Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Probably the best strategy for charities and non-profits in this situation is:
a) Encrypt your data. In Linux systems like Ubuntu it's really easy to encrypt your home directory or create an encrypted disk. You don't have to be an expert.
b) Back up your data in "the cloud" or on servers located outside of your country. This makes it harder (but I assume not impossible) for data to be seized arbitrarily.
c) Do as much as possible out in the open anyway (published somewhere on the web) so that there is little or no "secret sauce" to be seized, except perhaps private emails. For charities being as transparent about your operations as possible makes good sense in terms of reassuring donors that their money is being well spent.
Yet their computers were seized for five months and meanwhile Microsoft denied to help them prove that the software was genuine.
What is upsetting is that Microsoft is helping the authorities when the targets of these anti-piracy raids clearly is on organizations and journalists that peacefully oppose the Russian authorities in some way. They may run only legitimate software but still a raid is carried out.
'Mr. Kurt-Adzhiyev said he now realized that the authorities were not so much interested in convictions as in harassing opponents.'
That Microsoft declined to facilitate the checking of serial numbers after claims of piracy is reprehensible, and all the more reason not to use their software in the first place.
I hope the NYT report results in pressure on Microsoft, Redmond to stop ignoring what their Russian subsidiary is doing. They need to put an end to Microsoft participation in the "the persecution of civil society activists."
Treat the workstation as a dumb terminal and be ready to discard it if needed.
But I guess the computer sophistication required to do this is currently beyond the abilities of the targeted people.
It is important to note that the group are not undergoing a technological attack. The government forces are utilizing their ability to investigate software piracy to physically enter the targeted groups' spaces and seize their computers. It is clear that running Ubuntu is not going to prevent them from being able to do this, since they had no issues seizing computers that had legitimate versions of Windows on them.
While it is fine to suggest that they should "be ready to discard their computers if needed", most non-profit groups that I have come across do not have the financial resources to purchase new computers if all of their existing ones are taken.
E.g. what do you mean you've got this software for free? That's piracy, isn't it?
That's just how Russia is.