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Russia’s most daring moves to censor the internet began in the most mundane of ways, with a series of bureaucratic emails and forms.

In the messages sent by Russia’s powerful internet regulator, technical details such as traffic numbers, equipment specifications and connection speeds were requested from companies providing internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then came the black boxes.

Telecom companies had no choice but to step aside as government-approved technicians installed the equipment near their computer systems and servers. Sometimes new hardware fitted behind locks and keys connects to a command center in Moscow, giving authorities surprising new powers to block, filter and slow down websites they don’t want the Russian public to see.

The process continues since 2019represents the beginning of perhaps the world’s most ambitious digital censorship effort outside of China. Under President Vladimir V. PutinThe Russian government, which once called the internet a “CIA project” and sees the web as a threat to its power, is trying to bring the country’s once open and freely circulating internet to its knees.

The equipment is placed in equipment rooms of Russia’s largest telecom and internet service providers, including a veteran company Rostelecom, MTS, MegaFon and Vympelcom. Russian MP appeared this year. It affects the vast majority of over 120 million wireless and home internet users in the country, according to researchers and activists.

As Twitter slows down in the country, the world sees Russia’s new vehicles for the first time this spring. Researchers and activists said it was the first time the filtration system had been operated. Another sites blocked, including several people linked to imprisoned opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny.

“This is something the world can emulate,” said Laura Cunningham, former head of the State Department’s internet freedom programs. “Russia’s censorship model can be quickly and easily copied by other authoritarian governments.”

Russia’s censorship technology is between companies providing internet access and people surfing the web on a phone or laptop. Often likened to intercepting mailed letters, the software – known as “deep packet inspection” – filters data circulating on an internet network, slowing websites down or removing anything programmed to block them.

The blackouts threaten to disrupt Russia’s booming digital life. While the political system is tied to the personality cult of Mr. Putin and television broadcasters and newspapers face tight restrictions, online culture brimming with activism, black humor and foreign content. Widely censoring the internet could return the country to a deeper form of isolation, similar to the Cold War era.

“I was born in an era of the super-free internet, and now I’m seeing its downfall,” said Ksenia Ermoshina, a researcher from Russia who now works at the French National Center for Scientific Research. He published an article about censorship technology in April.

The censorship infrastructure was described by 17 Russian telecom experts, activists, researchers and academics, many of whom declined to be named because they feared reprisals. Government documents reviewed by The New York Times also summarized some of the technical details and requests made to telecom and internet service providers.

Russia uses censorship technology to gain greater leverage over Western internet companies, in addition to other powerful weapons tactics and legal intimidation. After September, The government threatened to arrest Companies that are local employees of Google and Apple removed apps run by Mr Navalny’s supporters ahead of national elections.

The country’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, who oversees the effort, can now go even further. He threatened to shut down YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram if they didn’t block certain content on their own. After authorities slowed Twitter down this year, the company agreed to remove dozens of posts deemed illegal by the government.

Russia’s censorship efforts met with little resistance. Leaders in the United States and Europe, once full-fledged proponents of the open internet, have largely remained silent about the deepening distrust in Silicon Valley. regulating the worst internet abuses themselves. Russian officials have pointed to the West’s tech industry regulation to justify their own crackdown.

“It’s striking that this hasn’t caught the attention of the Biden administration,” said Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration. Apple criticized Facebook, Google and Twitter for not speaking out more strongly against Russia’s policies.

A White House spokesperson said the administration had discussed freedom of expression online with the Russian government, and also urged the Kremlin to “stop its repression campaign to censor critics”.

In a statement, Roskomnadzor didn’t touch on filtering technology, but said foreign social networks continue to ignore Russian internet laws that ban incitement and content on issues that “divide the state” such as drug use and extremist organizations. “Russian legislation in the field of media and information does not allow censorship,” the statement said, adding that the law “clearly defines the types of content that is harmful and threatening” to citizens.

YouTube’s owner Google and Twitter declined to comment. Apple did not respond to requests for comment. Facebook didn’t specifically mention Russia in its statement, but said it “committed to respecting the human rights of everyone who uses our products.”

Rostelecom, one of Russia’s largest internet service providers, directed questions to Roskomnadzor. MegaFon declined to comment. MTS and Vympelcom did not respond to requests for comment.

Many question whether Russia has the technical expertise or political will to cut off the major online sources of entertainment, information and work for its citizens. In 2018, before the new censorship technology was implemented, authorities gave up on an effort to shut down the popular messaging service. Telegram because of technical problems and public anger. Many see YouTube as a future target due to its use by independent media and critics of the Kremlin, which may cause a backlash.

However, internet access is increasingly used as a tool of political power. In recent years governments in India, Myanmar, Ethiopia and elsewhere internet outages to strangle opposition pockets. Russia shut down the internet during anti-government protests in the southern region of Ingushetia in 2018 and in Moscow in 2019.

China inspired. For years, Russian politicians have been in talks with Chinese officials about doing things on their own. Great Firewall, I even once talked to the architect of filters that block foreign sites. During China’s World Internet Conference in 2019, Roskomnadzor signed an agreement with its Chinese analogue promising tighter government controls over the internet.

But unlike China, which has three state-run telecoms that get people online, there are thousands of internet providers in Russia, making censorship even harder. This is where black boxes come into play and provide government officials with a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer to filter certain websites and services without cutting off all access.

Russia has a long history of censorship. For decades, international telephone lines were curtailed and radio jammers blocked foreign broadcasts. The state still tightly controls television.

The internet was different. considered to have played a role in the Boris Yeltsin He came to power in 1991, allowing pro-democracy groups in Russia and beyond to coordinate and exchange information. In the following years, fiber optic cables were laid to connect the country to the global internet.

Mr. Putin tried to put that genie back in the bottle. Surveillance systems monitor people’s online activities, and some bloggers have been arrested. country in 2012 made a law It required internet service providers to block thousands of banned websites, but this was difficult to implement and many sites remained available.

So in May 2019, Mr Putin signed in a new phase: a “sovereign internet” law that forces internet providers to install “technical tools to counter threats” – software-laden equipment for government monitoring, filtering and redirecting internet traffic without any intervention or knowledge of companies.

The law established a record of transnational internet cables entering the country and key exchange points to which internet networks in Russia connect. Experts said this map made it easier for authorities to shut down parts of the network.

Since then, hundreds of companies have received orders from Roskomnadzor. The regulator requested information on companies’ computer systems and what settings should be used to allow the Center for Monitoring and Management of Public Communications Networks, a government body, to remotely access their networks, according to documents shared with The Times.

Mikhail Klimarev, an industry analyst who works with Russian internet firms like Rostelecom, later said government-approved contractors installed filtering equipment, allowing the regulator to block, slow down or redirect traffic.

“A blocking system has been installed at the border of every Russian internet provider,” he said.

The technology is currently located in 500 locations of telecom operators, covering 100 percent of mobile internet traffic and 73 percent of broadband traffic, said a Russian official participating in the program. said Wednesday. The technology will be in more than 1,000 places next year, the official said.

The filtering technology is being made by companies, including RDP.ru, a government-affiliated Russian telecommunications technology provider, according to University of Michigan researchers and Russian telecom experts. in RDPs Web siteboasts “high-performance URL filtering of banned sites” that allows operators to comply with Russian laws. The company sells products in Belarus and Kazakhstan, countries where human rights groups have documented internet censorship.

RDP.ru did not respond to a request for comment.

Attacking Twitter, which is not very popular in Russia, was a “significant moment”, said Andrei Soldatov, co-author of “The Red Web,” a book about the Russian internet. University of Michigan researchers measured connectivity slows by about 87 percent, only slightly better than cellular networks in the early 2000s.

“It showed that they have these abilities and they can use it,” Mr. Soldatov said.

Oleg Matsnev contributing reporting. Additional production Gray Beltran.