Citizen Spies

In my last post, I raised the concern that, by accepting Igor Sutyagin as part of the spy swap, the US might tacitly be admitting his involvement with some sort of illicit activities before his arrest. In turn, as I mentioned, this might lead to even further heavy-handedness on the part of the FSB in managing the relationships of Russian scientists and others with Western counterparts.

The draft domestic security bill that Medvedev appears posed to sign into law next week could exacerbate things even further, increasing the power of the FSB to preemptively restrict the speech or activity of Russian citizens and others. I haven't seen the text of the bill yet, but it doesn't sound good.

I can't help but again note that this type of legislation appears to counteract the thrust of Medvedev's recent visit to the US, during which he pressed hard to increase technical cooperation and foreign investment in Russia. That's going to be a very difficult task to handle if the FSB has such broad powers to intervene; the chilling effect of such powers will be very strong.