The revealings from Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and other whistle blowers have left governments worldwide infuriated and in a panic mode. FSO which is Russia’s equivalent of the secret service is adopting a novel method to stop prying eyes from Langley, Beijing and others by taking a backward leap to the analog ages. The Federal Guard Service who is in charge of protecting Kremlin’s documents and President Putin has placed an order of $15,000 for electronic typewriters to create paper documents and not share / store them electronically. Currently this practice exists for high level orders in the Russian defense, emergency and special services ministries.


Each typewriter has a unique typing pattern which makes it possible to link every document to a particular machine, which is not possible in printers. Nikolai Kovalev former director of the FSO says “From the point of view of security, any
means of electronic communication is vulnerable. You can remove any information from a computer. There are means of defence, of course, but there’s no 100 per cent guarantee they will work. So from the point of view of preserving secrets the most primitive methods are preferable: a person’s hand and a pen, or a typewriter.”. For spying will computers and cryptography be replaced with Minox cameras and balls of steel?

[RT]