Today is my debut in the interview genre, and I think it turned out quite interesting. I hope to replenish this new section with fresh materials from time to time. So, today I am not answering questions, but asking them. The one answering is the Russian Elephant.

There is a lot written online about your project “Russian Elephant”. Officially, you state that the project’s name was chosen because an elephant is distinguished by its intelligence and long memory for grudges. However, to many, the allusion to the abbreviation SLON — “death to cops by knife” — popular in the Soviet criminal world, is quite obvious. It is unlikely that you did not consider this circumstance. Could you comment on to what extent the expectations of those who interpret the name of your project in this key might be justified?

Someday in the Beautiful Russia of the Future, we will tell the whole story of how the Elephant was created, and we assure you, it will be a truly fascinating tale. Right now, such a story is impossible for obvious reasons.

Anyone can interpret anything however they want, but developing this thought will inevitably lead us to such delightful (not) moral puzzles as “Do people who play computer shooters want to kill people?”, “A song by such-and-such a group is about rape. Does this group call for rape?” and other attempts to stretch Columbine into allegory.

However, the official position of the Russian Elephant remains the same: we do not call for violence in any form. We call for the revival of the institute of reputation in Russia, and it is clearly impossible to do so without a long memory for grudges.

How do you comment on the recent video by Mikhail Pozharsky “The Mask of the Beast”, where he points out that de-anonymization is needed primarily for the police officers themselves, so as not to lose their human face?

Pozharsky is delightful in almost everything he does, and this video with a reference to Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” is no exception. From an ethical point of view, one can indeed agree with the position outlined in the video.

Moreover, it’s funny that this publication of ours practically coincided in timing with the release of a new video from Whalesplaining.

Russian security forces are massively resisting their de-anonymization; in other words, they insist on bearing collective responsibility instead of individual responsibility. Does it not follow from this, as well as from your agreement with the main message of Pozharsky’s video, that projects like the Russian Elephant should de-anonymize not only those security officers whose crimes have been recorded, but actually everyone who, as a representative of security agencies, hides their identity?

Given how low the standing of police authority (previously: militsiya) is in Russia from the perspective of the institute of reputation, this proposal sounds completely reasonable. We have a historically strong (brrr!) slave mentality that “the boss is always right” and other “all power comes from God” notions, and unfortunately, this also applies to police officers, although, one would think, it is just a job, like being a banker, a cashier, or a taxi driver.

And when every day you read news of the series “Anapa police officers from the anti-corruption department convicted of bribery,” “police planted drugs,” and “Rosgvardia officer killed a two-year-old boy,” you naturally get flabbergasted and, yes, definitely desire more protection from possible violence, in this case — state, monopolized violence.

This is from the same series as “When I walk through Paris, I can approach a police officer to ask something, or almost just to chat. When I walk through Moscow and see police officers coming towards me, I prefer to cross to the other side of the street.”

The Rosgvardia, however, is in principle a crime by Putin against the people of Russia.

You answered the first question quite vaguely, so let’s clarify with a concrete example. You post the personal data of a certain security officer, indicating the crimes he committed, and after some time, this officer’s car is burned, or a window is broken, or the lock is filled with expanding foam — in short, an anonymous prank is played, of the kind that they love to use against opposition activists in problematic regions. How will you officially comment on what happened on your website and in social networks?

Not at all. Even if this was a consequence, we did not call for it. If someone is “just following orders,” or, which is much worse, truly believes in all the propagandistic bullshit about the State Department, Maidan, and the orange threat, and furiously beats a person lying on the ground with a baton, then let them not be surprised that one day karma may send them a boomerang.

I remind you that during the protests in Magas, 13 Ingush police officers refused to carry out orders and go against their own people. Now they are being tried.

Let’s talk about technical details. Can you briefly tell us about what the Elephant’s “innards” are? Is the computer magic based on your own engine and capacities, or does it depend on third-party services? What is the share of manual work? What is the percentage of identification errors, and at what level of confidence that the perpetrator has been correctly identified do you decide to publish their data? Do you check the authenticity of publications from other projects like yours, for example, the sensational publication by Scanner about the identity of the Ministry of Internal Affairs employee who punched a girl in the stomach? Do you collaborate with related projects?

The computer magic is based both on existing technologies from various giants like Amazon and Google, as well as on our own developments. We are also closely integrated with a number of projects using technology similar to FindFace, which NTechLabs is currently successfully selling to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Accuracy is quite high, although for extra confidence, we check information using other indirect data. Naturally, no one is immune to mistakes — for this purpose, we are recruiting a quality control team to identify such situations and react to them. I will be happy to provide specific figures a bit later.

On the website, you promise not only to provide the necessary evidentiary base for prosecuting perpetrators according to the law, but also funding for human rights defenders and lawyers who will handle the criminal prosecution of these lawbreakers. Do you intend to initiate criminal prosecution yourself by hiring lawyers, or only to support such initiatives of private individuals? If the latter, how is the quality of work intended to be controlled? Could it not happen that, at your own expense, the authorities use fictitious lawsuits to cut off the possibility of actual prosecution?

Not necessarily private individuals, if a lawsuit is filed on behalf of some organization that already has successful experience in countering state violence and repression, we can join their initiative, thereby creating a synergetic effect.

As private individuals, we already actively donate to human rights protection and political activism. Redirecting the specified part of the donations that the Russian Elephant receives / will receive to the same goals seems to us the most reasonable. We are spending our time and taking risks, and all that other stuff — but those innocently convicted, such as Egor Zhukov and other figures in the case under article 212 for July 27 and August 3, need this help significantly more.

So far, the project exists in the form of a brief description on the website, as well as channels on Twitter and Telegram, where the data of de-anonymized security officers is posted from time to time. When will the project be considered officially started, and what functionality will it include at that time?

The current state of development can be well described by the following slogan: MAKE A ̶D̶E̶S̶T̶R̶O̶Y̶ DEPLOY.

The working functionality of the Russian Elephant, which everyone is expecting, will be available in the coming days, and perhaps, by the time this interview is published, it will already be available. Moreover: a so-called “roadmap” will be visualized, where all the stages of what we intend to do will be shown. This is also an example of the institute of reputation — if you promised something, be so kind as to do it, or you shouldn’t have promised in the first place.

Regardless, what is currently being posted in the TG channel, Twitter, and Instagram is, in fact, just attracting attention and maintaining interest. None of these services provide sufficient functionality for our goals, therefore a custom one is being developed.

The Elephant has many predecessors who hoped to somehow harness the institute of reputation. For example, Navalny runs the Black Notebook. In your opinion, what was lacking in earlier projects so that the institute of reputation in Russia could truly work as a real force influencing the behavior of government representatives in terms of preventing illegal actions, and how do you intend to fill those gaps?

One way or another, protest is indeed moving into the moral-ethical field, and when a singer like Manizha says: “I refuse to perform at such-and-such a festival, I’m not about politics, I’m the about music, and music should unite, not sow discord” — that’s one thing; when meanwhile the group Splin (despite all their undeniable talent and contribution!) doesn’t see a problem with their performance at that same festival — that’s quite another. The market, as they say, will decide, and the institute of reputation is its prophet.

In Russia, a civil society is indeed beginning to emerge. And it depends on all of us — young, proactive, capable, who can, among other things, “vote with their wallets,” whether it will form fully or wither halfway.

By what criteria do you intend to evaluate the success of your project? How public will your evaluations be? As you understand, for those who decide to invest money into something, it is important that the investment proves effective.

Perfectionism is inherent in us to a sufficient degree — to get involved in something average = wasting your time, therefore aut Caesar aut Nihil, or be the best, or why do this at all?

Accordingly, our goal is the maximum coverage of the Russian Elephant’s activities, so that people know about us, talk about us, publish about us, so that our symbolism, which was thought out four times over, is visible, so that it be recognizable and, in professional language, viral.

The more people know about the Russian Elephant, the more people know about those associated with state violence, aiding in the usurpation of power and propaganda. The more people know about these people, the closer we are to a fully functioning institute of reputation. That’s exactly what we aimed for initially, right?

As an example: our Instagram has been around for 3-4 days (the interview was taken on August 23 – Ancap-tyan). On the second day, a news aggregator account with 30k followers subscribed to us — and our call to tell people about the Russian Elephant was heard — a repost, a couple of stories with an additional call “from themselves”…

In general, 500 followers in these 3-4 days, and, based on experience, it only gets easier from here; reach metrics grow exponentially.

What will be your estimated budget by the time you reach the expected performance? How long can you work in such a mode before you start receiving donations in the necessary volume?

Why this attempt to look at the Russian Elephant from a commercial perspective? But, by the way, since you’re trying — would you buy shares with the ticker SLON, if we went IPO? 😉

We are capable of maintaining the project’s functionality at our own expense for an unlimited amount of time; the entire Elephant team, to put it mildly, are not dependents or idlers. The business of Alexander Litreev is absolutely public: as an advertisement — Connecto VPN — your choice for safe and anonymous surfing at the price of a cup of coffee per month. By subscribing to Connecto, you support the market and the institute of reputation.

However, if (let’s imagine for a second the most negative, but fortunately absolutely unrealistic variant) the Russian Elephant does not receive a single kopek of support over its entire time of operation, then this would signal that society simply does not need the counteraction to state violence and the revival of the institute of reputation. Do you feel indignation while reading these lines? That’s correct — it is indeed an unrealistic variant. Society is ready for change, moreover, society is actively demanding them.

Therefore, we are not worried that the Russian Elephant may not be appreciated to its full value (it has already been appreciated and will be appreciated even more). We are worried about justifying the high expectations placed upon us.

As Confucius once said a long time ago (and was popularized in 2007 by Pavel Durov): “Do not worry about not having a high rank. Worry about whether you are worthy of having a high rank.”

I think if such a project went IPO, I would be more concerned that its creators might be trying to make money through blackmail. I was interested specifically in your ability to fully realize and promote the project with your own strengths, and I am very glad that you have such an opportunity..

Thank you very much for the answers, and good luck to your project!