It’s a modern-day Big Brother. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) operates the vast and largely opaque SORM surveillance infrastructure in Russia spies on the entire Russian population that grants intelligence officers unfettered access to citizens’ communications, according to a new book by investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov.

The book, Russian Cyberpunk, details how the SORM system — officially known as the "System for Operative Investigative Activities" — has enabled nearly total control over digital and telephone traffic as well as what is known as RuNet, or the Cyrillic version of the Internet.

The Kremlin missed a trick by ignoring the development, and its ability to control or censure, the internet under Boris Yeltsin and is now trying to impose “sovereignty” over the world wide web in Russia to mirror Beijing's control over the Chinese internet.

The effort started with Yeltsin, starting with the Yarovaya law in 2018, but has been expanded under Vladimir Putin and a lot of progress has been made.

Listening devices have been added to telecoms companies and later to servers; SORM is installed across all major telecom and internet provider networks. Operators are unaware of the internal workings of these black-box devices, which are installed and maintained by FSB-linked contractors. The system funnels data directly to FSB terminals, to which only security officers have access.

“SORM is a black box in the literal sense,” writes Zakharov, explaining that court approval is technically required for interception, but in practice, “the procedure has become completely formal.” From 2016 to 2024, Russian courts granted surveillance permissions nearly 7mn times. In 2023 alone, over 500,000 requests were approved, with only 272 rejected — a rate of 0.00005%. reports The Bell.

Lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov, who specialises in high-profile state security cases, told The Bell, “I think the rejections were for formal reasons, due to paperwork errors.”

He described how operatives prepare surveillance requests with minimal judicial scrutiny: “All they need to fill in are a few fields — citizen’s name, judge’s name.”

Former FSB officers confirmed the rapid approval process, noting that judges typically spent five to fifteen minutes per request.

The book includes multiple examples of retrospective authorisation, where surveillance began before a warrant was obtained. One notable case involved the prosecution of the late opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison under questionable circumstances in February 2024, where a key wiretapped conversation was recorded after the court order had expired. Lawyers failed to get the material excluded.

Zakharov also documents the FSB’s deeper integration with Russian internet services. Officials can reportedly access user data on social network VKontakte without a password. “They can log into any account and see everything as if they were the user,” said one unnamed contact, noting that this privileged access is limited to higher-ranking officers.

Russia’s largest platforms — including Yandex, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Mail.Ru — are required to hand over encryption keys under the Yarovaya law. However, some foreign services, such as WhatsApp, are resistant due to end-to-end encryption. “You can detect WhatsApp usage with SORM but not decrypt the data,” said a former FSB officer.

Online arrests

Russia ranks highest in Europe for arrests related to online speech, with over 20,000 people facing administrative or criminal charges between 2022 and 2024.

According to rights group OVD-Info, prosecutions have surged under new laws criminalising criticism of the military or government, often for as little as sharing or liking posts on social media. Charges typically fall under provisions against "discrediting the army" or spreading "false information", and many cases have resulted in custodial sentences or heavy fines.

Turkey and Belarus follow closely. Turkish authorities arrest more than 1,000 people annually for online posts, especially those critical of the government or President Erdoğan, under laws targeting "terror propaganda" and "insulting the president". In Belarus, the human rights centre Viasna has documented hundreds of arrests each year, particularly targeting individuals engaging with opposition content on platforms like Telegram. Charges often relate to extremism or unauthorised media activity.

In Western Europe, arrests are less frequent but still notable. France and Germany each register dozens of cases annually, mostly under hate speech and incitement laws. France reported over 100 arrests in 2023 for online content, while Germany’s Federal Criminal Police investigated more than 300 online hate cases, with arrests following in some instances.

In the United Kingdom, authorities continue to enforce online speech laws under the Communications Act 2003, with 50 to 100 arrests a year for messages deemed grossly offensive or threatening.

Other European Union countries such as Poland, Italy, and Spain see far fewer arrests for online expression. Polish authorities have increased prosecutions under criminal defamation laws, especially against critics of the government or Church, but total arrests remain in the dozens annually. In Italy and Spain, arrests are rare and typically limited to extreme cases involving hate speech or threats.

While Western European states maintain legal boundaries around online speech, enforcement largely results in fines or suspended sentences rather than custodial punishment.

However, the picture looks different when comparing the number of complaints and subsequent investigations set against the number of convictions. In this case the UK leads Russia in terms of number of investigations, whereas Russia leads in terms of the number of convictions.

The United Kingdom ranks number one in Europe in terms of the number of police investigations or cases opened in relation to online posts — particularly under laws addressing grossly offensive messages, harassment, threats, or hate speech.

According to data from UK police forces, tens of thousands of complaints are made each year about online content. For example, figures from the UK Home Office showed that in 2017–2019, police investigated over 30,000 online speech-related offences per year under the Communications Act 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act.

By comparison, according to Agora International, a Russian human rights group that closely monitors digital repression, only 200 individuals were criminally prosecuted each year in 2017, 2018, and 2019 for online speech under various sections of the Criminal Code,

While the US numbers remain high, the vast majority of these cases do not lead to arrest or prosecution — many result in warnings, community resolutions, or are dropped due to evidentiary thresholds.

In Russia, from 2022 to mid-2024, over 20,000 people were arrested or prosecuted for online speech — often under wartime censorship laws or extremism-related charges, according to OVD-Info.

Privacy

A European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2015 found Russia’s surveillance practices violated the right to privacy. The case, brought by journalist Roman Zakharov, argued that SORM enabled unchecked surveillance in breach of constitutional protections. Despite the ruling, no substantial legal reforms were enacted.

The system’s efficacy remains in question. SORM logs vast quantities of traffic, yet over 80% of websites now use HTTPS encryption, limiting even what the FSB can access. According to a 2024 report from St Petersburg’s Ministry of Internal Affairs university, “HTTPS sites are inaccessible for monitoring by SORM-3, allowing potential criminal activity to evade surveillance.”

At the same time, Russians have increasingly adopted VPN solutions that hide their traffic from the FSB, although here too, the Kremlin has moved to block or ban VPN services inside of Russia as a cat and mouse game between the FSB and Russian citizens develops.

Nevertheless, the FSB maintains control of the system and restricts access to other law enforcement agencies. Alternative monitoring systems are used to track public social media activity, including tools powered by AI such as the Moscow State University’s “news collider” project, reportedly led by President Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova.

The Kremlin has so far failed to take control of RuNet. And while the TV news is dominated by the state, and the free press has been cowed into self censorship by repressive laws, Russia’s Internet remains relatively open and any citizen that wants to know what is really going on still has relatively unfettered access to independent and objective sources of information with a little effort.

One of the ironies of the Kremlin’s attempt to better police the online traffic is it is looking to Washington, not Beijing, for a blueprint. Zakharov says that Russia’s surveillance apparatus mirrors elements of the US National Security Agency’s PRISM programme, exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013. However, unlike in the US — where the revelations prompted public debate, new laws and restrictions on intelligence gathering — Russia’s response has been institutional silence. As Zakharov writes, “There is not a single official statement that SORM has helped solve a major crime.”