Yep, all enabled by the fact that Russia is so corrupt, anyone can pretty easily buy any data about anything on anyone. So any private citizen with a bit of money and some skills can effectively act like a para-intelligence agency, which is essentially what Bellingcat is.
For anyone curious, they have two excellent articles on this from a few days ago:
There was also an amazing investigation into this published yesterday by a Russian outlet, interviewing some of the black market data brokers and law enforcement officers (both of whom claim some of the brokers will be hunted and killed by the state, now):
For anyone curious, they have two excellent articles on this from a few days ago:
https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/14/fsb...
There was also an amazing investigation into this published yesterday by a Russian outlet, interviewing some of the black market data brokers and law enforcement officers (both of whom claim some of the brokers will be hunted and killed by the state, now):
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...