Nokia is reportedly critical to Russia's efforts to spy on its own citizens.
The New York Times reports that Nokia helped the FSB connect the System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) to MTS, which the Times describes as “Russia’s largest telecom service provider,” so the Russian intelligence agency could spy on its own citizens.
The FSB reportedly “uses SORM to listen in on phone conversations, intercept emails and text messages, and track other internet communications.” It has also been “used to track supporters of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny,” according to the Times, and “investigators said it had intercepted the phone calls of a Kremlin foe who was later assassinated.”
The report notes that Nokia didn’t create SORM. The company was integral to SORM’s ability to gather data from MTS, however, according to internal documents published between 2008 and 2017 obtained by the Times. (Some of which appear to have been leaked as early as 2019.)
"The documents lay out how [Nokia] worked with state-linked Russian companies to plan, streamline, and troubleshoot the SORM system’s connection to the MTS network," according to the Times, which also details Nokia’s collaboration with several Russian companies on SORM’s integration with MTS. Nokia engineers are also said to have “performed SORM-related work at facilities in at least 12 cities in Russia” during the period covered by these leaked documents.
Nokia didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment, but the company told the Times that it “does not have an ability to control, access, or interfere with any lawful intercept capability in the networks which our customers own and operate.”
It also said that it “unequivocally condemns” the Russian invasion of Ukraine—which actually prompted Nokia to halt all deliveries to Russia on March 1. What that could mean for SORM, or at least its ability to continue gathering data from telecom providers like MTS, is unclear.