Russia is “incubating a cottage industry” of tech contractors & “new digital surveillance tools to suppress domestic opposition to the war.” And the tech may be sold overseas. “A Swiss-army knife of spying possibilities.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/technology/russia-ukraine-surveillance-tech.html

NYT describes spying software that affects Telegram, Signal, and WhatsApp, not intercepting calls but accessing metadata to determine things like identity, devices, mapped relationships, etc.

Developers include firms like MFI Soft, Vas Experts, and Protei, which got started making pieces of Russia’s telecom wiretapping system.