APPENDIX. Espionage as Open-Source Data Collection
This appendix gathers cases of Russian citizens known to have been prosecuted by the FSB in the early years of post-Soviet Russia for gathering open-source data and passing it to foreigners.
Babkin, Anatolii (2003)
On 19 February 2003, Anatolii Babkin was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, suspended, for passing information on underwater rocket technology to a US naval intelligence officer, Edmund Pope. His defense was that all the information was already in the public domain.[509]
Danilov, Valentin (2004)
On 5 November 2004, Danilov was convicted by a court in Krasnoiarsk of passing satellite information to a Chinese company. His defense was that the information had been declassified for more than a decade.[510]
Nikitin, Aleksandr (1996)
In February 1996, Aleksandr Nikitin, a retired nuclear-submarine engineer, was accused of passing state secrets to a Norwegian organization regarding environmental contamination caused by nuclear submarines. His defense was that all the information supplied was already in the public domain.[511] He appealed his case to the Supreme Court, where he was acquitted. Subsequently the FSB reopened his case with fresh charges.[512]
Pasko, Grigori (1997)
In 1997 Grigorii Pasko, a naval officer and journalist with the newspaper of the Russian Pacific Fleet, was accused of releasing classified information concerning the Russian Navy’s dumping of nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan. After several trials, he was eventually convicted of espionage.[513] His appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was rejected on the grounds that the information concerned was covered by the Russian Law on State Secrecy and that he owed a duty of discretion to his employer, the Russian State.[514]
Pavlov, Ivan (2007)
In October 2007, Ivan Pavlov, director of the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, was severely beaten and hospitalized for several days. This came shortly after he sued the government to publish a register of standards for products and services produced in Russia. This register should have been available to Russian consumers free of charge. He won his case after recovering from his injuries and returning to the court.[515] In September 2021, Pavlov fled to Georgia to escape prosecution for disclosing supposedly classified information while acting as a defense lawyer for Ivan Safronov, a former space official charged with treason.[516]
Reshetin, Igor (2007)
In October 2007, Igor Reshetin, a Russian scientist, was sentenced to eleven years and six months for supplying reports on research relating to space vehicles to China. Although these reports were certified as nonclassified or already in the public domain, he was convicted along with three business associates; a fourth died before the trial, having signed a confession.[517]
Shchurov, Vladimir (2003)
On 25 August 2003, a court in Vladivostok sentenced Vladimir Shchurov to two years in prison for preparing to export underwater listening devices to China. He was then released immediately under an amnesty.[518] His defense was that the equipment was twenty years old and had found no uses in Russia; the Russian Academy of Sciences had approved the agreement, and the FSB had raised no objections to it.
Sutiagin, Igor (2004)
Igor Sutiagin, a civilian researcher on nuclear weapons, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on 7 April 2004, for passing information to the US Defense Intelligence Agency. His defense was that all the information he had collected was in the public domain; as a civilian, he had no access to military secrets.[519] In 2010 Sutiagin was released as part of the same spy swap as Anna Chapman and Sergei Skripal and, like Skripal, he settled in the UK. Sutiagin’s inclusion in the exchange was described as anomalous at the time: he was the only one involved who had not passed classified data.[520]
509
“Russian ‘Spy’ Avoids Jail Term,” BBC News, 19 February 2003, http:// news.bbc.co.Uk/1/hi/world/europe/2779959.stm.
510
AAAS Human Rights Action Network, case no. reo2o8_dan, 12 November 2004, on the website of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, http://shr.aaas.org/aaashran/alert.php?a_id=290.
511
“Aleksandr Nikitin: Researcher Facing Imprisonment,” Amnesty International, http://web.archive.0rg/web/20031226015639/http://www.amnestyusa.org/ group/bannedbooks/1998/russia.html.
512
“Aleksandr Nikitin Faces Further Persecution,” Amnesty International, 1 August 2000, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/aleksandr-nikitin-faces -further-persecution.
513
“Russia: Release of Imprisoned Journalist Grigory Pasko Must Be Made Unconditional,” Amnesty International, 23 January 2003, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/russia-release-imprisoned-journalist-grigory-pasko -must-be-made-unconditional.
514
“Evrosud otkazal Grigoriiu Pas’ko,” Kommersant, 27 May 2010, https:// www.kommersant.ru/doc/1375949.
515
C. J. Chivers, “The Defender of a Lesser-Known Guarantee in Russia,” New York Times, 27 October 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2oo7/1o/27/world/ europe/27pavlov.html.
516
“‘They Followed Me All the Way to the Airstairs.’ Human Rights Lawyer Ivan Pavlov Explains Leaving Russia after the Authorities Made His Job Impossible,” Meduza, 9 September 2021, https://meduza.i0/en/feature/2021/09/09/ they-followed-me-all-the-way-to-the-airstairs).
517
Brett Stephens, “Putin’s Political Prisoners,” Wall Street Journal, 19 February 2008, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120338385727075719.
518
Carl Levitin, “Russian Scientist ‘Tried to Smuggle Spy Device to China,”’ Nature 401, no. 200 (16 September 1999), https://www.nature.com/articles/45628.
519
“Case no. 52” (7 April 2004), http://www.case52.org; “Case Study: Igor Sutyagin,” Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/eca/ russia/4.htm.
520
Ian Black, “Igor Sutyagin Is Odd Man Out in Spy Swap Deal,” Guardian, 17 August 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2o1o/aug/17/igor-sutyagin -spy-swap.