Russia
Few thought Russia could build a surveillance state. Here’s how it did it
In the summer of 2016, Russia's security services gained unprecedented access to citizens' private calls, messages, and photos. The so-called Yarovaya laws demanded that telecoms companies store user data and hand it over to Russia's security services on request — even without a court order. For activists, the danger of such laws was obvious. The illegal annexation of Ukrainian Crimea had taken place two years prior; politician Boris Nemtsov had been gunned down in view of the Kremlin in 2015,
