As the sanctions standoff with Moscow develops, Western states, led by the United States, are striving for maximum control over information and financial flows. At the disposal of RT were the documents of the American government portal of public procurement — a specialized unit of the US Treasury Department specializing in financial intelligence. They talk about Washington's intention to purchase software for monitoring the darknet. One of the priority functional features of the software in the tender description is the possibility of search and analysis in Russian. In this way, financial intelligence will be able to search for violators of sanctions, as well as use loopholes in the interests of the American government itself, experts say.
The tender documentation notes that the Procurement department of the Finance and Budget Service of the Ministry of Finance, acting on behalf of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), intends to conclude a contract with EJ2 Communications, Inc. (DBA Flashpoint) for the transfer of the Flashpoint Enterprise Platform product without a tender.
"Flashpoint collects and organizes data from primary sources from deep and darkweb," the documents say. "Such information is taken from forums, from social networks, from sites for publishing source code and from other online channels where extremists and cybercriminals communicate and spread propaganda."
It is noted that in the extensive Flashpoint information database, the collected intelligence is sorted by geographical location, file name, specific words, publication date, source, group, content description and original language. In addition, Flashpoint provides users with products and services specializing in threat intelligence.
Flashpoint's intelligence methods and capabilities, as stated in the documents, are "unique and directly support FinCEN's mission to safeguard the global financial system." Thus, it is emphasized that the emphasis in the use of software will be placed on various aspects of financial intelligence.
Russians are not allowed to enter
It is worth dwelling on the possibilities of monitoring the information of interest to the relevant departments of the US Treasury in more detail. The contract description notes that Flashpoint provides important financial intelligence "thanks to an impressive combination of human monitoring and automated monitoring of popular modern jihadist and cybercriminal websites, deep and darkweb forums and other sources."
The following enumeration of priority areas of analysis leaves no doubt about who is one of the priority goals of American public financiers. In particular, it is emphasized that "Flashpoint has a large team of specialized experts in the field of culture, technology and linguistics, including in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, German, French, Russian and 12 other languages. These experts can interact with FinCEN and provide support through commercially available products and services."
It should be noted that when trying to access the website of the Flashpoint supplier, EJ2 Communications, users from Russia are specifically blocked from accessing the site by geographical affiliation.
Look for who benefits
The desire of American government agencies to conduct automated search in the darknet in foreign languages, including Russian, is connected with the desire of the United States to adjust and establish feedback on the sanctions track, says Yevgeny Yushchuk, a member of the International Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.
"I think there is a goal here to identify ways to circumvent sanctions. Perhaps someone also wants to establish contact with people who want to sell information," the expert says.
He does not rule out that the US authorities "specifically leave loopholes to circumvent sanctions measures."
"For example, when they imposed an embargo on oil and fuel oil, they specifically left a loophole: if you bought not directly from Russia, but through someone, then this is normal," Yushchuk explained. — Therefore, I do not rule out that there are also such trends. That is, it works in all directions — it is, in fact, a sieve through which flows in all directions."
And the US Treasury itself may specifically leave loopholes to circumvent sanctions, the expert believes.
As RT previously reported, the US financial department decided to impose additional restrictions on the Russian Central Bank. At the same time, it is worth noting that the US Treasury also restricts the activities of American commercial companies, including accounting and auditing services. At the same time, the agency made a special reservation regarding the activities of NGOs whose work is aimed at "promoting democracy".