Is the Kremlin about to increase its control over the digital sphere? The Russian government, which plans to ban WhatsApp and its millions of local users, is massively directing its population to fall back on Max, a new local messaging service denounced as a possible surveillance tool by lawyers.
Offered by the Russian social media giant VKontakte – which maintains close links with Russian power circles – since the start of the year, Max is presented as a super-application giving access to both administration services and the possibility of ordering a pizza, like WeChat or Alipay in China. The application already has nearly 50 million users, according to pro-Kremlin media.
The government has asked manufacturers to automatically include it in all new phones and tablets on sale since September 1, while blocking the possibility of making calls on foreign messaging services like WhatsApp, which claims 100 million users in Russia.
“Digital control tool”
On Friday, media regulator Roskomnadzor announced that it was considering banning WhatsApp altogether, in the name of fighting crime. Since August, calls have already been impossible with the application owned by Meta. Authorities stress the importance of cutting Russian dependence on foreign platforms that store data.
In the absence of end-to-end encryption, however, it would be a powerful surveillance tool, believe lawyers defending freedoms and rights and NGOs. Russian political opponent Andrei Okun denounced a “digital gulag”: a sterile space “in which the authorities will have total control over the leisure activities, motivations and thoughts of citizens”.
In the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, Max is already being used to replace local digital services and cut off external communications. In a press release, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounces “a tool of digital control, enclosing the occupied territories of Ukraine in an information prison”.
Russians divided
“I don’t have much confidence,” confides Ekaterina, a 39-year-old doctor, without wanting to give her last name. Her employer asked her to install Max but she still mainly uses WhatsApp for her private exchanges. “There’s a whole personal history of messages that I don’t want to lose, and exchanges for my work,” she says, with “a lot of patients on it.”
Andrei Ivanov, 33, is divided: data on WhatsApp can “be stolen by other countries” but it is “practical for communicating”. Forcing people to change “is a form of restriction of our freedoms,” he criticizes. Some Russians are reluctant to use the application, which is much less powerful than its competitors and offers many fewer guarantees in terms of confidentiality.
“No one is fooled. We all know that it is a way to listen to us more effectively and to prevent us from organizing or demonstrating,” points out Nikolaï, a retired professor from Saint Petersburg interviewed by the weekly Le Point.
Others trust the Kremlin. “For me, everything that is created abroad is now a threat to us,” disputes Sergei Abramov, retired, 67 years old. Maria Isakova, 36, agrees: “Our country is inherently good at adapting to changing circumstances. We adapt, there are other messaging services, alternatives. I don’t see the problem.”
Ties with power
The general director of Max is none other than Vladimir Kirienko, son of Sergei Kirienko, deputy head of the presidential administration and close to Vladimir Putin. “Max, who is clearly a spy in your pocket (…) Everything is connected to the Sorm system, controlled by the FSB (Russian secret services)”, estimates Sarkis Darbinyan, lawyer, founder of the NGO defending the rights of Internet users Roskomsvoboda, to franceinfo.
WhatsApp, for its part, believes it is in the crosshairs because the encryption method used by the platform, owned by the American giant Meta, allows messages to be encoded as they leave the sender’s device until they are read by the recipient.
The platform ensures that its servers store encrypted messages, which are destroyed once delivered, and that it refrains from communicating anything to governments. This does not seem to have convinced the government, which has already been insisting since this summer that WhatsApp (like Telegram) “offers resources to terrorists and extremists of all stripes who call for a change of power in our country and aim to destroy Russia. »