User:Evackost/Mondightmany

Criticism
The FSB has been criticised for corruption, human rights violations, secret police activities targeting dissidents, and the use of chemical weapons.

Murat Zyazikov
On August 31, 2008, after using the same aeroplane as Zyazikov, journalist Magomet Yevloyev was arrested at the airport. Yevloyev was shot in the temple and killed while in Nazran police custody. Weeks before his killing, Magomet reportedly knew his life was in danger and had planned on seeking political asylum in a European Union country. Local police claimed that Yevloyev was shot after he had attempted to grab an assault rifle from one of the police officers in the car. Human rights groups have rejected this account of Yevloyev's death, and the US State Department has called for an investigation of the killing and that those responsible be "held to account for what happened". A spokesman for Vladimir Putin has said that an investigation will take place, but added that "Yevloyev [had] resisted arrest". In the summer of 2008, Human Rights Watch was also investigating the country's record.

Targeting of dissident Russian nationals
Some Kremlin critics such as Alexander Litvinenko have claimed that the FSB is engaged in suppression of internal dissent; Litvinenko died in 2006 as a result of polonium poisoning.

A number of opposition lawmakers and investigative journalists were murdered while investigating corruption and other alleged crimes: Sergei Yushenkov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Galina Starovoitova, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, Paul Klebnikov, Nadezhda Chaikova, Nina Yefimova, and others.

Recently, the FSB was criticised by western sources for monitoring a gathering of members of the Jehovahs Witnesses while they were about to undergo baptism rites.

The FSB has been further criticised by some for failure to bring Islamist terrorism in Russia under control. In the mid-2000s, the pro-Kremlin Russian sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya claimed that FSB played a dominant role in the country's political, economic and even cultural life. FSB officers have been frequently accused of torture,

Former FSB officer, a defector, Alexander Litvinenko, along with a series of other authors such as Yury Felshtinsky, David Satter, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky, Mikhail Trepashkin (also former FSB officer) claimed in the early 2000s that the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities were a false flag attack coordinated by the FSB in order to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya and boost former FSB Director Vladimir Putin's, then the prime minister, popularity in the lead-up to parliamentary elections and presidential transfer of power in Russia later that year.

After the annexation of Crimea, the FSB may also have been responsible for the forced disappearances and torture of Crimean Tatar activists and public figures. Some, such as Oleh Sentsov, have been detained and accused in politically motivated kangaroo courts.

Corruption
In spite of various anti-corruption actions of the government FSB operatives and officials are routinely found in the center of various fraud, racket and corruption scandals.

Three Whales corruption scandal
Three Whales (Tri kita/Три кита) is a Moscow furniture shopping complex owned by Sergei Zuev. On August 13, 2000, Russian Customs inspectors suspended it and seized a furniture consignment supplied by the companies Bastion and Liga Mars, as they allegedly had smuggled 400 tons of furniture into Russia, while Zuev had evaded $5 million of Customs duty by falsifying the price and weight of the imported goods. On October 20, 2000, Captain Pavel Zaitsev filed a criminal case against Liga Mars initiated on September 7 by the Moscow Oblast Directorate of Internal Affairs.

the backer of Three Whales is FSB Deputy Director General Colonel Yury Zaostrovtsev and his father, Yevgeny, a retired FSB major general who was responsible for Grand's security. The elder Zaostrovtsev was also a KGB boss of current FSB head Nikolai Patrushev. Zaitsev also discovered that corrupt Russian officials were attempting to launder hundreds of million of dollars through Liga Mars and the Bank of New York in the 1990s.

The Customs inspectors found that the Three Whales shop was controlled by Yevgeny Zaostrovtsev, a former chief of now FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev and the father of FSB General Yury Zaostrovtsev who at that time was the Head of the Economic Security Department and a Deputy Director of FSB.

Businessman Aleksei Shmatko fled Russia in 2014 and applied for asylum in the United Kingdom. He alleged the FSB's involvement in extortion, bribery and illegal takeovers of private companies, working together with tax inspection officers. Active and former FSB officers are also present as "curators" in "almost every single large enterprise", both in public and private sectors.

Russian doping scandal
In December 2014 German television network ARD broadcast Hajo Seppelt's documentary film The Doping Secret: How Russia Makes its Winners (Geheimsache Doping: Wie Russland seine Sieger macht) featuring testimonials from Russian athletes about systematic doping in athletics and other sports in Russia.

Following the broadcast, World Anti-Doping Agency President Craig Reedie authorized a three person Independent Commission (IC) under Richard Pound to investigate the issues brought up by the documentary. In November 2015, the IC authorized a review of practices by "whether have been any breaches of processes or rules (Code and International Standards)," by Russian Anti-Doping Agency and IAAF (though not exclusively).

The November 2015 IC Investigative Report found direct interference into the laboratory’s operations by the Russian State undermined the laboratory’s independence and that tests conducted by the laboratory were highly suspect. The report elaborates on the role of the FSB:"[A] laboratory staff member reported that an FSB agent regularly visits the Moscow laboratory. The IC sources within the laboratory identified the FSB agent as Evgeniy Blotkin/Blokhin. Sources reported that Moscow laboratory Director Rodchenkov was required to meet with Evgeniy Blotkin weekly to update him on the “mood of WADA.”

One laboratory staff member provided information to IC investigators about the suspected bugging or wiretapping of telephones, while another staff member reported that office spaces within the Moscow laboratory were monitored (bugged) by the FSB in order to be informed of the laboratory’s activities. This could not be independently verified by the IC, but the reported statements demonstrate the perceptions of laboratory officials, who believe they are under constant state surveillance. This perception is also fuelled by the FSB’s regular visits to the laboratory and the questioning of its staff members. For example, the IC learned that staff members were routinely questioned by FSB upon their return from global laboratory and WADA seminars. Following the airing of the ARD documentary, select laboratory staff members were directed by the FSB not to cooperate with the WADA investigation."

Following the release of the IC report, WADA suspended the Moscow Antidoping Center. From November 2015 to May 2016. the United Kingdom Anti-Doping agency assisted WADA with testing in Russia. In June 2016, they reported that Doping Control Officers were unable to fully carry out their work and noted intimidation by armed Federal Security Service (FSB) agents.

In January 2016, Moscow laboratory Director Grigory Rodchenkov fled Russia aboard a flight to Los Angeles. He gave an interview to The New York Times the following May exposing the doping program in Russia, admitting to development of a three-drug cockatail of banned Performance-enhancing substances provided to dozens of athletes at 2014 Sochi Olympics. The Financial Times reports that United States granted Rodchenkov asylum in 2019 and that he lives in the witness protection program.

As a result of the scandals the International Association of Athletics Federations suspended Russia from all international athletic competitions including the 2016 Summer Olympics. Russian weightlifters were banned from Rio Olympics for numerous anti-doping violations as well.

In July 2016, the first McLaren Report found that "beyond a reasonable doubt" the Russian Ministry of Sport, the Centre of Sports Preparation of the National Teams of Russia, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the WADA-accredited laboratory in Moscow "operated for the protection of doped Russian athletes" within a "state-directed failsafe system" using "the disappearing positive [test] methodology."

In a second McLaren Report released December 2016, it was found that "In the period before the Sochi Games, a “clean urine bank” was established at the FSB Command Centre, which was situated immediately adjacent to the Sochi Laboratory. Inside that building a dedicated room containing several large freezers was set up for the purpose of storing the clean urine samples."

International hacking and sabotage
On 29 December 2016, the White House accused and sanctioned the FSB and several other Russian companies for what the US intelligence agencies said was their role in helping the Russian military intelligence service, the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) disrupt and spread disinformation during the 2016 US presidential election. In addition, the State Department also declared 35 Russian diplomats and officials persona non-grata and denied Russian government officials access to two Russian-owned installations in Maryland and New York.

Yahoo data breach
In late 2016, reports surfaced of a tranche of hundreds of millions of Yahoo! account credentials. The hackers had obtained data from over 500 million user accounts, including account names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords, and in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. Security experts noted that the majority of Yahoo!'s passwords used the bcrypt hashing algorithm, which is considered difficult to crack, with the rest using the older MD5 algorithm, which can be broken rather quickly.

On March 15, 2017, the FBI officially charged four defendants in the 2014 breach. Two were for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). In its statement, the FBI said "The criminal conduct at issue, carried out and otherwise facilitated by officers from an FSB unit that serves as the FBI's point of contact in Moscow on cybercrime matters, is beyond the pale."

The four named suspects were Alexsey Belan, a hacker on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, FSB agents Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin who the FBI accused of paying Belan and other hackers to conduct the hack, and Canadian hacker Karim Baratov who the FBI claimed was paid by Dokuchaev and Sushchin to use data obtained by the Yahoo! breaches to breach into about 80 non-Yahoo! accounts of specific targets. Baratov, the only man currently arrested, was extradited to the United States, though had claimed not guilty to the charges in August 2017. However, he later pled guilty, admitting to hacking into at least 80 email accounts on behalf of Russian contacts. He was charged with nine counts of hacking, and in May 2018 sentenced to 5 years in prison and ordered to pay US$2.25 million and restitution to his victims.

Berserk Bear
In 2021, federal grand juries in the United States indicted three personnel of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) alongside a civilian from the Central Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (CNIIHM). These indictments were kept under seal until March 2022 when the United States publicly named the defendants and treated them as fugitives.

“Center 16” defendants
The indictment in the case United States v. Akulov, et al. is focused on three members of a team within "Center 16" (16-й Центр) an FSB component also known as Military Unit 71330 (Bойсковая часть B/Ч 71330).

The British Foreign Office states that the full name of Center 16 is "Radio-Electronic Intelligence by Means of Communication" (TsRRSS); Центр радиоэлектронной разведки на средствах связи (ЦPPCC))

The U.S. v. Akulov case was filed within the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. The named defendants are:
 * Pavel Aleksandrovich Akulov (Павел Александрович Акулов, b. 2 July 1985) is described as a military officer assigned to Military Unit 71330, who held the rank of lieutenant as of 2013. Akulov is descibed as conducting surveillance and reconnaissance supporting the targeting of the Wolf Creek Generating Station computer network.
 * Mikhail Mikhailovich Gavrilov (Михаил Михайлович Гаврилов, b. 7 November 1979) is described as Russian military intelligence officer assigned to Military Unit 71330. He has held the rank of captain and major. He is described as conducting computer intrusions into the computer networks of Wolf Creek and another unnamed entity ("Company 7") used to access energy, utility and critical infrastructure webmail login webpages.
 * Marat Valeryevich Tyukov (Марат Валерьевич Тюков, b. 17 November 17 1982) is described as a Russian military intelligence officer assigned to Military Unit 71330. He is alleged to have gained unauthorized access to a server owned by an unnamed entity ("Company One") that was used for command and control infrastructure. He is also accused of tampering with updates to industrial control software which affected power and energy companies globally.

FBI and Department of State designation
The U.S. State Department Rewards for Justice Program is offering $10 million for tips leading that lead to the apprehension of the four named "Berserk Bear" suspects.

Other stuff
In September 2017, WikiLeaks released "Spy Files Russia," revealing "how a St. Petersburg-based technology company called Peter-Service helped state entities gather detailed data on Russian cellphone users, part of a national system of online surveillance called System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) (Система оперативно-разыскных мероприятий)." SORM-1 is for wiretapping phones. SORM-2 intercepts electronic correspondence and Internet traffic. Beginning in the summer of 2014, SORM-3 has been "on guard" and integrates all telecommunication services in real time.