinion, this indicates an agreement to provide all the necessary information upon the first request.

If we talk about legal means, no one can have permission to read correspondence or other information without a court decision. However, Internet users are not sure of this, since more and more bills appear in the State Duma that indicate that they can still read the correspondence. Russians complain about the emergence of control on the Web, where a citizen is not sure about the reliable encryption of his information.

The State Duma is developing bills to which society reacts negatively. For example, the so-called "Yarovaya package". According to the document, from October 1, 2018, all telecom operators are required to store user data for 30 days, including messages, photos, video and sound files.

The media reported that all this data is with the operator, but he must provide them to the special services at the first request. This means that the FSB and other services can read the correspondence and listen to conversations if the subscriber comes into their field of vision, and for this you just need to go to an uncoordinated rally or appear at a large protest rally several times.

Users who do not break the law can sleep well, but they are still concerned about this topic, since it is unpleasant to know that someone can read your personal correspondence. Even if there is nothing illegal in it, these are still personal messages that only the addressee has the right to read.

There is no more personal space on the Internet.

Probably, many of you are asking the question: "Can the special services read my correspondence on the Internet?" The peak moment was the situation with the whistleblower of the American special services Edward Snowden, who, by his example, opened the eyes of the whole world to the fact that personal data, correspondence and calls can be viewed and listened to by special services without any permission and court orders.

Let's figure it out in order.

Mobile phone

Snowden showed everyone that the telephone is a "tidbit" for the secret services of many countries. They can easily access the phone by sending an encrypted text message to it, which, of course, will not be noticed by the user. After that, the Smurf suite, a set of secret interception methods, will work on your phone. Each "smurf" performs its own functions, as a result, special services can track who you called, what you wrote in a text message, what sites you visited, who is in your contact list, where you were, what wireless networks your phone. And the most interesting thing is that the special services can take a photo from your phone and turn on the microphone to listen to the environment at any time, regardless of your desire.

It is worth saying that these very "Smurfs" are a joint development of the special services of several leading countries. Of course, not all countries use the “smurf kit”, but the special services in absolutely every country have their own methods for listening to phones and can use them at any time. Generally speaking, it turns out that by gaining access to your phone, the secret services gain access to your entire private life.

Of course, all states unanimously say: "Surveillance activities are carried out within the framework of a strict legal regime and principles to ensure that these activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate." And, most likely, they really only apply this technology to certain individuals, and it is your phone that is not being tapped right now. But I assure you, if your phone starts to be tapped, you will not even suspect about it.

As for correspondence on social networks, then, of course, not all special services can read them openly, but they definitely have access to publications that are not hidden in private messages, as well as to information about who sent the message to whom and at what time. ... And in Great Britain, for example, correspondence on social networks was officially recognized as "external communications", which made it possible for the special services of this country to literally read all messages. Other countries may follow this example.

However, do not forget that the owners and administrators of the resource itself have access to all correspondence in any social network. And they can already provide your personal correspondence with law enforcement agencies by a court order, which says that the transfer of such information is necessary for an investigation. At the same time, it is the social network that makes the final decision about what confidential data can be disclosed in each individual case.

Therefore, while you can not worry about the safety of your personal correspondence on social networks, if you do not break the law and did not get "on the pencil" by the special services. As one of the Vkontakte press secretaries says:

If you are dealing in weapons or drugs, distributing child pornography, or being involved in organized crime, do not use our site at all.

The Facebook and Instagram administration will prohibit posting about the sale of firearms and ammunition.

This decision was made in connection with the confirmed information that some users use Facebook as a platform for illegal arms trade.

Related articles:

Messengers

A similar situation is with messengers such as Viber, WhatsApp, ICQ, Telegram. The owners of these applications provide information to the intelligence services upon their request and court order. Also, all correspondence goes through the filter of "unwanted" words, and the collected data is sent directly to the special services.

In this plan Telegram is the most secure messenger from wiretapping and surveillanceas it has the additional feature of private chat with end-to-end encryption.

As the creator Pavel Durov stated:

Telegram does not store unencrypted messages, and if they are deleted from phones, they disappear forever.

Due to the fact that the authorities cannot fully control the correspondence in Telegram, it has already been blocked in Iran and some regions of China.

The situation with the Skype program is radically different: Microsoft, which bought Skype in May 2011, provided the service with legal listening technology. And from that moment, any subscriber can be switched to a special mode in which encryption keys are generated not on the user's device, but on the server. And the one who has access to the server can, accordingly, listen to your conversation or read the correspondence. Microsoft provides such a service not only by a court order, but simply by request of the special services of many countries, not just Russia.

Also, the Skype distribution includes a "keylogger" that monitors the presence of "unwanted" words in messages, and sends the collected data to the special services. Truly, communication via Skype can be called the most accessible for the special services of each country.

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mail

As for e-mail, we can say with confidence that all mail services are initially engaged in scanning mail in one form or another, sorting letters from spam or selecting contextual advertising for you based on your interests. The transfer of information to special services occurs in the same way as in social networks, upon request and with a mandatory court order. However, the user is still not warned about this and will not know when law enforcement agencies will start spying on him.

By the way, the owners of postal services in different countries treat requests from special services differently. For example, in 2013, interesting statistics were published: in six months, Google received 97 requests for user data from the Russian special services, but partially satisfied only one! For comparison: during the same time, 7.5 thousand requests from American services were satisfied, which is 88% of requests.

P.S. It is worth noting that if your traffic passes through the territory of any state, then, for security purposes, the special services of this state can access your personal information without any requests and court orders.

This is such a world of freedom. Welcome to the 21st century.

The anti-terrorist laws of Irina Yarovaya and Viktor Ozerov have already been approved by the Federation Council and are awaiting signature by the president. Slon Magazine analyzed in detail the main provisions of these documents - many of them are aimed at tightening control over any correspondence on the Internet. So, from July 20, 2016, providers will be fined if they do not provide the FSB with information "necessary to decode received, transmitted, delivered and (or) processed electronic messages." Expert of the British Institute for State Ideologies Anton Merkurov spoke about how this measure will affect ordinary people.
What popular services will the law formally touch?

The law will affect all Russian companies that are in one way or another related to the transfer and storage of information. These are mobile operators, Internet providers, Internet companies: from Tele2, whose existence profile senators do not know, to Mail.ru mail, familiar to everyone. Any business that is recognized as the organizer of the dissemination of information.

What kind of encryption is used in everyday communication and how does it work?

Emails are most often sent unencrypted, but sometimes over encrypted channels. In this case, messages are encrypted for storage on the server. But in Russia, the use of unlicensed cryptographic tools is prohibited, which means that the special services may well get access to them through SORM-3. This applies to all Russian services, and does not affect foreign ones.

In messengers, everyone approaches this issue in different ways. Let's say Telegram stores chats on the server, this allows you to synchronize information in the application between multiple devices. This decision is justified for the sake of convenience. But any convenience is a vulnerability.

Secret Telegram chats are not stored on the server, they use end-to-end encryption (English, from one end to the other; as in WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal). That is, the key is generated on subscriber devices during each conversation. This makes it pointless to try to insert between interlocutors and eavesdrop. Without going into details, secret chats in Telegram and even more so in Google Hangouts are the most secure. Google, for example, immediately warns of suspicious activity, sometimes even indicating that hackers are trying to carry out a hack, behind whom government authorities may be behind.

In what form and where are the keys stored in these services?

It must be understood that the encryption key and the password are not the same thing. The password is used to determine that it is the registered user who is logged on. The key is one of the elements of the encryption algorithm already inside the system, in no way connected with the password. And usually passwords are not stored in clear text, they are also separately encrypted.

Keys, as described above, in secret chats are located on users' devices. In the opposite case, if messages are stored encrypted on the server, the keys are also stored there. But this does not always facilitate access to information without identifying the subscriber. For example, the "iCloud hack", when photos of celebrities were leaked, was still a brute-force attack. No one has cracked Apple's encryption.

What is more important is not where the data is stored, but the fact that in most cases, access to encrypted information cannot be obtained. If, for example, the data was intercepted, then it will take years to hack, even on a powerful computer.

Can the owner of the service or the provider himself get the key and decrypt the message?

No. In most cases, only the owner of the data can get access. If the service has built the security system correctly, then you can only go the traditional way - change the password and log in as a user. But there are also some nuances. In general, since our personal data on the Web has become a lot: from mail and photos to medical records and tracker indicators, they have become well protected. After all, in fact, the behavior of intelligence services is difficult to distinguish from the behavior of cybercriminals.

If the service refuses to give the keys, what will its blocking look like so that the provider does not have to pay a fine?

You need to observe the real practice of applying the law. If we are talking about a regional provider, then most likely it will not come to blocking - such companies will seek a dialogue with special services or say goodbye to business in favor of other players. Foreign services have two options. Or to meet halfway and save face to Roskomnadzor, as the conditional Viber does, which immediately transferred the personal data of Russians to Russia. Or just silently disobey the law

Will it be possible to bypass this blocking and how?

The law does not say anywhere that such services will be blocked in Russia. And speaking of Russian services, the only way to bypass the blocking is to fulfill the requirements and go to the regulatory authorities a couple of times - they will explain what to do there.

Telegram has already stated that they will not give the keys to anyone. So, the authorities will simply close access to the address through which messages come / go? And it doesn't matter which SIM card is linked to the account, Russian or foreign?

First, not one address will have to be blocked, but many. And after that the number of addresses will start to increase - there are enough technical possibilities for this.

Secondly, it will be enough to enable VPN on the phone (transfer of all data through an intermediary abroad), and all efforts to block it will be useless. But these are hypothetical reflections, I don't think they will really block.

Will services or providers be able to come up with a mechanism for their data to be encrypted on the Runet differently from the rest of the world?

The amount of encrypted information is growing; in many cases, its decryption is impossible or meaningless. A special Russian way is possible only within government bodies and state-owned companies. That is, outside the State Duma and Rostelecom, the world is also subject to earthly laws. The stories about the sovereign Internet have nothing to do with reality.

It is simply impossible to create a separate database of all messages that were sent from Russia or received in Russia, in order to then give the key to this database to the FSB.