Russian opposition leader complained to the ECHR on the hacking of your account in the Telegram

Civic activist and founder of the School for civic leadership Oleg Kozlovsky complained to the European court of human rights (ECHR) on the hacking of your account in the messenger Telegram. About this “Vedomosti” said the lawyer “Agora” Ilnur Sharapov representing Kozlowski in Strasbourg. The complaint sent in the mail. The appellant contends that the state violated article 8 of the European Convention, do not protect adequately his right to private life and secrecy of correspondence.

Account Kozlowski was hacked in April 2016, simultaneously with the account of the head of investigation Department of the Fund of struggle against corruption of George Alborov. Later, in a similar way were hacked accounts in the Telegram, one of the leaders of the unregistered party “the Other Russia” Alexander Averin, journalists Sergei Parkhomenko and Mikhail Rubin. The opposition claimed that the attack on Alborov and Kozlowski are Russian special services, but evidence was not found.

In his complaint, Kozlowski said that the account received is unknown night, although no authorization code via sms, he did not come. Later, his operator MTS reported that sms was not delivered because the mobile Internet services and sms to his room that night was off by two hours for technical reasons. Kozlowski asked Izmailovo Department of the TFR in Moscow to open a criminal case under the article 137 and 138 of the criminal code (violation of privacy and violation of secrecy of correspondence), but they felt that the Complainant “does not contain evidence of the crime,” and refused to check. The Prosecutor’s office found the refusal unlawful and ordered the investigators to conduct the test. In August 2017, the investigator Sergey Vedernikov still demanded from MTS to provide documents about the fact of a technical failure, but MTS said that can’t do that because the investigator had not indicated a telephone number of the applicant. Then Vedernikov took Decthe message on refusal in excitation of criminal case, citing the fact that the hacking was carried out from the territory of the United States, and it is not included in the area of the operational service of the TFR. In January 2018, the leadership of the investigative Department quashed that decision, stating that the investigator should obtain from the operator a reasoned response to the request. From the detailed answer of MTS indicated that on 29 April 2016 the system is under attack, therefore specialist information security Department decided to turn off the sms service. These actions were recognized by the MTS redundant due to lack of competence of the employee, and was applied a disciplinary action to a reprimand. Copying fully this response, the investigator again refused to Institute criminal proceedings. Izmailovo district court and the Moscow city court found the refusal lawful, and the Tagansky regional court has left without consideration a civil action Kozlowski to the MTS for the recovery of damages.

Telegram filed a complaint to the ECHR to block in Russia This is the second complaint of the messenger to the Strasbourg court Media

Reliable information about the involvement of the state or individuals to break-no, according to the complaint. But the police did almost nothing to protect the applicant’s right to privacy of correspondence, emphasizes Sharapov: the investigator did not interview the employee who have disabled sms notification claimed in the MTS technical information about the hacker attack, have not figured out the identity of the IP address which was illegal entry to the account, and how the attacker got the access code. In fact, the verification statement was never conducted, concludes the lawyer.

Press service of the TFR in Moscow and Moscow MTS company has not responded to the queries of “Vedomosti”.

According to a former operative employee of the Central apparatus of the interior Ministry, hacks accounts so much, that if all such facts criminal cases, they would be millions. So the obvious desiree investigator to avoid the initiation of the case can understand, not even considering the fact of the account of the opposition activist. Although the investigation of cases of cyber crimes related to embezzlement of funds and extortion, hacking of accounts are often the scenes of crimes in criminal cases, adds the source.

Indeed, cybercrimes are not a priority for the investigators and they are trying to evade investigation under various pretexts, agree expert on cybersecurity Alexey Lukatsky. It is not surprising that, although the number of such cases is growing (recently, the interior Ministry reported that in 2019 was 206 000 such crimes), before the court reaches a very few.

According to the court statistics, in the first half of 2019 (more recent data yet) for violation of privacy was condemned by 68 people, and for violation of the secrecy of correspondence – 15.