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The Red Web

The Kremlin's Wars on the Internet

The Red Web Open the full-size image

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By Andrei Soldatov

By Irina Borogan

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$18.99

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$23.99 CAD

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  1. Trade Paperback $18.99 $23.99 CAD
  2. ebook $11.99 $14.99 CAD

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A Library Journal Best Book of 2015
A NPR Great Read of 2015

The Internet in Russia is either the most efficient totalitarian tool or the device by which totalitarianism will be overthrown. Perhaps both.

On the eighth floor of an ordinary-looking building in an otherwise residential district of southwest Moscow, in a room occupied by the Federal Security Service (FSB), is a box the size of a VHS player marked SORM. The Russian government’s front line in the battle for the future of the Internet, SORM is the world’s most intrusive listening device, monitoring e-mails, Internet usage, Skype, and all social networks.

But for every hacker subcontracted by the FSB to interfere with Russia’s antagonists abroad — such as those who, in a massive denial-of-service attack, overwhelmed the entire Internet in neighboring Estonia — there is a radical or an opportunist who is using the web to chip away at the power of the state at home.

Drawing from scores of interviews personally conducted with numerous prominent officials in the Ministry of Communications and web-savvy activists challenging the state, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan peel back the history of advanced surveillance systems in Russia. From research laboratories in Soviet-era labor camps, to the legalization of government monitoring of all telephone and Internet communications in the 1990s, to the present day, their incisive and alarming investigation into the Kremlin’s massive online-surveillance state exposes just how easily a free global exchange can be coerced into becoming a tool of repression and geopolitical warfare. Dissidents, oligarchs, and some of the world’s most dangerous hackers collide in the uniquely Russian virtual world of The Red Web.

Genre:

On Sale
Aug 22, 2017
Page Count
416 pages
Publisher
PublicAffairs
ISBN-13
9781610399579

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Andrei Soldatov

About the Author

Andrei Soldatov is an investigative journalist, co-founder, and editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services’ activities. He has been covering security services and terrorism issues since 1999, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Moscow Times, Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and BBC. He is co-author with Irina Borogan of The New Nobility. The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2010), The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015) and The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019), all published by PublicAffairs. He lives in London.

Irina Borogan is an investigative journalist, co-founder, and deputy editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services’ activities. Borogan has reported on terrorism in Yugoslavia, tensions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and has extensively chronicled the Kremlin's campaign to gain greater control of civil society. She is co-author with Andrei Soldatov of The New Nobility. The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2010), The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015) and The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019), all published by PublicAffairs. Her reporting has also been featured in the New York Times, Moscow Times, Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and BBC. She lives in London.

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Irina Borogan

About the Author

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are cofounders of Agentura.Ru and authors of The New Nobility. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Moscow Times, Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and BBC. The New York Times has called Agentura.ru “a web site that came in from the cold to unveil Russian secrets.” Soldatov and Borogan live in Moscow, Russia.

Learn more about this author