时代周刊：俄罗斯是维基解密下个目标？

时代周刊：俄罗斯是维基解密下个目标？

http://www.sina.com.cn 2010年11月03日 15:23 新浪尚品

　　不管你对“维基解密”创始人朱利安-阿桑奇评价如何，他的工作已表明他确实毫无畏惧。10月22日在网站上披露最大规模的美军有关伊战的机密文件后，他在遭到美国谴责和警告的情况下仍继续在欧洲旅行。他甚至告诉全球媒体，新披露的东西将不仅曝光美国军方机密，而且还将曝光俄罗斯的机密。俄罗斯已对“维基解密”网站将披露俄罗斯机密的消息发出了信号，这些信号表明俄罗斯人的反应将不会像美国人那么克制。

　　俄罗斯主要报纸《生意人报》10月26日刊登了对“维基解密”网站发言人克里斯汀-拉分森的采访录，拉分森称：“俄罗斯读者在维基解密网站披露新材料后将获知有关他们国家的更多情况。我们想告诉人们，他们政府所采取行动的真相。”

　　到目前为止，俄罗斯还没有作出官方反应，但俄联邦对外情报局信息安全中心的一名匿名官员上周三警告称：“考虑到意愿和相关的命令是至关重要的，我们可以使维基解密永远无法再被人们访问。”当《时代》杂志联络到俄联邦对外情报局时，这一克格勃的主要继承者拒绝为这一言论发表进一步的评论或者称它是对外情报局的官方立场。但历史表明，对外情报局会立刻采取行动以封锁网上泄密活动。一个与“维基解密”相类似的网站“卢比扬卡真理”六月份公布了一系列据称是俄联邦对外情报局在前苏联地区活动和与其它俄安全部队冲突的机密文件。

　　这一网站的在线时间没有超过三周，俄罗斯报纸在此期间也没有刊登那些文件。

　　WikiLeaks: Is Russia the Next Target?

　　Say what you will about Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, but his work has shown him to be pretty fearless. After his site published the biggest cache of secret files in U.S. history on Oct. 22, detailing some of the ugly truths about the war in Iraq, he continued to travel around Europe despite U.S. reprimands and warnings. He even told the global media that new leaks would expose more secrets not only about the U.S. military but about other "repressive regimes," such as Russia and China. The signals coming from Moscow, however, suggest that the Russian reaction will not be as reserved as America's. So is WikiLeaks really ready to take on the world's more callous states?

　　It's certainly talking the talk. In an interview published on Tuesday, Oct. 26, in Russia's leading daily newspaper, Kommersant, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said that "Russian readers will learn a lot about their country" after one of the site's upcoming document dumps. "We want to tell people the truth about the actions of their governments."

　　So far Russia has had no official response. But on Wednesday, an official at the Center for Information Security of the FSB, Russia's secret police, gave a warning to WikiLeaks that showed none of the tact of the U.S. reply to the Iraq revelations. "It's essential to remember that given the will and the relevant orders, [WikiLeaks] can be made inaccessible forever," the anonymous official told the independent Russian news website LifeNews。

　　When reached by TIME, the FSB, which is the main successor to the Soviet KGB, declined to elaborate on the comment or say whether it was the agency's official position. But history has shown that the FSB readily steps in to shut down Internet tattlers. In June, a Russian analog to WikiLeaks called Lubyanskaya Pravda published a series of documents it claimed to be top-secret FSB files detailing the agency's operations in the former Soviet Union and conflicts with other Russian security forces。

　　The site stayed online for less than three weeks — during which time no Russian newspapers published the files — and then put up a notice saying it was under construction. With the site down and the people who anonymously ran it unreachable, the leak was apparently stopped. "The FSB could have easily found the people behind it and convinced them that this was not a good idea," says Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian security services. "It is also possible for the FSB to take down a site like WikiLeaks. They have the capacity for all of this."

　　In a far more gruesome case of leak patching, former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who had published damning books about the agency and Russia's leadership, was poisoned with a rare and highly radioactive polonium isotope while living in London in 2006. British police suspect former Russian security agent Andrei Lugovoi of murdering Litvinenko. But the Russian government, which vehemently denies any connection to the murder, has refused to extradite Lugovoi, and a nationalist party has since made him a member of the Russian parliament。

　　"If the FSB says it is capable [of taking out WikiLeaks], I believe them," says Gadi Evron, an expert on cybersecurity and counterespionage. It would not be necessary to crash the WikiLeaks site, says Evron, because "behind every Internet project, there are people." And people can be coerced — or worse。

　　But other observers say WikiLeaks presents a far more serious challenge to Russia's security services than the sources of previous leaks. For one thing, WikiLeaks has established a reputation for publishing authentic documents, which means the Russian press would be more likely to cover the story and republish the files. It is also a diffuse and secretive organization that is technologically prepared to deal with cyberattacks. The kinds of hacker raids that took down Georgia's government websites during its war with Russia in 2008, for example, probably wouldn't keep WikiLeaks offline for long。

　　So the most likely Russian reaction, at least at first, would be to undermine the authenticity of the alleged secrets. "That is the main tool — to filter it through the state-controlled mass media, which would discredit WikiLeaks and put into question the reliability of its sources," says Nikolai Zlobin, director of the Russia and Eurasia Project at the World Security Institute in Washington, D.C. "This would limit any public debate of the leak to the Russian Internet forums and news websites, which reach a tiny fraction of the population."

　　Zlobin says it would also take something extremely damning to rattle Russia's political elite. "Russians already believe that their leaders steal, that they have offshore bank accounts and funnel money into them," he says. "It would have to give shocking details about the country's two leading figures [Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev], and even then, the complete apathy toward politics in Russian society would absorb a lot of the shock waves at home."

　　Russia's reputation abroad, however, could be badly hit by the release of foreign-policy secrets. As the Kremlin pushes ahead with a drive to charm the West, its security agencies will be eager to prevent that kind of embarrassment. And there's no knowing how far they'll go to save face。

　　(时代周刊)