Dmitry Bogatov, aka KAction, is a Russian free software activist and mathematics teacher at Moscow’s Finance and Law University. He was arrested in Russia on 6 April of this year and charged with extremism. He is currently held in a pre-trial detention centre, and is apparently likely to remain there until early June at least, while investigations continue. The Russian authorities claim that Bogatov published messages on a Russian website, “sysadmin.ru”, inciting violent action at the opposition protest demonstration held in Moscow on 2 April.
Bogatov is well known in the free software community as a contributor to debian. As a privacy activist he runs a Tor exit node in Russia and it is this latter point which would appear to have caused his difficulty. Apparently, Bogatov’s Tor exit node was logged as the source address for the inflammatory posts in question. The debian project have taken the precaution of revoking Bogatov’s keys which allow him to post material to the project. They see those keys as compromised following his arrest and the seizure of his computing equipment.
Bogatov claims (with some justification it would appear) that he had nothing to do with the posts of which he is accused. Indeed, at the time of the post from his Tor node he claims that he was at a gym with his wife and visited a supermarket immediately afterwards. CCTV footage from the store supports this claim.
Operating a Tor node is not illegal in Russia, nor is it illegal in many other jurisdictions around the world. However, the act of doing so can draw attention to yourself as a possible “dissident” wherever you may live.
I am a passionate fan of free software, I use debian (and its derivatives) as my preferred operating system. I am an advocate of privacy enhancing tools such as GPG, Tor and OpenVPN, and I run a Tor node.
I hope that Dmitry Bogatov is treated fairly and in due course is proved innocent of the charges he faces. I post this message in support.