Systems such as ‘Semantic Archive’ are, in fact, what the Russian security services and Ministry of the Interior (MVD) use to monitor open sources (i.e. the media) and the Internet, including the blogosphere and social networks. The FSB and MVD started buying these systems extensively in the middle of the 2000s. In 2006, for example, during the run up to the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, the Interior Ministry bought a ‘Random Information Collection System’ from the Russian software company Smartware, as a precaution, it claimed, against extremism. ‘Instead of Facebook we have XiaoNei, and instead of Twitter, Weibo. The usual policy in China for introducing Internet technology is to allow people to use a new product just until a Chinese equivalent is developed. So now Facebook is banned, and so is Twitter. And the servers for the Chinese versions are in Beijing.’