ФСБ назвала сведения, за сбор которых могут признать "иноагентом"
В частности, под запрет на передачу за границу попали данные о работе "Роскосмоса"
www.svoboda.org
Russia's FSB (Federal Security Service, roughly responsible for domestic and sometimes "near abroad" intelligence and state security) has announced that Russian citizens who collect non-classified military or technological information pertaining to military use may be designated as "foreign agents".
While some Russian "foreign agent" laws have been in force for some time, the ones I've noticed thus far have "only" concerned (targeted) "legal persons" i.e. organizations such as free media, human rights groups and such. I'm not clear whether this is a new designation or not, but this development clearly concerns "natural persons" i.e. individual Russians. The FSB has published a draft list of items which it considers as usable against the security of the Russian Federation. In this conjunction it should probably be noted that previous Russian "foreign agent" regulations and laws have been seen (criticized, pointed out, demonstrated) as intentionally vague and not uniformly enforceable and as such essentially devised for selective repression under the guise of law enforcement (more information here). Examples of this abound, e.g. the once-or-twice-poisoned and serially imprisoned lawyer/activist Alexey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation FBK etc.
Previously some individual Russians have been prosecuted (under espionage legislation) for sharing documents about nuclear waste dumping with foreign environmental organizations and such (in the above Svoboda article Ivan Safronov's Roscosmos allegations are described) but a "foreign agent" designation offers the authorities/powers that be a sliding scale of consequences (instead of ad hoc processes) for what they might (need, desire to) consider infractions by individuals. It is notable here that the designation "foreign agent" does not require any direct foreign contact and that it now seemingly widens its scope to wholly apolitical (but "undesirable") acts.
As there are more or less longstanding Russian members on the SPF this might of course concern what information they may collect and share here. I don't quite know what can be done to alleviate the effects but this should perhaps be discussed especially among the more established figures. Also, going forward (and seeing there's a lot of newfound enthusiasm and participation around current Russian weapons systems, around Sukhoi LTS and the like), it might also be prudent to consider purely as a matter of veracity and fact checking what kind of information will continue to emerge seemingly care-free and with impunity in venues such as this.
Local knowledge, situational awareness and cultural understanding will of course somewhat help us clarify the repercussions but dismissing this development out of hand doesn't seem like an entirely responsible approach either.
