[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
119th Congress Printed for the use of the
1st Session Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
_________________________________________________________________________
The MAX App: Russia's Pocket-Sized
Approach to Mass Surveillace
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
DECEMBER 2, 2025
Briefing of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
__________________________________________________________________________
Washington: 2026
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-1901
[email protected]
http://www.csce.gov
@HelsinkiComm
Legislative Branch Commissioners
SENATE HOUSE
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi Chairman JOE WILSON, South Carolina
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island Co-Chairman
Ranking Member STEVE COHEN, Tennessee Ranking Member
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas ROBERT ADERHOLT, Alabama
KATIE BRITT, Alabama EMMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri
JOHN FETTERMAN, Pennsylvania LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
TINA SMITH, Minnesota RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina
THOM TILLIS, North Carolina GREG MURPHY, North Carolina
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota MARC VEASEY, Texas
Executive Branch Commissioners
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, to be appointed
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, to be appointed
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, to be appointed
[II]
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The MAX App: Russia's Pocket-Sized Approach to Mass Surveillance
December 2, 2025
Page
COMMISSION STAFF PRESENT
Alanna Novetsky, Communications Director, Commission on Security
and Cooperation in Europe ................................................................ 1
PARTICIPANTS
Anastasiya Zhyrmont, Policy Manager, Eastern Europe & Central Asia, Access Now ........... 2
Laura Cunningham, President, Open Technology Fund ......................................... 4
Justin Sherman, Founder and CEO, Global Cyber Strategies .................................. 5
The MAX App: Russia's Pocket-Sized Approach to Mass Surveillance
----------
December 2, 2025
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Washington, DC
The briefing was held from 2 p.m. to 3:08 p.m., Room 2358-C,
Rayburn House Office Building, Alanna Novetsky, Communications
Director, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, presiding.
Ms. Novetsky: Good afternoon. My name is Alanna Novetsky, and I am
the communications director with the U.S. Helsinki Commission. I am
pleased to welcome you to this briefing on ``The MAX App: Russia's
Pocket-Sized Approach to Mass Surveillance.'' Thank you all for joining
us.
Before I turn it over to our esteemed members of our panel, I will
share a few words about why we are choosing to focus on this issue now.
On a trip to Kyiv in September, my colleagues and I met with members of
civil society who support and help evacuate Ukrainians living under
Russian occupation. They discussed how the information environment
there has made every aspect of their jobs more difficult. Occupation
authorities flood Ukrainians with propaganda, and search their devices
and homes for any tools to connect with the open internet and
communicate freely. Ukrainians live in a constant State of fear. They
do not know who to trust or what to believe.
For the Kremlin, creating an information bubble in occupied Ukraine
is central to their genocidal project to erase the Ukrainian State. By
purging occupied territories of any means of connection with the
outside world, authorities believe they can isolate and dishearten the
population, discourage resistance, and brainwash the next generation.
Yet, despite relentless pressure, Ukrainian parents and
grandparents continue to risk everything to find virtual and physical
pathways out of this hell for their children. They teach their children
Ukrainian in secret and use VPNs to give them a Ukrainian education.
They find ways to talk to their neighbors undetected to help avoid
conscription into the Russian army. In some cases, they find routes out
of the occupied territories and lead their families through treacherous
escapes. Through their kids, using the limited resources and technology
they have, these parents and grandparents keep hope alive for a future
in which Ukraine is free and united.
Over the past several months, the Kremlin has doubled down on its
efforts to digitally monitor and isolate those under its thumb in
Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. They are implementing a novel approach
to censorship and surveillance that pairs old-school authoritarian
tactics with software solutions that allow authorities to police
people's digital lives on their personal devices. As part of this
strategy, they have launched MAX, a super app that gives Russian
officials wide-ranging access to users' messages, contacts, internet
usage, and location--which is the topic of this briefing.
With that, I am honored to introduce our panelists, who will
discuss the implications of Russia's approach to wide-scale digital
surveillance, the potential for Russia to export this paradigm further
beyond its borders, and strategies to circumvent and counter this
approach to repression.
First up, we will have Anastasiya Zhyrmont. She spearheads Access
Now's Eastern Europe and Central Asia policy work, building coalitions,
influencing stakeholders, and bringing digital rights issues in
restrictive environments into the international spotlight. Anastasiya
previously worked as an advocate for the rights of people with
disabilities and currently serves as a board member for Inclusion
Europe.
Laura Cunningham is the president of the Open Technology Fund, a
nonprofit organization supporting the counteraction of repressive
censorship and surveillance globally. Laura has over a decade of
experience working on internet freedom across a variety of donor,
nonprofit, and government organizations. Prior to joining OTF, Laura
was the senior advisor for internet freedom in the U.S. State
Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, where she
led the Department's internet freedom programs focused on technology
development, digital security, internet policy advocacy, and research.
Last but not least, we have Justin Sherman, who is the founder and
CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a D.C.-based research and advisory
firm, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign
Service, and a distinguished fellow at Georgetown's Law Center on
Privacy and Technology. He was previously a fellow at Stanford's U.S.-
Russia Forum, where he participated in track-two dialogs with Russian
counterparts on international security issues. Justin has consulted for
and advised CEOs, government officials, investors, attorneys, product
managers, communications strategists, and threat intelligence teams,
including volatile, complex, and high-risk scenarios. He has consulted
on projects and programs for organizations ranging from HBO to DARPA.
Now I will turn it over to Anastasiya for her opening statement.
Once everyone has had an opportunity to give their opening remarks, I
will ask a round of questions, and then we will open it up to audience
questions. So, Anastasiya.
Ms. Zhyrmont: First of all, thank you so much for the opportunity
to appear before you today. Of course, it is an honor for me to address
the issue of accelerating crisis of digital censorship and surveillance
in the Russian Federation, including the growing role of MAX messenger,
a state-controlled tool that exposes users to State surveillance,
undermines their privacy, exposes them to State propaganda, and further
limits access to independent information.
Well, first of all, let me start by outlining the current status of
the digital space within Russia and how authorities are driving the
country into the complete shutdown and informational blockade from the
rest of the world. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian
authorities have blocked access to almost all websites of independent
media, NGO's, and global social media platforms. Facebook and
Instagram--whose parent company, Meta, was declared extremist
organization in 2022--are banned, as TikTok, X, Discord, and even
Signal. YouTube is heavily throttled, so it is barely functional for
many users within Russia. Starting this summer this year, authorities
went as far as they also disabled voice calls on Telegram and WhatsApp,
which are the two last remaining accessible platforms in Russia. Recent
reports indicate that WhatsApp is experiencing dysfunctions. It is not
functioning well in many regions of Russia, and this has led some
experts to believe that it soon will be blocked as well.
Adding to all of this, since May this year, millions of Russians
and people in the occupied territories have been experiencing mobile
internet shutdowns. What started as sporadic outages has now escalated
to frequent, in some regions even daily disruptions of mobile and
cellular data services. Since September this year, Russia has also
begun whitelisting during the internet shutdowns, meaning that only a
narrowly approved list of websites, usually state-controlled, is
accessible during the shutdowns. Usually, it includes services such as
Yandex, state-controlled media outlets, et cetera.
It has been done to promote MAX messenger, not only a messenger in
itself but a comprehensive surveillance tool, which now comes
preinstalled on all the devices sold in Russia starting September 1st.
According to independent assessments, MAX does not merely record user
messages and metadata; it embeds deep tracking analytics and compiles a
wide--a wide digital dossier on the user, mixing personal identifiers
like gender, age, your email, your phone number with external account
IDs linked to other social media and the usage data.
Also, precise geolocation tracking is built in, so if
granted``Always On'' location permission, MAX can report your real-time
movements. In repressive conditions, as you can imagine, this can
expose attendance at political protests, political gatherings, or
simply trace your mobility and all of your contacts.
Another feature of MAX is also the collection of your search
history within the app, linked to your identity. In light of the recent
legislation that targets people who are not only searching for
extremist material--including materials by independent media--the app
can potentially expose such users to heavy fines or even tougher
penalties. The app is reportedly capable of more invasive operations
like secretly switching on your microphone, your camera, or even screen
recording.
Despite all of those risks, it is becoming more and more popular
due to the combination of aggressive promotion by the authorities, but
also the way essential services are funneled in ways through it. Many
of our partners on the ground, parents and students, report their
school group chat, for instance, often circulates official reminders
that you need to install this app. Beyond schools, regional authorities
in some areas went as far as tying access to critical public safety
notifications, such as air raid alerts or emergency alerts in the app.
Since November 5, the MAX app has also been launched in Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, and
Azerbaijan.
At the same time, it is very difficult for users to still make
resistance and escape such a type of control because of the ongoing
crackdown on circumvention tools and privacy tools, such as VPNs. In
recent years, Roskomnadzor, the censorship body in Russia, has
pressured major big tech companies to remove VPNs from the App Store in
Russia. Unfortunately, Apple, for instance, succumbed to this
censorship request. As a result, more than 100 VPNs are right now
unavailable in the App Store in Russia.
Just let me underline that without VPN and other security tools,
people in Russia and in the occupied territories are deprived of ways
to securely access independent information, to communicate privately,
or to evade digital surveillance. This is why we as Access Now, but as
civil society as a whole, we call on the governments to condemn the use
of mandatory or state-controlled and preferred apps that collect
invasive privacy data under the guise of national sovereignty, support
civil society and digital rights group in exposing such invasive
practices, but also providing resilience tools and digital security
tools for the users in order to increase their safety; and to recognize
that shutting down or reengineering the whole internet to serve State
propaganda and surveillance is tantamount to curtailing freedom,
dissent, and democracy. We also call on big tech companies and Apple
not to concede to the Russian government's attempts and efforts to
suppress freedom of expression and to, instead, restore all of the
blocked and deplatformed VPNs in the App Store in Russia.
Thank you. I would love to answer any questions that you might
have.
Ms. Novetsky: Thank you so much.
Yes, Laura, go ahead.
Ms. Cunningham: Wonderful. Thanks again for having us here today,
Alanna. I am really excited to talk about such an important issue. I
think, just kind of taking off of what Anastasiya started with, I think
MAX really does represent a significant evolution in the Kremlin's
approach to information controls. Obviously, has hugely concerning
implications for freedom of expression, access to information, privacy,
and security for Russian citizens. However, in this context, I think it
is really important to remember that MAX, in and of itself, should not
be our primary concern. Rather, the aggressive model of internet
control that the implementation of MAX predicts is the true challenge
that we are confronted with today.
As Anastasiya explained, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,
the Russian government has demonstrated both the will and the technical
capacity to implement a sophisticated model of total internet control.
We refer to this in the Chinese context as the Locknet. The Russian
government has not only brought a largely decentralized infrastructure
to heel, but also instituted a centralized censorship regime and made
significant strides toward even more totalitizing solutions, including
the much-discussed Runet, and more recently and potentially more
concerning, a Chinese-style Locknet supported in part by the
implementation of MAX.
By capturing their citizens on a single app, the Kremlin, as
Anastasiya said, can leverage backend control to far more effectively
censor and surveil their citizens. Which serves to not only teach but
reinforce self-censorship among citizens themselves. Simultaneously,
the app provides all the information and services a citizen is supposed
to need in Russia, thereby prescribing the bounds of what should and
should not be permissible within the country. When that is combined
with significant impediments to accessing the global internet or
nonState platforms, such as censorship, meta-censorship, legal
consequences, and offline consequences that we know are common in
Russia, the stage is really set for near-complete information control.
If this model of control is successfully implemented over a long
enough period of time, it is likely--and we have seen this happen in
China--to fundamentally reengineer how Russian citizens think about,
search for, and engage with independent media over the long term. I
think--kind of to put it most simply, I think the Kremlin really hopes
to force their people to choose between convenience and ease of a super
app over freedom--over freedom, until they no longer have any
meaningful conception of what the global internet looks like outside of
this walled garden that has been created by the State.
In this context, I think it is really important that we not confuse
tactics with a longer-term strategy. Our goal should not be to compete
with Russia tool for tool. I do not think we should respond to MAX with
the anti-MAX app. Rather, to provide a compelling alternative
environment where Russian citizens can continue to actively connect to
the global internet and engage with a diversity of technologies and
information. In this formulation, success is not about eliminating MAX
entirely but, more importantly, rendering it just irrelevant to the
Kremlin's information control goals.
I think, honestly, in these terms in this moment, we--the U.S.
Government has an upper hand. We are still able to offer Russian
citizens access to the entire global internet, something that they
clearly remember and desire. That is far more compelling than a single
app is going to be. Think we need to work to honor and channel the
desire that Russian citizens have to access tools and techniques to
easily reach the global internet, and to help them to avoid the ever-
increasing state-imposed friction and chokepoints designed by the
Kremlin to discourage their access.
To do this, I think, from a technological perspective, there are
two things that we really need to focus on. We need to support a
diversity of tools and technologies, not that respond individually tool
for tool or app for app but instead work collectively to undermine the
Russian government's model as a whole. First, we should continue to
facilitate Russian citizens' access to the global internet and
independent information. This means continuing to support a range of
secure privacy-enhancing circumvention tools and secure communication
tools to empower Russian users and impede the Kremlin's ability to
force citizens onto apps like MAX.
Second, we should simultaneously invest in new solutions to stay
ahead of quickly evolving Russian information controls. In preparation
for the next generation of Russian information controls, we should
invest now in forward-looking internet freedom solutions, such as
advanced circumvention techniques, novel security and privacy-enhancing
technologies, and innovative shutdown mitigation tools that are
becoming ever more critical in this environment, as Anastasiya pointed
out.
I think the speed and scale with which the Russian government has
prioritized and is investing in information controls only raise the
stakes for the U.S. to support internet freedom and free expression in
Russia. Currently, the population of Russia still remembers how to
access independent information and connect to the wider world. Like I
said earlier, as we have seen in China, they risk losing this muscle
memory the longer the Russian government censorship remains unchecked.
Ms. Novetsky: Thanks so much, Laura.
Yes, Justin, go ahead.
Mr. Sherman: All right. Thank you. Thank you to the Commission as
well for the chance to talk about an issue that, as my fellow panelists
have said, is not just critical for human rights in Russia and Ukraine
and the region, but also for U.S. and Western security as well.
Hopefully, this will dovetail well with what we have just heard.
To step back for a second, over the past several decades, but
especially the last 10 to 15 years, the Russian government has built
out an extensive domestic surveillance apparatus. It spans phone and
internet monitoring, mobile device surveillance capabilities, cyber
actors that can break into devices and networks, facial recognition
systems, biometric surveillance data bases, censorship and web
blocking, and, among others, outright coercion. It is, as Julien
Nocetti has put it, a dictatorship of law approach to internet policy,
fused, I would add, with sophisticated State intelligence capabilities,
and what Masha Gessen has rightfully called ``the economy of terror''
approach to information control. The MAX app, developed by VK
[VKontakte], is therefore part of this broader surveillance ecosystem.
The mixed origins of where this comes from, as we all know, we had,
you know, Soviet security apparatuses that were migrated to their post-
USSR collapse forms, keeping many of the same technology and
surveillance capabilities. You had law enforcement, you know, systems
that were set up in the 1990's that were then converted into what we
now see as the form of modern internet monitoring in Russia. All the
way to the paranoia and distrust of the internet, the internet
awakening of the Kremlin I call it sometimes, across 2008 Russo-
Georgian war, the 2010's Arab Spring, the 2013 Snowden leaks--coming to
view the internet as not just a threat to regime security but as a tool
of the U.S. Government--which, of course, many here would find
fanciful--but a tool of the U.S. Government to project power. All to
say, the Putin regime today views the internet both as a threat to
regime security and a weapon to wield against Russia's enemies. The MAX
app is a direct follow-on of this worldview.
As we heard, MAX is built by the Russian tech company VK. As of
September 1st, it is required to be installed on every new phone sold
in Russia, implemented through coercive and legal pressure, both on
phone-selling companies as well as individuals who will use those
devices. MAX enables users to do all of the things we heard, messaging,
and much more. The Kremlin's vision is much more expansive--talking
about replacing physical documentation, enabling people to verify their
identities entirely through the app, both for business and government
purposes, replacing, as we heard, State alerts, forms of communication,
and other document-sharing systems that currently exist on State
servers, or in less-centralized fora.
At the same time, as we heard, as the Kremlin has required MAX's
installation on devices in Russia, it has also blocked alternatives.
Again, something we have seen time and time again as a means of pushing
people onto a particular platform. I will also add that VK, much like
Kaspersky and other Russian tech companies, may have had the
opportunity 25 years ago to exist fairly independently from the
Kremlin. That is obviously not the case today. These companies have
long ago more than willingly bent the knee to the Putin regime.
When past Russian domestic tech or digital surveillance efforts
have failed in recent years, it is typically fallen victim to at least
one of three factors. [A], terribly built, dysfunctional technology.
[B], a lack of political will, meshed with bureaucratic incompetence.
Or, [C], both. We will put corruption under the incompetence umbrella,
right? The problem here, at least from my vantage point, is MAX may be
poised to avoid all three of these stumbling blocks. You have a product
from a fairly successful consumer-facing technology company. You have,
as we have heard, seemingly enforced legal requirements in Russia on
device manufacturers, on individuals to use it. The technical
throttling of alternatives. We see that political will. We see that
capability there now.
Further complicating the challenge ahead is Russia's growing
techno-isolationism, leaving Russians with fewer technological systems
in general that are not heavily Russian state-monitored and controlled.
If they are not Russian these days, they are more, in fact, in some
cases, from China than they are from Europe, or the U.S., or Japan, or
elsewhere. You have persistently growing Kremlin paranoia, as
mentioned, about Western tech platforms. You had Meta designated as a
terrorist organization 3 years ago, as an example of that view. You
also have suboptimal or harmful policy decisions from U.S. tech
companies. In some of these cases, U.S. tech firms, such as with
YouTube, are dealing with highly complicated tradeoffs, decisions,
often more so than the public might appreciate, in terms of information
access, censorship, and content requests.
At the same time, you have other firms making disastrous decisions,
such as with Apple and Google a couple of years ago, deciding to open
local offices in Russia, which, of course, demonstrates some degree of
naivety about the risk. All to say, as we have heard, MAX threatens
human rights in Russia. As was mentioned, I recently wrote in The
Atlantic about this as well. Russian forces are stopping individuals
entering and leaving temporarily occupied territories to do technical
inspections of devices, the details of which we will not get into, but
to include looking for the MAX app on people's phones. As mentioned, it
is also now permeating the near abroad.
Then the second set of concerns really, to me, relates to broader
U.S. and Western security, which is, as Laura was just saying, not
every country has the political will, the intelligence sophistication--
as in intelligence agency sophistication--the policing apparatus, the
tech talent to control and surveil in the way China does. Not every
country has the same underlying digital infrastructure layout as China
does, which is quite centralized. In many other countries, like Russia,
it is much more diffuse. Enter then an approach that requires less
technical centralization, that requires less of a broader tech talent
base to implement, and that may require less financial investment to
carry out. Yet, as some, you know, have already analogized MAX to
China's WeChat, as an attractive means of conducting State
surveillance, of trying to suppress dissent and free expression, or--
this was not mentioned yet--of trying to root out Western spies, and
adverse Ukrainian spies, and an adversarial and authoritarian regime,
through this messaging app.
Looking forward, there are several solutions that Congress can
undertake in this area. These include renewed funding, as was
mentioned, for anticensorship circumvention capabilities, privacy-
forward encrypted messaging systems, to continue engagements or renew
engagements, we will say, in some cases, with European partners on this
issue set, and, importantly, continuing to study the problem and to
conduct effective oversight of executive branch activities in this
area. I look forward to your questions. I will stop there.
Ms. Novetsky: Thank you so much.
Yes, so I will ask the first round of questions, and then following
that, we will open it up to audience questions, so you can ask
questions from that podium and that microphone over there. Just make
sure to introduce yourself when you do so.
I will start with you, Anastasiya. Historically, as Justin
mentioned, Russian attempts to create an isolated internet for those
under Russian control have made life worse for users in many ways. You
have written extensively about how local and regional internet
blackouts, for example, make it difficult for Russians to complete
daily tasks, like withdrawing money from ATMs. However, it seems like
recently Moscow has shifted its approach and is prioritizing user
experience. It did so, you know, including through the MAX app. Do you
think that Russians will mind using the censored internet if the user
experience is improved? What further steps could Moscow take to ease
the discomfort of using this censored or restricted internet and quell
resistance to surveillance and censorship?
Ms. Zhyrmont: Well, thank you for the question. It is a very
justifiable concern indeed that users in Russia, but also in the
occupied territories, will, as Laura said, lose the muscle memory to
use the independent internet, and will somehow get used to this all
limited possibilities. We have seen this with YouTube. Several years
ago, two or 3 years ago, it was difficult to imagine the daily life of
Russian people where YouTube played a huge role in their daily life,
that even if blocked, they would not search for opportunities to
circumvent this. The throttling of YouTube, which made it extremely
inconvenient for Russians to watch YouTube, actually switched many of
them to alternatives, like RUTUBE and other, like, ways to receive this
content.
Which, of course, makes us believe that the same will happen with
MAX. Indeed, Alanna, not only is it all the entertainment and ability
to, well, basically call your friends and relatives, because on other
platforms, as I said, video calls are blocked, but also, as you said,
it is more and more user-friendly. All the content is in there. All the
State services are embedded and funneled through it. If not in the
repressive environment, just imagine--all platforms in one app, and you
do not need to switch. You do not need to choose. Like, all your
friends, all your work-related contacts are in there. Yes, Russian
authorities are investing a lot, not only in advertisement of the MAX
app, but also in increasing its usability and user friendliness. Russia
is a tech-savvy country that can actually compete, at the moment, with
all of this.
People also have no choice. We are hearing reports that employers
are forcing their employees to install the app. You are somehow banned
from the community in those parent or student group chats if you are
not using it. You are simply receiving no reports, no updates. It is
very difficult not to use it. Even people who are well-aware of all the
risks prefer to minimize them through acquiring a new device and
installing MAX on it. It is a temporary solution. One way--first of
all, not all people can afford to buy a second phone. Of course, one
way or another it will become--[phone rings]--oh, I am so sorry--
impossible not to use it. So sorry. [Laughs]Alert. [Laughter.] MAX app.
[Laughter.] Yes.
Ms. Novetsky: Thank you so much.
Laura, so you discussed how the Russian government has
systematically increased its online information control since the full-
scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the deployment of the MAX is
sort of the latest step in this progression. What do you think this
progression tells us about the Kremlin's longer-term strategy for
internet control, both in Russia and in the occupied territories of
Ukraine? What do you think is next?
Ms. Cunningham: Yes. I think what we are starting to see is a very
similar kind of Chinese Locknet model being deployed in Russia as well.
Obviously, given the differences between kind of the starting points of
Russia's infrastructure and China's infrastructure, kind of, that path
is going to look very different. I think ultimately the goal that the
Russian government is pushing toward right now looks very similar to
where China is headed as well. What that is to say is creating, rather
than, I think, for a long time, many people thought of, you know, in
China they had a great firewall and kind of censorship happened at the
border. That was kind of the only impediment to access to the global
internet.
What we have seen in China instead is creating these kinds of
concentric circles of control, making it more difficult, basically at
every step, for a user to access the global internet. Starting with, we
see in China a kind of WeChat being this walled garden providing all
the information you could possibly want, being, in fact, very content-
rich. A place that people are not necessarily dying to escape, so you
start with this kind of platform substitution that really captures the
audience. Then, adding layers of meta-censorship, making it impossible
to even kind of search for or know about circumvention. Even if you
wanted to get beyond WeChat, like, what would be the process for that
and how? Then seeing VPNs themselves blocked and disabled, so that by
the time--you know, even to get to the great firewall, you have had to
go through so many barriers and steps of unknown information that is
difficult to ascertain even to get there.
What that does, I think, is two things. One, it obviously
disincentivizes many users from seeking out--knowing about, frankly,
and then going above and beyond to seek out that information. To the
kind of muscle memory point, you have a whole generation in China that
has started to forget what the global internet looks like. They are no
longer compelled by that desire to connect with the international
community, to connect with the global internet. I think--I think why
MAX feels like such an inflection point for us in the Russian model is
because it is starting to create those layers of control, and starting
to create a situation where you might actively capture a population on
a single app or platform, and start to wither that muscle memory of the
global internet.
Which is why I think it is especially critical we have this
conversation right now, and we are trying to engage in this topic in
this moment. Because you still do have, you know, the majority of the
Russian citizenry who remembers the global internet, who still
remembers YouTube, who still is eager to access this type of
information. I think we will start to see that go away unless we are
really actively engaged quickly in the short term to make sure those
connections remain open.
Ms. Novetsky: Thank you.
Before I open it up, just one more question for Justin. As you
mentioned, in recent years, Russian authorities have cracked down on
tech developers and other companies that demonstrate any reticence to
comply with State orders or try to assert any independence. It seems
relatively unlikely that any company like VK would resist government
efforts to use and abuse user data collected by MAX. What about
American and international companies operating in Russia? Are there
ways we can reasonably expect them to resist or refuse to comply with
orders and laws that infringe on people's freedoms and violate their
privacy?
Mr. Sherman: Yes, it is a good--I was going to say, if it is the VK
one, that is a short answer. [Laughter.] It is a good question. We have
seen--it has been interesting to see--and I, you know, worked on some
of these issues as this was unfolding--but companies that, you know,
completely immediately left Russia in 2022, that I think did it for
good reasons and in a good way. Companies that left for good reasons
but did it very poorly, such as--I will not name, although folks will
know who I am referring to--but certain telecom companies that left
immediately, and immediately the State seized control of the
telecommunications fibers and other things that they left there. Which
was not good.
Then we have this complicated category, I think like we are talking
about, where, you know, a company like Google or Apple does not
maintain any more--even though they did and it was used to coerce--they
do not maintain a local office anymore in Russia. There is still
product presence. There are still questions of, you know, even if, let
us say, Apple is not opening up a new store in, you know, St.
Petersburg next week to sell the new iPhone, are they still providing
security updates to the many, many people in Russia who own existing
Apple products, right? All to say, there are all kinds of complex touch
points that I think are underappreciated when we just look at headlines
that say: This many companies left Russia, or this company does not
operate in the country. As we are all talking about, it is a lot more
complicated.
In terms of levers, I would say app stores removing VPN tools in
particular countries is especially problematic. Even more so, I think--
at least, based on what we can see publicly--what might appear to be
the absence of real, robust corporate policy around when to do that. I
am not saying you should never do that. You know, there have been bad
actors known to create VPN apps that are malware. I am not saying you
should never take down a VPN, per se. You know, at the whim of the
Kremlin, without a robust policy, is not exactly a good framework, so
that would be the first thing.
The second, I think, as we are talking about, is that Russia is
making a push toward a much more autarkic, maybe the right word,
technology ecosystem. In some areas, it is failing miserably.
Microelectronics, as we all know, has been one area for years. Russia
has basically no manufacturing capacity. All this stuff's either still
stolen from the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, or it comes from China
now, but software, as Laura was just saying, is an area where Russia is
making a lot of progress. That is another space where we need to think
about U.S. companies that touch those firms. For example, if VK--as MAX
app spreads throughout parts of Europe--what are U.S. companies' and
other companies' positions on working with it, interoperability? You
get into all these questions that, you know, unsurprisingly, but I do
not think a lot of companies have thought through and will ultimately
have serious impacts on the very issues that we are talking about
today.
Ms. Novetsky: Great. Thank you so much.
If anyone has any questions, I am sure--yes, please. Francois will
help with the mic.
Question: Thank you very much. Ray Celeste with Congressman Dr.
Murphy.
I wrote a question that was very similar to the one that was just
asked, but I think it bears to be asked again. This is what I wrote:
Are the tech giants--such as Meta, Apple, Alphabet, and others--doing
all they can to combat these shutdowns done under the order of the
Russian government? Or are they just hanging back due to fears the
Russian government will find ways to hurt their bottom line in other
places around the world?
You know, I do not know what the Congress can do. I know this
administration maybe they could do more in this area. What that is, I
do not know. Maybe you all can talk about that. I do not know if
throwing more dollars at it--I mean, we already, you know, throw lots
of dollars. I mean, these companies have huge contracts. I remember at
one time--you know, I am old enough to remember the BlackBerry.
Well, now everybody in the Pentagon carries what? An iPhone. Who
are these trillion-dollar companies? There are all these Meta and
Google and, unfortunately, they are making--I do not know if they have
a moral compass in that they are making tons of money, these big giant
centers that they are building all across the United States, that the
administration has brought back all this money, and yet I think they
are getting it in both ways.
I hate to say this--they do not care if they get money from
democracies or China or these--you know, these dictatorships. They just
like money.
Thank you. That is a pretty complicated question.
Mr. Sherman: Happy to start. I think it is a really good point.
Sam Bresnick and some others at CSET have written papers on this. I
will just say the number of these companies that have pulled out of the
Russian market or, as I said, left Russia in some way and signaled a
lot about that.
Well, actually, when you look at it, of course, their dependencies
in certain other autocratic areas or their dependencies in Taiwan or
other places are very, very different, and so this notion that, you
know, they would always do that, I think you are right that that is not
a correct assumption.
I would say that--can the companies do more to help circumvent?
Absolutely. I will kick that to some of the experts here, but the
answer is yes, right? We have had cases before where companies have,
for example, leaned pretty far forward on domain fronting and other
ways of getting around censorship mechanisms and then backed off
because of pressure from that government.
Again, we probably know one of the examples I am talking about, but
that is an example where if the company really wanted to do more there,
they could. What are their pressure points? In Russia's case, it is
going to be less market--small market to begin with.
How many users do they have there? You know, we are thinking broad
spectrum. If the Kremlin really was mad about that, obviously, there
are lots of other ways, including hacking and other kinds of things
that you could do to apply pressure to a U.S. tech company.
Again, I think the point stands that, back to your question of
incentives, how do we ensure that if they have the capability to lean
further forward on censorship circumvention, which technically they
absolutely do, and in corporate policy they absolutely do, what are
those incentives? I think it is the right question to ask.
I will let my fellow panelists weigh in.
Ms. Cunningham: Yes, I will maybe add a little bit more fuel to
that fire, even.
To take a step back here on OTF, OTF is a U.S. government-funded
nonprofit. We receive our resources from Congress. The majority of our
resources go to support VPNs that are used by tens of millions of
people in authoritarian contexts to access the global internet around
authoritarian censorship.
Those exact VPNs that are funded by U.S. Government dollars have
been taken out of the Apple store--the Apple app store in China, out of
the Apple app store in Russia. I think to Justin's point, certainly the
answer should not be never take a VPN out of an app store, but when
there are apps actively being funded by the U.S. Government to advance
human rights in authoritarian contexts to support our foreign policy
and our national security, to see American companies removing them from
those app stores and making it difficult if not impossible for those
exact users that we are attempting to support to actually access those
technologies, I mean, frankly, we are just working against ourselves.
Also, to Justin's point, I mean, it seems like the bare minimum
should be allowing those applications to be available to the
beneficiaries who need them, to the beneficiaries that those resources
are being provided.
Certainly, there are ways to go beyond that in terms of technical
support, in terms of public-private collaborations that could help
bring down the per-user cost of VPNs. There is a lot of work that could
be done proactively once we get over the hurdle of actually being
prevented from doing that work and providing those services.
Ms. Zhyrmont: Well, just adding my two cents in all of this, well,
of course, we do understand the pressures that big tech companies might
receive from Russia, and it includes not only economic pressure but
sometimes, like, physical safety of their former staff or present staff
in the country.
It does not mean that there is no way out. Let us see. Like, Google
received the very same censorship request to delete all the VPNs, yet
they did not follow. Now they are facing this hilariously big fine in
Russia. I do not even know how to pronounce this number in English.
It does not mean that I know how to pronounce it in Russian--
[laughs]--because it is, like, just a joke. They did not, and as a
matter of fact, they are very transparent what requests they are
receiving. They are making this public.
At least Apple might follow the steps of their peers, but also,
like, this is a slippery slope. Like, first VPNs, but what if later on,
Russia asks Apple and Google to delete all the apps of independent
media?
Later on, it will follow to further requests. Context is very much
important, and a human rights assessment within the context is very
much important as well, and, of course, Apple and big tech need to
support civil society and digital resilience.
They need to invest their resources into--like, into progress of
circumvention tools and finding new creative solutions. This is how
they can compensate for some wrongdoings, in a way, but also pulling
out completely of the market is not the solution also.
Like, stop providing updates to their own devices, will be the end
of the security of users in Russia, because what gives us a little hope
that the security features within iPhones will somehow cope with the
ability of MAX to gather information from other apps on your devices.
Probably in the future, with no support, it will not be the case
anymore.
Ms. Novetsky: Thank you. Jordan, go ahead.
Question: Thank you so much, Alanna, and to all of you. This is a
really interesting briefing, so I appreciate you.
My name is Jordan Warlick. I am a policy advisor at the Helsinki
Commission. I can imagine that the MAX app surveillance has probably
resulted in a certain amount of self-censorship, which, obviously, can
be hard to measure those invisible consequences.
I wanted to ask if there are reports yet of, you know, raids,
arrests, or fines, or any other consequences like that imposed on
individuals based on information gathered from surveillance on the MAX
app or through, as you mentioned, the technical inspections and failure
to download the app.
Mr. Sherman: Yes. I mean, you mentioned this, Alanna; there was
some conversation around the inspections in the occupied territories in
Ukraine. I will let Alanna weigh in, too. We were talking about this.
I, at least, was not able to discern a particular case yet where
someone was arrested.
There were rumors of different kinds of consequences, but certainly
the stops are happening. I do not know if others want to weigh in on
the Russia piece.
Like, I will just say, you know, VK broadly we know for many years,
of course, is a huge source of--your post was flagged, FSB data
requests submitted to VK that are, you know, complied with their eyes
shut, so, otherwise wide open. They do not really care.
I will just say so, I do not know necessarily. I have not seen any
reports of that. I, obviously, do not think that is dispositive of the
fact that probably this is already an information source, but I will
let--yes, Okay.
Ms. Zhyrmont: No, we did not receive any reports yet, but I think
this is only a matter of time because it is very difficult to promote a
new app within the users and to reach this critical amount of users
needed if you start with the massive arrests for all who are using MAX.
I think they created the necessary infrastructure. Later on, they
will first target people that they want to target among civil society--
journalists, opposition leaders, and et cetera, where probably some of
them are still in Russia. I doubt that it will reach out massive scale
because, like, even with this new law who target people for searching
extremist materials, of course, at the moment, many people are still
using Instagram, so if you start, like, arresting all Instagram divas
in Russia, it will be a bad start. [Laughs.]
Yes, the point is that they can target anybody at a certain point,
so yes, I will stop there.
Ms. NOVETSKY: Okay, good. Yes, Max, go ahead.
Question: Thank you for--thank you for being here and for the work
that you do. It is really important, and it is really eye-opening for
me.
I am kind of cursing my parents at the moment. My name is Max--
[laughter]--and I am Max Undeland. I work for Senator Boozman. I do not
work for VK. [Laughter.]
I was just wondering what the likelihood is that this app rolls out
in countries where maybe there has been a little bit of a Russian lean,
maybe in countries that might even be in NATO or Europe and--or to be
used in the developing world as sort of a--where there is Russian
action present or country where Russia--or countries like the U.S. or
Germany or others that Russia might want to influence elections and
have disinformation campaigns. What is the connection between them?
Ms. Zhyrmont: Well, as I mentioned, MAX has been launched in a few
neighboring countries to Russia. It has also been launched in Moldova,
for instance, which is quite concerning.
It will appear in Europe as well for one simple reason: You need to
stay in touch with the close ones in Russia. For them, the only
opportunity to be connected with you is through MAX app, especially in
the occupied territories.
MAX will appear in Ukraine as well. It is, like, people who want to
keep in touch with their relatives in the occupied territories will
still need MAX in order to call them, tag them, et cetera. Yes, the
simple answer is yes.
Mr. Sherman: Nothing to add other than I think Telegram is a
great--a different app, different situation, but a great example of
where an app that I am sure no one in here is using, perhaps, other
than to read Russian posts. You know, clearly backdoored and compliant
with the Kremlin and so forth, yet still is quite popular around the
world, including in Ukraine, which is an interesting phenomenon.
Ms. Novetsky: Yes. Just maybe building on that a bit, like, could
you envision a world in which other authoritarian countries or, you
know, leaning authoritarian countries might adopt it as a model because
it is effective and store the data in their own countries or, you know,
use this model even if it is not necessarily the MAX app itself?
Ms. Cunningham: Yes. I think, as Anastasiya has already said, I
think the MAX app is going to find its way to allied neighbors,
certainly.
I think, maybe going back to kind of the broader picture on this
model-wise just beyond MAX, what I think is really interesting about
the Russia model in particular is the ability of other countries to
potentially adopt it in ways that other censorship models, particularly
the Chinese censorship model, just been too high a bar for most
countries.
In the case of China, we see a country that had a centrally
controlled or centrally controlled internet infrastructure from the
very beginning. They made very few compromises on that and, as a
result, were able to kind of perpetuate their control very quickly and
centralize their control there.
Most other countries around the world have pretty diverse internet
architecture, Russia included, and so there was always a theory that,
you know, no one could really follow in China's footsteps because
everyone else had kind of let a thousand flowers bloom when it came to
the internet.
I think the Russian model is a really interesting counterpoint to
that now, where they have taken this--what was a very dispersed network
and found a way to actually implement very centralized control, and
they have kind of been slowly kind of pulling that control in.
First we saw, you know, through many different laws that they were
implementing and then, you know, requiring ISPs to blacklist and then
they were requiring ISPs to actually install infrastructure to create,
like, centralized control over what is being blocked, and now they have
gone so far as to take what was, you know, thousands of ISPs down to
basically seven centrally owned ISPs, and that is one example of how
they have taken the infrastructure and slowly exerted control over it
in a way that has become more and more centralized.
That model, to me, is really fascinating because it is one that
another government could replicate. You do not have to say, did you
make a decision 40 years ago to forever centrally control your
internet? No.
You could take this and potentially replicate it in any kind of
environment with--you know, with an authoritarian who is eager enough
and has the resources to do it, to actually take something relatively
diversified and actually bring that centralized control.
Again, I think MAX is an interesting indicator when it pops up of
what governments are thinking and the direction they want to go. The
fact that that is matched with a Russian model that might actually
enable them to do it, I think, is even more kind of concerning in
tandem.
Ms. Novetsky: I think we have time for maybe one more audience
question and then--yes, Kyle?
Question: Thank you. Kyle Parker, Helsinki Commission.
Laura, I just wanted to clarify. You had mentioned something about
Russians losing muscle memory and kind of experience with the open
internet. By that, do you mean is it a loss of technical savvy or trade
craft, or is it more a loss of interest, initiative, motivation, even
hope? That is, I guess, the first question.
The second question for anyone or whoever knows this best, how does
the framework and practice of engaging with--so by that I suppose
potentially some legislative framework, regulations, also habit and
practice, enforcement--differ between Russia, Belarus, occupied
territories?
Last--and maybe I missed this at the outset--when we were talking
about complicity of Western companies, U.S.-based companies, if
Congress were to contemplate something like a foreign corrupt practices
act for tech, right, something that, you know, in a sense might
liberate them from saying, look, whether we want to do it or not we
have to do it and we all have to do it.
Certainly, there would be the moral dimension of that and
complicity that could help uncomplicate. Are there enough alternatives
out there that its practical effect might just mean a loss of market
share for our own tech companies? Thanks.
Ms. Cunningham: I am happy to start with the first question on
muscle memory and then go to others.
On the question of muscle memory, is that kind of forgetting--you
know, being less tech savvy, or is it kind of giving up on the memory
of the global internet, or I think hope even, as you said. I think it
is both, but I think the second bit of that is what is even more
troubling.
I am using a lot of China analogies today, but I will do one more
on this. There was a really interesting study that Stanford University
did with Chinese university students a couple of years ago, and they
gave about a thousand university students VPNs. Half of them gave a
VPN, said go do with it what you will.
The other half, they gave a VPN and a specific assignment, go
research XYZ, and what they found was that the students who were given
a VPN and given a specific assignment knew how to use the VPN, went and
got the information, came back.
The students who were given a VPN and free range most of them did
not use the VPN. Most of them did not know even what they would go
search for, given that kind of freedom, and I think that is the really
concerning bit, is that they have, like, forgotten even the potential
of what the global internet is, the potential of what independent
information might look like.
They do not even have that incentive when given the opportunity
search something out or know what to look for. That is the kind of
muscle memory that I think is most detrimental to be lost in that
process. I think certainly there is a tech element to it, but
maintaining that connection, especially with Russian users right now to
the global internet to independent information, I think that is the
most critical bit.
Tech, you can kind of always solve for. Trying to have people
understand what the outside world looks like and continue to be
incentivized for that, that is a lot harder to rebuild.
Ms. Novetsky: Does someone want to talk about the tech company
piece of it?
Ms. Zhyrmont: I can address the issue of how the framework will
work in different contexts, like in Russia, Belarus, and the occupied
territories.
In the occupied territories, people are extremely vulnerable to
this kind of MAX installation and surveillance. We mentioned several
times the regular checks, but if not willing to install MAX, you can be
subject to further searches, investigations, and et cetera.
Of course, people are willingly installing the MAX apps in order to
guarantee their own security. Same as they acquired SIM cards on
Russian numbers before because it was impossible to use Ukrainian ones
in the current conditions.
In Russia, I might say they are seizing control step by step, so
like a frog in a kettle, people are adjusting. They did not ban VPNs
per se legally; VPNs are still allowed, but they banned the
advertisement of VPNs, so nobody will know about them eventually.
They also did not persecute you before for reading, like, I do not
know, independent media, Meduza, or others, but now they will persecute
you for searching actively for extremist material, and they can call
extremist whatever these days.
Same goes to--yes, VPNs are not banned, but since September this
year, it can be aggravated in circumstance in crime, so if you are
using a VPN, it can be considered a shady thing to do. People are not--
same as they did not shut down the internet all at once, they declared
Meta an extremist organization, but Instagram and Facebook were still
available.
Then they shut down Instagram and Meta. Then they shut down the
other platforms, so people are, yes, adjusting to all of this, and they
are willingly switching to Russian alternatives.
In Belarus, in Kazakhstan, in other contexts, it is a bit different
because, like, of course, MAX does not go preinstalled on all the
devices, and I suppose people want to be so actively downloading it.
If Russian propaganda and Russian advertising come to these
countries, of course, they will be exposed to the very same risks. What
triggers me the most is also the export of Russian not only
technologies or apps, but techniques and authoritarian tactics.
We see more and more how all the countries around Russia are copy-
pasting all those legislative innovations like the foreign agent law,
anti-extremist legislation, anti-LGBTQ legislation, and et cetera. All
this leads to further censorship.
Mr. Sherman: I guess that leaves question three--[laughter]--and I
will say, too, right, in a country--like, obviously, as we know,
Belarus and Russia have very close intelligence cooperation, the SORM--
the actual physical SORM system that Russia uses for domestic internet
and data surveillance. There are analogs in a lot of those countries,
but Belarus is basically the same architecture, so there are all kinds
of other risks there.
FCPA for tech, interesting question. I think I would say we can
think about the set of responsible practices that we have been talking
about throughout this briefing, around, you know, do companies have
policies for takedowns and so forth, and then maybe you could think
about some bounds of what is acceptable and not acceptable there.
For example, you know, delete this Navalny app ahead of the
election because I do not like opponents, maybe it would not be a real
reason to take an app down, but there could be reasons, too.
I think the same thing with--which we have not talked much about,
it is a bit outside the remit of the MAX app, I guess. If you own the
app a little bit different. Data access requests as well are very
complicated and, obviously, in pretty much any country on Earth, there
would be data access requests from law enforcement or even from
intelligence agencies that--whether every single person in this room
would agree or not, I think generally the U.S. Government would agree
with, right? Child sexual abuse material enforcement or other things
that are criminalized rightfully in most countries, for example.
It is not to say that all data access requests should really be put
through some absurd ringer or just denied on their face but, again, I
think that is another category where some tech companies have done
this, I think, in a thoughtful way over time of saying, we operate in
countries that have very strong rule of law; we operate in countries
that have very weak rule of law and so we are not going to equate those
two.
There are others that do not really draw those lines, and I think
that is another place where we can enter into, you know, regimes, sort
of throwing around the market pressure as a reason to coerce compliance
with outright, you know, dictatorial demands.
Ms. Novetsky: Yes, thank you so much, and I want to wrap up in just
a minute.
Before we wrap up, I think, you know, it is obvious to many of us
sitting in this room and certainly at this table why we care about
this, and the human costs of it are obviously, you know, enormous.
I was hoping that someone could touch on why it should be in our
interest as Americans and our strategic interests as the United States
and the West to promote access to an open internet in Russia and around
the world, as we have been talking about.
Mr. Sherman: We will go down the line. That is great.
As I mentioned, right, so there is the fact that--Laura can
elaborate more on this but, you know, not every country can do the
China approach, to be a bit simplistic about it, and so having other
ways of approaching internet surveillance and control in other
adversarial countries we should be worried about what Russia continues
to experiment with and build out.
Two is that there are all kinds of complicated cyber questions--
cybersecurity questions, cyber operations questions, et cetera--when an
adversary is trying to develop a fairly autarkic technology ecosystem.
We are not really going to get into that today, but that is really
complicated and concerning from a U.S. military, intelligence, and
national security standpoint.
The third, as I mentioned, is alongside undermining human rights
and other important, you know, democratic values of free speech and so
forth, this is also a way for, much like the biometric surveillance I
mentioned, which they're starting to deploy more at the borders in
every entry point in Russia, is to root out Western spies, root out
Ukrainian spies, root out informants or people who cooperate with
anyone to include talking to journalists.
There are lots of cases there where I think from a U.S.-EU-NATO
standpoint, we should really be worried about that device-level
surveillance and targeting capability.
Ms. Cunningham: I will reiterate one and then add one more.
I think the reason that most of us are here today, first and
foremost, is just the human rights concern and our goal really to be
able to empower Russian citizens in particular to be able to exercise
their human rights online, and so I think that is first and foremost.
I also think that there are, just as Justin said, real national
security concerns that go along with this. A government that is able to
kind of fully co-opt their domestic population is going to be in a
situation where their citizens are less likely to keep that government
in check. It is going to perpetuate authoritarian power. It is going to
embolden autocrats if they are able to maintain that type of almost
universal control over their populations.
I think, in addition to the very concerning human rights impact on
those citizens, the free rein that it gives an authoritarian government
to have that level of control should be something that is very
concerning.
Ms. Zhyrmont: Well, it is very difficult to add on top of that, but
maybe just to summarize.
If we do not export human rights, access to free information, or
creative tech solutions, freedom of expression, then autocrats will
export their vision of how the world should work, and they will export
those MAX messages, their restrictive legislation.
Ms. Novetsky: Thank you.
Thank you all so much for being here, to our panelists and to our
audience.
Tune in, we will have another briefing next week on the European
and Ukrainian defense supply chain and procurement innovations. Hope to
see you all soon, and thanks again to everybody for being
here.[Applause.]
[Whereupon, at 3:08 p.m., the briefing ended.]
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