A spokesman for the Russian president Dmitry Peskov said that the products of Russian Internet companies, "which are ahead of other similar products in the framework of free competition," will be in demand, despite the statement by the FBI that they pose a threat.
“Can this competition be stopped by such decisions of the FBI? I don’t think, ”said Peskov.
In turn, in "Rostec"
The FBI said mobile apps developed in Russia threaten US security. The corresponding letter was sent by the American intelligence service to the leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer. He previously demanded that the FBI check the FaceApp application created in Russia. On December 2, the senator notified the public that he had received an official response.
A warning to share with your family & friends:
This year when millions were downloading #FaceApp, I asked the FBI if the app was safe.
Well, the FBI just responded.
And they told me any app or product developed in Russia like FaceApp is a potential counterintelligence threat. pic.twitter.com/ioMzpp2Xi5
“In any of the mobile applications or similar products developed in Russia, such as FaceApp, the FBI sees a potential counterintelligence threat based on the nature of the data they collect, the rules for using and protecting privacy, and the legal mechanisms by which the Russian government can take advantage of it to gain access to data within its borders, ”says a letter to Sumer signed by Jill Tyson, deputy director of the FBI Congress Relations Department.
Recall that the FaceApp application, created back in 2017 by the Russian company Wireless Lab, has become very popular in recent months. It allows users to edit photos, “changing” the age and even gender of the person in the picture. In July, Russian Forbes reported that in 10 days the application brought developers more than $ 1 million.
At the same time, Senator Chuck Schumer appealed to the FBI and the US Federal Trade Commission, saying that there is a danger of transferring data of American citizens using FaceApp to the disposal of a “foreign power that takes hostile actions against the United States in cyberspace.” The politician asked the competent authorities to check whether the Russian authorities can access the data of US citizens and how to protect military and civil servants from this.
BIG: Share if you used #FaceApp:
The @FBI & @FTC must look into the national security & privacy risks now
Because millions of Americans have used it
It's owned by a Russia-based company
And users are required to provide full, irrevocable access to their personal photos & data pic.twitter.com/cejLLwBQcr
The developer of FaceApp, Yaroslav Goncharov, then denied the allegations against his product, saying that Wireless Lab does not transfer user data to third parties.
“Judging by themselves”
The FBI’s letter also states that “if the FBI concludes that elected officials, campaign headquarters, or political parties have become targets of foreign influence operations using FaceApp, then it will organize alerts, depending on the circumstances, begin an investigation and engage a working group against foreign influence. "
- © Yuri Gripas / Reuters
The American intelligence service, however, did not explain exactly how the Russian mobile application could affect American politics.
In its argument, the FBI emphasizes that the Russian special services supposedly can get unhindered access to data inside Russian Internet networks. At the same time, the American intelligence agency writes that FaceApp does not store images in Russia, but in cloud services in the USA, Singapore, Ireland and Australia. How in this case, the data of the Americans can fall into the hands of Russian special services, the FBI does not explain.
The FBI recognizes that the request for data access, which the user must agree to when downloading FaceApp, is generally not different from the requirements of other applications in the world. The specificity of the service is only the ability to edit photos.
According to experts, theoretically, any mobile applications are at risk and users should be wary of them. According to Russian entrepreneur and IT expert, CEO of Ashmanov & Partners Igor Ashmanov, the US suspects Russia of what they themselves have repeatedly been convicted of.
“They judge by themselves,” Ashmanov explained to the FBI in a conversation with RT. “The FBI knows that all applications in the US are controlled by US intelligence.”
Information has repeatedly appeared in the media about how American intelligence agencies monitor citizens of the United States and other countries using Internet technologies. Revelations about the PRISM NSA secret program by Edward Snowden in 2013 showed that the intelligence agency had access to data from users of Google, Facebook, Apple and other American IT giants. I informed about this and the project WikiLeaks Julian Assange.
In May, Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced that Facebook’s WhatsApp application could provide the FBI with access to user data.
Why WhatsApp will never be secure https://t.co/kHfTiWdNQw
- Pavel Durov (@durov) 15 de mayo de 2019According to Igor Ashmanov, even if we take for granted the FBI's arguments about Russian mobile applications, it is not they who pose a real threat to data security.
“FaceApp cannot seriously influence something, because it is neither a news application, nor a social networking application. The FBI believes that it collects data on individuals and passes it to someone. But everyone does it. And Facebook itself collects dozens of times more user information than FaceApp, ”said Ashmanov.“ FaceApp doesn't have many users compared to Twitter or Facebook. This is an exaggerated threat. The real threat is social networks and social applications. ”
“They Will Return”
In a commentary to the Daily News, Chuck Schumer urged Americans to remove FaceApp from their mobile phones as soon as possible and said that the Apple App Store should not offer the application for download. According to the American politician, the FBI should "get to the bottom of the truth."
“We should be wary of further penetration of Russia's tentacles into the American election,” quoted The New York Daily News as quoted by Chuck Schumer.
The topic of Russian “interference” in American politics has not disappeared from public space after the publication of the report of the commission of Special Prosecutor Robert Muller this spring. On the contrary, American politicians and officials continue to make statements about Russian “interference”, including suggesting that it may “recur” in 2020.
- Chuck Schumer
- © Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
In early November, Chris Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency, part of the US Department of Homeland Security, said in an interview with CBS that the Russians could “return.”
“They will be back. They want to work on our minds. They’re trying, so to speak, to crack our brains and ultimately ensure that we lose faith in our processes, ”the American official said.
During a congressional hearing about the impeachment of Donald Trump in late November that Russia will try to interfere in the 2020 elections, Fiona Hill, an ex-Trump administration official, said. Previously, she was responsible for the Russian and European directions in the US National Security Council. Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference is also mentioned in the invitation to the impeachment hearing, which the other day the US Senate Legal Committee sent to Donald Trump.
As an expert of the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Konstantin Blokhin noted in an interview with RT, the suggestion that Russia could intervene in American elections using a mobile application or “crack the brains” of respectable citizens is beneficial to the part of the American establishment that is harnessing the money allocated to fight Russian threat.
“They are trying to find the Russian trace everywhere. This is beneficial for Democrats and all those in the United States who are not interested in normalizing relations with Russia. Not only billions, trillions of dollars are being earned on deterring Russia, on confrontation with Russia, ”Blokhin said. “Although I personally don’t know how to make an American citizen vote for Trump or Biden with the help of an aging person in the application.”
Fighting competitors
FaceApp is not the only Russian software product that has troubled Washington. Back in 2017, the US president signed a law prohibiting the use of products of the Russian IT company Kaspersky Lab for US government agencies.
- globallookpress.com
- © Manuel Romano / ZUMAPRESS.com
US authorities and Chinese communications technology are worrying. In particular, earlier, Chuck Schumer, together with Republican Senator Tom Cotton, asked acting director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire to conduct an investigation into the Chinese TikTok service, which allows the exchange of short video messages, as well as other Chinese media platforms.
On November 21, U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said the military was investigating whether TikTok posed a security risk.
On December 2, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on European authorities not to cooperate with Chinese 5G technology companies because of fears of espionage. A few days earlier, the Pentagon called on US companies to contribute to the development of 5G technology.
Director of the Cybersecurity Agency Yevgeny Lifshits, in a conversation with RT, emphasized that for American politicians cyberthreats, allegedly coming from hypothetical opponents of the United States, are a beneficial topic.
“The tech sector of IT is less understood by most people. Therefore, it’s easiest to create informational stuffing and informational cases in it, blaming a particular country, including Russia for any incident, ”RT Livshits said.
In turn, Konstantin Blokhin suggests that the United States, calling the technology of competitors “spyware”, is simply trying to oust them from its market.
“FaceApp has become a concrete competition for US applications. It is rapidly gaining popularity. And in America, apparently, they decided, under the pretext of protecting US national security, to thus simply eliminate a competitor in the economic sphere, ”the political scientist concluded.