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The mirror site of RFE/RL's Uzbek Service
The mirror site of RFE/RL's Uzbek Service
A website has been set up to mirror the site of RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, in what could be a phishing scheme to harvest user information.
The site, ozod.orca.uz, is a crude knock-off of Ozodlik, with RFE/RL's logo and branding. Since RFE/RL's Uzbek Service reported about the site on February 14, the mirror has been blocked.
Creating mirror sites can help websites under attack from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks or to circumvent websites that have been blocked. But it has also been used as a tool by repressive regimes to misinform.
To enter the ozod.orca.uz site and access Ozodlik articles, users had to provide a name, e-mail address, and password.
The frontpage of the mirror site also listed proxies advertised by Ozodlik, which has been blocked in Uzbekistan since the brutal suppression of unrest in Andijan in 2005. It also listed two Ozodlik emails and a third, yangilik@bk.ru, which does not relate to RFE/RL.
In recent weeks, an unknown person approached RFE/RL's Uzbek Service by email and Skype asking if it was safe to set up a mirror site. RFE/RL declined to cooperate.
According to a Berlin-based computer specialist, who wishes to remain anonymous, the same person approached him and reportedly tried to recruit him to work for Uzbekistan's National Security Service (SNB).
In Uzbekistan, the operators responsible for the .uz domain are closely linked to the state. To register a .uz domain, users would need to provide passport information to the hosting company. Most independent websites are hosted outside Uzbekistan. According to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), which monitors web censorship worldwide, Internet Service Providers risk having their licenses removed if they post "inappropriate" information.
A representative from the company that hosted the mirror site, Orca.uz, told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service that anyone can register on their domain. "We are not aiming to persecute or pursue anyone. However, if there is a website that goes against Uzbek law or a porn site, we will remove that," the representative said.
The site could have been a genuine attempt to set up a mirror of Ozodlik, rather than a phishing scheme, where fake sites are set up to gain user information by malicious means.
However, Galima Bukharbaeva, the editor of uznews.net, a leading independent website, says that mirroring sites is not a good way in Uzbekistan to avoid censorship.
"If we launch a mirror site, we will be somehow promoting it but after a while that site will also be blocked and even if we had a new IP that would then be blocked," Bukharbaeva said.
If the website was connected to Uzbekistan's security services, it could yield important password and log-in information from opposition-minded individuals. The authorities could also potentially track down users by IP addresses. Sources in Uzbekistan, who wish to remain anonymous because of fears about their safety, told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service that they had been approached by security personnel to set up mirror sites of leading independent and opposition websites.
According to the ONI, Uzbekistan has the "most pervasive regime of filtering and censorship" in the CIS. In addition to filtering, "the security forces in Uzbekistan manually check Internet access at 'edge locations' (such as Internet cafes) and monitor users’ activities."
The Uzbek authorities have also tried to lure users away from social-networking sites, which have become a forum for dissent outside state control. In August 2011, the Uzbek authorities launched Muloqot, which translates as "dialogue," a slick Facebook alternative, tied to the state telecom monopoly and requiring users to sign in with an Uzbek telephone number.
Other repressive governments have experimented with cloning websites popular with the democratic opposition.
In the late 1990s, websites were set up to mirror the sites of exiled Kazakh opposition figures. The most well-known case was the website of Akezhan Kazhegeldin, a former Kazakh prime minister, who left Kazakhstan in the late 1990s saying he feared persecution. While the original websites were often political and critical of the Kazakh government, the mirrors presented nonpolitical or entertained-related content.
During postelection protests in Belarus in December 2010, independent and news websites (including RFE/RL's Belarus Service) were mirrored, although it is unclear by who.
The sites would present sanitized versions of the content on opposition and independent websites and misinformation about the time and location of opposition rallies. The YouTube page of RFE/RL's Belarus Service was also cloned and also offered sanitized content.
Last year, I wrote about Russia's "human bots," aka its 30-ruble army -- online commentators who were paid to trawl the web and comment on articles critical of the Kremlin.
Much like China's 50-cent party, these online commentators are paid a few hundred dollars to leave 70 comments a day from 50 different accounts. Hard to pin exactly on the Kremlin (it's the type of shady public-private partnership the Kremlin excels at), but entirely consistent with the Russian authorities' approach to the Internet: less filtering, more narrative-shaping.

There are now more details about how exactly this process works, after a group of Anonymous hackers released private e-mails allegedly from the pro-Kremlin group, Nashi.
The group has uploaded hundreds of emails it says are to, from and between Vasily Yakemenko, the first leader of the youth group Nashi – now head of the Kremlin's Federal Youth Agency – its spokeswoman, Kristina Potupchik, and other activists. The emails detail payments to journalists and bloggers, the group alleges.
[…]
Apparently sent between November 2010 and December 2011, the emails appear to confirm critics' longstanding suspicions that the group uses sinister methods, funded by the Kremlin, to attack perceived enemies and pay for favourable reports while claiming that Putin's popularity is unassailable.

They provide particular insight into the group's strategy to boost pro-Putin coverage on the internet, which in contrast to television is seen as being ruled by the opposition. Several emails sent from activists to Potupchik include price lists for pro-Putin bloggers and commenters, indicating that some are paid as much as 600,000 roubles (£12,694) for leaving hundreds of comments on negative press articles on the internet. One email, sent to Potupchik on 23 June 2011, suggests that the group planned to spend more than R10m to buy a series of articles about its annual Seliger summer camp in two popular Russian tabloids, Moskovsky Komsomolets and Komsomolskaya Pravda, and the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Arkady Khantsevich, deputy editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, denied that his journalists accepted money for articles, a widespread practice in post-Soviet Russia.
As Miriam Elder points out in "The Guardian" story, in the past pro-Putin stunts "advertised as spontaneous acts by average citizens were in fact orchestrated by Nashi."

If you look at much of the pro-Kremlin activism, it does have the look and feel of astroturf.

For example this "viral" video of oppositionists praying in front of the U.S. Embassy popped up on a recently created YouTube channel without any other content and received a relatively small amount of clicks. It only really surfaced after a report on the state-controlled RT.

Or there's this video of a Tajik guy singing Putin's praises and staring longingly at the Kremlin. Nothing is known of the singer, and he appears to have emerged from nowhere.

The sham is mirrored offline with the Kremlin bussing in people from the provinces, getting people's employers to pressure them to attend, and even reportedly paying for protesters.

The Kremlin is also pursuing other avenues of engagement, notably a new crowd-sourced platform online, Russia Without Fools, where concerned citizens get to bitch about bureaucratic ineptitude and crumbling infrastructure.

Essentially it's a slick parody of OpenGov, an Internet-age spin on the "if only the tsar knew" theory, where the focus of Russians' anger wasn't their leader with all his God-given grace but instead the bumbling and corrupt local officials.

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