Like PRISM on Steroids. SORM will monitor all electronic communication in Sochi area

[arely staircase]

"a perfect storm of terrorist threats, autocratic government and limitless resources..."


“It’s almost like Sochi has been turned into an independent state,” said Mark Galeotti, a specialist in security affairs and modern Russia, who teaches at NYU. “It is an extremely extensive control zone.”

On Wednesday, I spoke to Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who broke the biggest security story of the Sochi Olympics: SORM, the Russians’ virtual surveillance system. The Russian FSB (successor to the KGB) will monitor all communications between spectators, journalists, athletes and anyone else who visits (or lives in) Sochi. The U.S. State Department has warned business travelers to be careful with sensitive information, which “may be taken and shared with competitors, counterparts, and/or Russian regulatory and legal entities.” One security expert said SORM was like “PRISM on steroids.”

“There’s not public outcry about these measures,” Soldatov said. “After every big terrorist attack, like Volgograd,” — where suicide bombings killed 34 people last month — “Russian society approves half-measures. And metadata seems quite innocent in comparison to what was proposed.” In October, for example, the lower house of the Russian Parliament approved a law to hold the relatives of terrorists financially responsible for crimes. Muslim women in nearby Dagestan say they have been asked to provide saliva samples to the FSB so that their body parts may be identified in the event of a suicide bombing.

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/25/the_sochi_olympics_putins_shiny_new_surveillance_state/