Russian web brigades

The web brigades (Russian: Веб-бригады ) are in view of some Russian liberal intellectuals online teams of commentators linked to security services that participate in political blogs and Internet forums to promote disinformation and prevent free discussions of undesirable subjects. Assertions of the existence of web brigades were made in a 2003 article "The Virtual Eye of the Big Brother" (detailed below).

An article "Conspiracy theory" published in Russian journal in 2003 criticized theory of web brigades as attempts of creating myths by Russian liberal thinkers in a response for massive sobering up of Russian people. A point was made that observed behaviour of forum participants may be explained without a theory of FSB-affiliated brigades.

As mentioned in 2007 sociological research of big groups in Russian society by the RIO-Center, the idea of existence of web-brigades is a widespread point of view in RuNet. Authors say "it's difficult to say whether hypothesis of existence of web-brigades corresponds to reality", but acknowledge that users professing views and methods ascribed to members of web-brigades may be found at all opposition forums of RuNet.

The expression "red web-brigades" (Красные веб-бригады) used by Anna Polyanskaya as a title to her article is a pun with "Red Brigades".

Such teams are reported to exist in Chinese internet police.

Web brigades in Russia

Polyanskaya's article

This alleged phenomenon in RuNet was described in 2003 by journalist Anna Polyanskaya (a former assistant to assassinated Russian politician Galina Starovoitova), historian Andrey Krivov and political activist Ivan Lomako. They described organized and professional "brigades", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who were working in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy Internet forums and Internet newspapers of RuNet.

The activity of Internet teams appeared in 1999 and were organized by the Russian state security service, according to Polyanskaya. According to authors, about 70% of audience of Russian Internet were people of generally liberal views prior to 1998–1999, however sudden surge (about 60-80%) of "antidemocratic" posts suddenly occurred at many Russian forums in 2000.

According to Polyanskaya and her colleagues, the behavior of people from the web brigades has distinct features, some of which are the following:

• Any change in Moscow's agenda leads to immediate changes in the brigade's opinions.
• Boundless loyalty to Vladimir Putin and his circle.
• Respect and admiration for the KGB and FSB.
• Nostalgia for the Soviet Union and propaganda of the Communist ideology, and constant attempts to present in a positive light the entire history of Russia and the Soviet Union, minimizing the number of people who died in repressions.
• Anti-liberal, anti-American, anti-Chechen, anti-Semitic and anti-western opinions. Xenophobia, racism, approval of skinheads and pogroms.
• Accusation of Russophobia against everyone who disagrees with them.
• Hatred of dissidents and human rights organizations and activists, political prisoners and journalists, especially Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Kovalev, Elena Bonner, Grigory Pasko, Victor Shenderovich, and Valeria Novodvorskaya.
• Emigrants are accused of being traitors of the motherland. Some members will claim that they live in some Western country and tell stories about how much better life is in Putin's Russia.
• Before the Iraq War, the brigade's anti-U.S. operations reached unseen scale. The original publication describes: "it sometimes seemed that the U.S. was not liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, but at a minimum had actually launched an attack on Russia and was marching on the Kremlin." However, it fell silent suddenly after Putin announced that Russia was not opposed to the victory of the coalition forces in Iraq.

Polyanskaya's article describes the "tactics" of the alleged web brigades:

• Frequent changes of pseudonyms.

• Round-the-clock presence on forums. At least one of the uniform members of the team can be found online at all times, always ready to repulse any “attack” by a liberal.

• Intentional diversion of pointed discussions. For instance, the brigade may claim that Pol Pot never had any connection with Communism or that not a single person was killed in Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by Soviet tanks.

• Individual work on opponents. "As soon as an opposition-minded liberal arrives on a forum, expressing a position that makes them a clear "ideological enemy”, he is immediately cornered and subjected to “active measures” by the unified web-brigade. Without provocation, the opponent is piled on with abuse or vicious “arguments” of the sort that the average person cannot adequately react to. As a result, the liberal either answers sharply, causing a scandal and getting himself labeled a “boor” by the rest of the brigade, or else he starts to make arguments against the obvious absurdities, to which his opponents pay no attention, but simply ridicule him and put forth other similar arguments."

• Accusations that opponents are working for “enemies”. The opponents are accused of taking money from Berezovskiy, the CIA, the MOSSAD, Saudi Arabia, the Zionists, or the Chechen rebels.

• Making personally offensive comments. Tendency to accuse their opponents of being insane during arguments.

• Remarkable ability to reveal personal information about their opponents and their quotes from old postings, sometimes more than a year old.

• Teamwork. "They unwaveringly support each other in discussions, ask each other leading questions, put fine points on each other’s answers, and even pretend not to know each other. If an opponent starts to be hounded, this hounding invariably becomes a team effort, involving all of the three to twenty nicknames that invariably are present on any political forum 24 hours a day."

• Appealing to the Administration. The members of teams often "write mass collective complaints about their opponents to the editors, site administrators, or the electronic “complaints book”, demanding that one or another posting or whole discussion thread they don’t like be removed, or calling for the banning of individuals they find problematic."

• Destruction of inconvenient forums. For example, on the site of the Moscow News, all critics of Putin and the FSB "were suddenly and without any explanation banned from all discussions, despite their having broken none of the site’s rules of conduct. All the postings of this group of readers, going back a year and a half, were erased by the site administrator."

Criticism

Alexander Yusupovskiy, head of the analytical department of the Federation Council of Russia (Russian Parliament) published in 2003 an article "Conspiracy theory" in Russian Journal with criticism of theory of web brigades.

Yusupovskiy's points included:

• According to Yusupovskiy, an active forum participant, it's not the first time he's faced an unfair method of polemics, when a person with "liberal democratic views" accused one's opponent of being an FSB agent as a final argument. Yusupovskiy himself didn't take Web brigades theory seriously, "naively" considering that officers of GRU or FSB have more topical problems than "comparing virtual penises" with liberals and emigrants. His own experience at forums also did not give him a reason proving the theory.
• Yusupovskiy considered Polyanskaya's article an interesting opportunity to draw a line of demarcation between analytics and its imitation. According to Yusupovskiy, authors of the article are obsessed with "a single but strong affection": to find a "Big Brother" beyond any phenomena not fitting their mindsets. Yusupovskiy called an article a classic illustration of reverted "masonic conspiracy".
• Although Yusupovskiy himself has a list of claims against Russian security services and their presense in virtual world (as "according to statements of media every security service is busy in the Internet tracking terrorism, extremism, narcotic traffic, human trafficking and child pornography"), his claims are of different nature than those of Polyanskaya.
• Criticising Polyanskaya's point that Russian forums after 9/11 show "outstanding level of malice and hatred of the USA, gloat, slander and inhumanity" as "undifferentiated assessment bordering lie and slander", Yusupovskiy noted that there is a difference between "dislike of hegemonic policy of the United States" at Russian forums and "quite friendly attitude towards usual Americans". Aggression and xenophobia don't characterize one side but are a common place of discussion (as Yusupovskiy suggested, illusion of anonymity and absence of censorship allows such stuff to be taken from subconsciousness that won't let to be spoken aloud by an internal censor otherwise). According to Yusupovskiy,

There's no lack of gloat of other kind — e.g. over Russian losses in Chechnya — or manifestations of brutal malice against "commies", "under men", Russians, Russia in posts of some our former compatriots from Israel, USA and other countries. And in a discussion of Palestineans or Arabs, "beasts", "not people", etc. are perhaps the most decent definitions given by many (not all) western participants of forums. It's specially touching to observe "briefings of hatred" (such things happen too), when Russian, Israeli and American patriots unanimously blame "Chechen-Palestinean-Islamic" terrorists...

• Commenting on the change of attitude of virtual masses in 1998-1999 authors evade any mention of the 1998 Russian financial collapse which "crowned liberal decade", preferring to blame "mysterious bad guys or Big Brother" for that change.

"About 80% of authors at all web forums very aggressively and uniformly blame the USA" as authors note, making a conclusion at the same time: "at a moment amount of totalitarian opinions at Russian forums became 60%-80%". Try to feel semantics of "extremal journalism" mindset and its logics of antithesises: either apology of Bush'es America while spitting on one's own country, either — totalitarian agentry. To illustrate "protective totalitarian" mindset, authors quote several malicious posts from masses of forum flapjaw: "Security services existed in all times, all democratic states of the West had, have and will be having them." Or: "FSB is the same security service like FBI in the USA or Mossad in Israel or Mi-6 in Great Britain". And etc. I understand that I risk of being called "totalitarian", but quite honestly I'm having difficulties to recognize signs of totalitarianism in the above quotes. As authors continue, "there are quite less real people with totalitarian views than one may consider after having a casual look on posts in any forum". Here one can only sigh: would they look on VCIOM or FOM opinion polls results, how Stalin's popularity doesn't diminish and even rises, how meaning and emotional connotations of the word "democrat" changed (from positive to negative), and would they seriously consider these tendencies of development of social consciousness...

• Authors exclude from their interpretation of events all other hypotheses, such as internet activity of a group of some "skinheads", nazbols or simply unliberal students; or hackers able to get IP addresses of their opponents.
• According to Yusupovskiy, authors treat "independence of public opinion" in spirit of irreconcilable antagonism with "positive image of Russia".

Yusupovskiy finally commented on Polyanskaya's article:

"We would never make our country's military organizations and security services work under the rule of law and legal control, if won't learn to recognize rationally and objectively their necessity and usefulness for the country, state, society and citizens. Sweeping defamation and intentional discreditation with the help of "arguments", which are obviously false, only contribute to the extrusion of security services outside of rule of law and instigates them to chaos".

Discussion on control over the Internet

In 2006 radio talk show hosted by Yevgenia Albats with a topic "Control over the Internet: How does that happen?", Russian journalist Andrei Soldatov made the following points:

• There are countries with greater or less control over the Internet; but there is control over the Internet in Russia;
• During the US invasion of Iraq, a group of people calling themselves GRU officers published allegedly internal GRU information on American losses in Iraq — this information was shown on the background of Anti-american hysteria and was well consumed. Later it turned out this information was not credible, but this effectively didn't change the result;
• After 2005 Nalchik raid Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that Kavkaz Center "is a very bad resource", and after two days two teams calling themselves hackers appeared, to arrange hacker attacks against Kavkaz Center;
• Soldatov doesn't think web brigades are fiction. He had related issues with his own site, especially during such events like Moscow theater hostage crisis;
• One of structures having related business with the Internet is signals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB and has been formerly a part of 16th KGB department;
• There is a related agency in Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs with competent people who can do such things.

Other participant of the talk show, Russian political scientist Marat Gelman made the following points:

• There are countries with control over the Internet, there's none in Russia; there may be control understood as observation, but there's no tool to forbid any certain resource;
• Internet is good as the space where authorities and opposition are placed in absolutely equal conditions and they need to actually struggle and convince people. It's impossible to actually prohibit in the Internet, one needs to win [a game];
• Professional activity exists for long in the Internet — as many sites are professional media-structures with a team and owners perhaps — in a way a newspaper is. And coordinated work of these resources is possible. Commenting on a possibility that besides open structures there are closed ones imitating activity of youths, Gelman said he had an exact feeling it's fake;
• Answering Albats' question about possibilities of control over Internet as a means to exert influence on youths, Gelman asserted that authorities, opposition and America are all equal players in question of control and attempts of influence. Unlike e.g. television or newspapers all players in the Internet have equal possibilities, every player tries to do one's sort of work;
• Answering Albats' question "How control over Internet is technically organized?", Gelman noted that there are two major concepts: either the information is filtered before an user may access it ("premoderation"), either "postmoderation". While the first is the case in China, where access to certain types of resources is physically blocked, Gelman considers it a bad practice and it is absolutely unacceptable for Russia. Gelman thinks there must be control over the Internet in Russia, but only in the form of an agency searching for criminals in the Internet, tracking their IPs to get personal information, as well as there must be a mechanism to impose a penalty on such people.

"LiveJournal fighters"

A member of National Bolshevik Party Roman Sadykhov claimed that he secretly infiltrated pro-Kremlin organizations of "LiveJournal fighters", allegedly directed and paid from the Kremlin and instructions given to them by Vladislav Surkov, a close aide of Vladimir Putin Surkov allegedly called Livejournal "a very important sector of work" and said that people's brains must be "nationalized" . He instructed "LiveJournal fighters" that

"We are losing in the Internet in that respect. It is always easier to break down things than to do something positive. What you are doing are jokes and minor infractions. Not only methods, but also goals must be radical. We must blow this romantics out of them [our opponents]. It is important not only to protect the authorities - this is understood, but we need to attract young people who can work creatively in the Internet. This is an important communication place of young people. Make them interested in conversations with you."

Similar developments outside Russia

Governmental efforts to infiltrate internet are reported in other countries as well.

Internet propaganda teams in mainland China

See also: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

It has been reported that in 2005, departments of provincial and municipal governments in mainland China began creating teams of Internet commentators from propaganda and police departments and offering them classes in Marxism, propaganda techniques, and the Internet. They are reported to guide discussion on public bulletin boards away from politically sensitive topics by posting opinions anonymously or under false names. "They are actually hiring staff to curse online", said Liu Di, a Chinese student who was arrested for posting her comments in blogs.

Netherlands

It was reported that Dutch police have set up an Internet Brigade to fight cybercrime. Among its planned actions are to infiltrate internet newsgroups and discussion forums for intelligence gathering, to make pseudo-purchase and to provide services..

Poland

Anonymous "Polish specialists in Russian affairs", reported by the Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny, say: "the Russian secret service made a test on us... At least a dozen active Russian agents work in Poland, also investigating the Polish Internet. They are claimed to scrutinize Polish websites (like those supporting Belarusian opposition), and also to perform such actions, as—for instance—contributing to Internet forums on large portals (like Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, WP.pl). Labeled as Polish Internet users, they incite anti-Semitic or anti-Ukrainian discussions or disavow articles published on the web."

See also

• Internet activism
• Harassment by computer
• Jingjing and Chacha
• Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
• Astroturfing
• Internet Haganah
• Jewish Internet Defense Force
• Political repression of bloggers and cyber-dissidents

External links

• Discussion of control over internet and personal security with Yevgeniya Albats at Moscow-based radio channel Echo Moskvy. Template:Ru icon