A US-backed campaign is giving Russians access to anti-censorship software to circumvent Moscow’s crackdown on dissent against the invasion of Ukraine, groups involved have told AFP.
Russia has tightened its restrictions on independent media since attacking its neighbor in February, with journalists facing prosecution for criticizing the invasion or even calling it a war.
The US government-backed Open Technology Fund is paying money to a handful of American companies that are making virtual private networks (VPNs) available to millions of Russians for free, which they can then use to visit censorship-blocked websites.
Traditional VPN software creates a private tunnel on the Internet through which data flows, usually encrypted, protected from spying—and its use has boomed in Russia since the invasion.
“Our tool is primarily used by people trying to gain access to independent media, so the funding from the OTF was absolutely critical,” said a spokesman for Lantern, one of the companies involved.
Technology firms Psiphon and nthLink have also made sophisticated anti-censorship applications available to the people of Russia, with OTF estimating that around four million users in Russia have received VPNs from the firms.
Psiphon has seen a massive spike in Russian users, with numbers rising from about 48,000 the day before the Feb. 24 invasion to more than a million a day by mid-March, said Dirk Rodenburg, the company’s senior advisor.
The company’s Russian-language tools are now used by almost 1.5 million users on average every day, he added.
While some, like Ukraine’s leadership, are calling for Russia to be cut off from the internet, others have noted that access for opposition groups is vital.
“It’s very important for Russians to be connected to the entire World Wide Web to keep the resistance going,” said Natalia Krapiva, technical legal adviser at rights group Access Now, which isn’t involved in the OTF effort.
“There are all kinds of initiatives and to keep them alive you need the internet because you can’t gather in person or because activists are scattered around the world,” she added.
Keeping VPNs up and running and accessible was relatively easy in the early days of the war, said Lucas, Lantern’s spokesman, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used.
“They weren’t willing to block anything,” Lucas said. “Over time, Russia has learned to block the simple things, but Lantern and Psiphon are still operational.”
– Lesson from China, Myanmar –
Censors try to cut VPN software off of servers they rely on to function, or block people from going to websites where the tools can be downloaded.
As a result, crackdowns on internet freedom typically result in people sharing VPNs through guerrilla tactics like word of mouth.
However, groups like Lantern have adopted methods such as hiding VPN installers on online platforms that are too important for the government to block and building a network so users can share the technology with others, Lucas said .
“What’s different about Lantern and Psiphon is that we do all sorts of much more sophisticated things to hide our traffic and bypass detection on our servers,” he said.
People in Russia are benefiting as VPN makers refine their tools while battling censorship in countries like China and Myanmar.
“There was a moment about two years ago where China really upped the level of their game when it came to how long they wanted to block stuff,” Lucas said.
“We’ve raised the level of our game tremendously,” he added.
The US government funding provided through OTF has been important to its operations as costs for VPN makers in Russia soared and revenue vanished as sanctions kicked in and companies pulled out of the country.
OTF said it typically spends $3-4 million a year funding VPNs, but that number has been increased due to censorship in Russia.
Psiphon has received funding from the US government for more than 14 years, with the money generally being used to improve tools used to counter new tactics used by authoritarian regimes, the company told AFP.
Despite efforts to make VPN technology available to those who want it, many people still don’t have access.
“The use of virtual private networks and other methods has increased significantly in Russia, but it still makes up only a small percentage of the population,” Access Now’s Krapiva told AFP.
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