Roskomnadzor plans surveillance of the entire Russian-speaking Internet using artificial intelligence

Analysis and Forecasting Department of the Main Radio Frequency Center (GRFC), was preparing for the next meeting of the Expert Council on Artificial Intelligence. The GRCHTS is part of the structure of the main censorship agency in Russia – Roskomnadzor (RKN), and the center is responsible for monitoring the Internet, preparing certificates and reports on the found “forbidden information”, as well as blocking it.

Putin apologists and Russian funded parrots are claiming the US and the NSA are doing the same. This is not true. The false claims are examples of the vast and well-funded Russian disinformation machine.

The GRCHTs (RKN) has been working on a project for a long time, which the employees called “an automated system for the comprehensive analysis of media materials and the search for points of information tension in the global network” Internet “” Vepr “”, or briefly – “AS Vepr”.

The main duties of the Vepr:

• analyze materials in social networks and the media, on the basis of this analysis, to identify the so-called points of information tension (under which the authors of the study mean the dissemination of publications that can cause a reaction in society),
• build a forecast of the development of the situation, anticipate scenarios for the dissemination of information and “turning them into an information threat”, in order to then transfer the data to the “authorized bodies”.

As planned by Roskomnadzor, Vepr should first of all pay attention to:

• themes of territorial integrity, ethnic hatred, migration policy, etc.;
• negative attitude towards the first persons of the state, state structures and interstate organizations;
• fakes about the first persons of the state, about the state and the country as a whole;
• manipulation of public opinion and polarization of society (for example, on the topics of non-systemic opposition, sanctions pressure, etc.);
• substitution and discrediting of traditional values.

The GRFC commissioned a team of experts, researchers and engineers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) to explore the possibilities for creating such a system, led by Konstantin Vorontsov, head of the Department of Machine Learning and Digital Humanities. As follows from the report prepared by the Vorontsov team, before starting work, they studied existing methods of censoring the Internet. Researchers were most interested in China’s experience because “to date, China’s Internet censorship program can be considered the most complex in the world. In this regard, the country has even begun to export its technology to other countries such as Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Belarus.” However, domestic developers are trying to create an equally complex system for total surveillance and censorship of the Internet in Russia.