Nokia said this month that it would stop its sales in Russia and condemned the invasion of Ukraine. But the Finnish company didn’t mention what it was leaving behind: the equipment and software that links the government’s most powerful tool for digital surveillance to the country’s largest telecommunications network.
The device was used by Russian opposition leader Alexei A. Was to track Navalny’s supporters. Investigators said he intercepted phone calls from a Kremlin enemy who was later assassinated. Called the System for Operative Investigative Activities, or SORM, it is also most likely to be employed at the moment since President Vladimir V. Putin suppresses and silences anti-war voices inside Russia.
Nokia has provided equipment and services connecting SORM to Russia’s largest telecommunications service provider, MTS, for more than five years, according to company documents obtained by The New York Times. While Nokia does not make communications interception technology, the documents describe how it worked with state-affiliated Russian companies to plan, streamline and troubleshoot the connection of SORM systems to the MTS network. Russia’s main intelligence service, the FSB, uses SORM to listen in on phone conversations, intercept email and text messages, and track other Internet communications.
Documents from 2008 to 2017, show in previously unreported detail that Nokia knew it was enabling a Russian surveillance system. This work was necessary for Nokia to do business in Russia, where it became a top supplier of equipment and services to help various telecommunications customers perform their network functions. The business generated hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, even as Mr. Putin became more belligerent abroad and more controlled at home.
Over the years, multinationals capitalized on the growth in Russian demand for new technologies. Now the global outcry over the biggest war on European soil since World War II is forcing them to re-examine their roles.
The conflict in Ukraine has fueled the idea that products and services are agnostic. In the past, tech companies argued that it was better to remain in authoritarian markets, even if it meant obeying laws written by autocrats. Facebook, Google and Twitter have struggled to find a balance under censor pressure, whether in Vietnam or Russia, while Apple works with a state-owned partner in China to store customer data that officials said. can access. Intel and Nvidia sell the chips through resellers in China, allowing authorities to buy them for computers with surveillance power.
The lessons companies learn from what is happening in Russia can have consequences in other authoritarian countries where advanced technologies are sold. A rule giving the US Commerce Department the power to prevent companies including telecommunications equipment suppliers from selling technology in such locations was part of a bill called the US Competition Act that was passed by the House of Representatives in February.
“We should treat sophisticated surveillance technology the same way we treat sophisticated missile or drone technology,” said Representative Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey. “We need to have reasonable controls on the spread of this stuff like we do on other sensitive national security items.”
Russian intelligence and digital surveillance expert Andrei Solatov, who reviewed some of Nokia’s documents at the request of The Times, said that without the company’s involvement in SORM, “such a system would have been impossible to build.”
“They should have known how their tools would be used,” said Mr Solatov, who is now a fellow at the European Policy Analysis Centre.
Nokia, which did not dispute the authenticity of the documents, said that under Russian law, there is a need to create products that allow the Russian telecom operator to connect to SORM systems. Other countries make similar demands, the company said, and it will have to decide between helping the internet work or giving up entirely. Nokia also stated that it did not manufacture, install or service the SORM tool.
The company said it follows international standards, which are used by many suppliers of core network equipment, which cover government surveillance. It called on governments to set clear export rules about where the technology can be sold and said it “unequivocally condemns” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Nokia does not have the ability to control, access, or interfere with any lawful interception capability in the networks that our customers own and operate,” it said in a statement.
MTS did not respond to requests for comment.
The documents reviewed by The Times were part of nearly two terabytes of internal Nokia email, network schematics, agreements, license agreements and photos. Cybersecurity firm UpGuard and TechCrunch, a news website, previously reported some documents linking Nokia to the state surveillance system. Following those reports, Nokia lowered its participation limit.
But The Times garnered a huge cache, showing off the depth of Nokia’s knowledge of the program. The documents include correspondence on Nokia’s engineers investigating SORM, details of the company’s work at more than a dozen Russian sites, photographs of MTS networks connected to SORM, floor plans of network centers and installation instructions from the Russian firm that supervised . Device.
According to public announcements, after 2017, when the documents expired, Nokia continued to work with MTS and other Russian telcos.
Updates
March 28, 2022, 1:27 am ET
SORM, which dates back to at least the 1990s, is similar to systems used by law enforcement around the world to wiretap and survey criminal targets. Telecommunications equipment manufacturers such as Nokia are often required to ensure that such systems, known as legitimate intercepts, function smoothly within communications networks.
In a democracy, the police are usually required to obtain a court order before seeking data from telecom service providers. In Russia, the SORM system bypasses that process, acting like a surveillance black box that can take in whatever data the FSB wants without oversight.
In 2018, Russia strengthened a law requiring internet and telecommunications companies to disclose communications data to authorities even without a court order. Officials also mandated that companies store phone conversations, text messages and electronic correspondence for up to six months and Internet traffic history for 30 days. SORM works in parallel with a separate censorship system that Russia has developed to block access to websites.
Civil society groups, lawyers and activists have criticized the Russian government for using SORM to spy on Mr Putin’s rivals and critics. He said the system is now almost certainly being used to crack down on dissent against the war. This month, Mr Putin vowed to remove Western Russians, whom he called “scum and traitors” from society, and his government cut off foreign Internet services such as Facebook and Instagram.
Nokia is best known as a pioneer of mobile phones, a business that was sold in 2013 after Apple and Samsung dominated the market. It now makes up the bulk of $24 billion in annual sales, providing telecommunications equipment and services so that phone networks can function. According to market research firm Dell’Oro, about $480 million of Nokia’s annual sales come from Russia and Ukraine, or less than 2 percent of its total revenue.
In the last decade, the Kremlin had become serious about cyber espionage, and was legally required to provide telecommunications equipment providers with a gateway to espionage. If Nokia did not comply, competitors such as Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei were considered ready to do so.
According to the documents, as of 2012, Nokia was providing hardware and services to the MTS network. The project document, signed by Nokia personnel, included a schematic of the network showing how data and phone traffic should flow into SORM. Annotated photos show a cable labeled SORM being plugged into networking equipment, apparently by Nokia engineers documenting the work.
An annotated photo displayed to show the cable connecting SORM to networking equipment. Credits … The New York Times
The flow chart showed how the data would be transmitted to Moscow and FSB field offices across Russia, where agents could use computer systems to trace people’s communications without their knowledge.
The specifics of how the program is used have been largely kept secret. You would never know if the surveillance was done at all, said Sarkis Darbinian, a Russian lawyer who co-founded Roskomsvoboda, a digital rights group.
But some information about SORM has been leaked from court cases, civil society groups and journalists.
In 2011, Russian opposition leader Boris Y. Shameful phone calls made by Nemtsov were leaked to the media. Mr. Solatov, who covered the incident as an investigative reporter, said the phone recordings came from SORM surveillance. Mr Nemtsov was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015.
In 2013, a court case involving Mr Navalny included details about his communications which were believed to have been intercepted by SORM. In 2018, some communications from Mr Navalny’s supporters were tracked by SORM, said Damir Genutdinov, a Russian lawyer who represented the activists. He said phone numbers, email addresses and Internet Protocol addresses were merged with information gathered from Russia’s largest social network VK, which is also required to provide access to user data via SORM.
These tools are used not only to prosecute someone, but to fill out a dossier and collect data about someones activities, about their friends, partners, etc., Mr. Genutdinov Said, who now lives in Bulgaria. “The officers of the Federal Security Service, because of the design of this system, have unlimited access to all communications.”
By 2015, SORM was gaining international attention. That year, the European Court of Human Rights called the program a “system of covert surveillance”, which was deployed arbitrarily without adequate protection against abuse. The court eventually ruled in a case brought by a Russian journalist that the devices violated European human rights laws.
In 2016, MTS used Nokia to help them upgrade their network over large areas of Russia. According to a document, MTS made ambitious plans to install new hardware and software between June 2016 and March 2017.
According to documents, Nokia carried out SORM-related work at facilities in at least 12 cities in Russia, which show how the network connected the monitoring system. In February 2017, a Nokia employee was sent to three cities south of Moscow to investigate SORM, according to letters from a Nokia executive informing MTS employees of the trip.
Nokia worked with Malvin, a Russian firm that manufactured the SORM hardware used by the FSB. A Malvin document instructed Malvin’s partners to ensure that they entered the correct parameters for the operation of SORM on the switching hardware. It also reminded them to notify Malvin technicians of the password, username and IP address.
Malvin is one of several Russian companies that have won lucrative contracts to build equipment to analyze and sort through telecommunications data. Some of those companies, including Malvin, were owned by a Russian holding company, Citadel, controlled by Alisher Usmanov. Mr Usmanov, an oligarch along with Mr Putin, is now the subject of sanctions in the United States, the European Union, Britain and Switzerland.
Malvin and Citadel did not respond to requests for comment.
Other Nokia docs specified which cables, routers, and ports to use to connect to the surveillance system. Network Maps showed how gear from other companies, including Cisco, was plugged into SORM boxes. Cisco declined to comment.
For Nokia engineers in Russia, SORM-related tasks were often mundane. In 2017, a Nokia technician got an assignment in Orel, a town about 225 miles south of Moscow.
“Work on the exam of SORM,” he was told.
Michael Schwartz contributed reporting.
