Russia’s main security agency is expanding its sweeping surveillance powers, deepening the state’s reach into economic and social life to suppress any risk of dissent to President Vladimir Putin.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is getting wide-ranging access to corporate databases, telecommunications networks, financial communications and even information on international contacts by scientists under a spate of legal changes.
“Every political model has its own beneficiary class. And in Russia the beneficiary class is the security apparatus,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a Berlin-based political scientist at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in an interview. “The system is built, essentially, for the convenience of the security enforcers.”
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