The CIA is calling all disgruntled Russians

The CIA is trying to approach Russians disillusioned with President Putin by offering a secret channel for potential insider whistleblowers. The US intelligence agency has posted instructions in Russian on YouTube to help them make contact securely via the CIA's dark Web site. Although Moscow has blocked access to Facebook and other social media platforms to suppress news about the war in Ukraine, YouTube is still available. Russians prepared to air their views about the war and provide any information that could be useful to the CIA, are advised to download the Tor anonymity network browser or a virtual private network (VPN) to gain access to the dark Web site. The aim is to provide a channel for valuable information that can be passed on without the risk of being traced by Russia's internal security agency, the FSB. The ultimate hope is to glean intelligence from within the Russian government from officials who secretly oppose Putin and his war without daring to speak out. US intelligence sources said it was known that Russians opposed to the war were trying to contact the CIA. The new channel of communication launched this week was aimed at reaching these Russians to ensure they could contact the agency without leaving a digital footprint. The CIA initially set up a clandestine contact channel via the Tor browser in 2019 and called it their "onion service", Although other organisations, including national police forces, set up similar onion services to attract anonymous tip-offs, the CIA was believed to be the first intelligence agency to use the Tor browser service to gather information. It's also the first time the CIA has directly aimed at anti-Putin informants by writing the instructions to the secret channel in Russian. The CIA pledged that anyone contacting through the onion service method would be "secure, anonymous and untraceable". "Our global mission demands that individuals can access us securely from anywhere," the CIA said when the onion service was first set up three years ago. Tor which stands for the onion router, is a programme anyone can download to help strengthen user security online. It consists of a series of computers that bounce encrypted internet traffic through several chains of computers before the data arrives at the final destination. It's described as a multi-hopping network to ensure anonymity. Russians trying to make contact with the US intelligence agency by using the normal website address, www,cia,gov, would be instantly trackable by the FSB which has a sophisticated cyber department.