Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

Search results: zero.

Zero?

He tried a few different keywords. "Azerbaijan" plus "new building" plus "corruption" - zero; "Baku" plus "housing allocation" plus "bribery" - zero.

But he clearly knew that someone had posted these messages on the forum, and the complaint letter even cited links to the forum posts.

He clicked on those links, and the page displayed: "This content does not exist."

The post has been deleted!

Gerdrian leaned back in his chair, a smile playing on his lips.

Interestingly, on Vych, the largest forum in the Soviet Union with 300,000 daily active users, posts containing specific keywords were systematically deleted. Someone was using technical means, such as keyword filtering, to block all related posts.

Gerdrian realized he might have caught a fish much bigger than “housing allocation corruption”.

...

He started to use his brain.

The Soviet Union's internet was built upon the OGAS information infrastructure. Information centers throughout the country served a dual function: they acted as local computing nodes for OGAS, responsible for collecting and processing local production data, and as local servers for the internet, responsible for caching and forwarding data from local websites and forums.

To implement keyword filtering on a local server, allowing posts containing specific words to be automatically blocked and deleted after being published, it is necessary to install specific filtering software on the server!

Theoretically, only the KGB had the authority to deploy this software. The KGB's 16th Directorate was responsible for the cybersecurity of the entire Soviet Union, and only it had the authority to install any software on the OGAS's information center nodes.

Any unauthorized loading of software into the OGAS information center without authorization from the central government or the KGB will be subject to a military court. This is hacking, and could even be an attempt by enemy agents to sabotage the alliance's information infrastructure. We must take strong measures!

If this is just a case of espionage, whose spy was helping the Soviet Communist Party suppress public opinion regarding housing allocation? Besides the KGB, who else had access to Azerbaijan's information center servers and installed keyword filtering software?

Either someone in the KGB was colluding with local officials to cover up corruption, or someone bypassed the KGB's authority and tampered with the server themselves.

Neither of them is a trivial matter.

Gerdrian sent a coded telegram to Moscow requesting greater investigative authority—including the authority to investigate information centers and KGB branches in Azerbaijan.

Moscow approved it swiftly.

Soon, Gerdrian spent a month tracking it step by step. The first step was the information center.

With the authorization documents from Moscow, Gedriyan entered the information center in Azerbaijan that the whistleblower post had pointed to. It was an inconspicuous three-story office building on the outskirts of Baku, filled with rows of server racks and air conditioning equipment.

He contacted the cybersecurity department of the KGB's 16th Directorate and requested technical support. The technicians from the 16th Directorate remotely connected to the server in the information center and checked the system logs.

The conclusion was quickly reached: a non-standard filtering module was indeed installed on the server. This code would scan all forum posts passing through the server, and if they contained specific keywords, it would automatically block and delete them. Moreover, this keyword could be adjusted through a specified terminal. However, the cybersecurity department found that there was only one terminal with records of adjusting the keyword filtering, which was the one used by the information center server administrator.

Step 2: Interrogate the person in charge.

Gerdrian called the head of the information center into an office. The head was a technical staff member in his forties who had worked at the information center for over a year. He sat opposite Gerdrian, the sweat on his forehead glistening under the light.

"Come on, take a look."

Gerdrian placed a printed copy of the code on the table: "Who told you to install this?"

The person in charge initially denied it: "I don't know how this thing appeared on the server." "Maybe it was an automatic system update." "Maybe it was installed by someone from the 16th Bureau."

Gerdrian looked at him with an expression as if he were an idiot and showed him his investigation license from the Central Committee.

“The consequences of resisting central censorship are not small, citizens.”

"Think carefully before you speak. The installation log for this module shows that it was installed using your administrator account at 3:47 AM on May 12th. Your account, your password, and your login IP are all there. If you say this wasn't you—then someone stole your account. You are the head of the information center; your account being stolen is a serious security incident in itself."

Don't even think about quitting and getting away with it. This server hosts nodes of a national automated system, which are closely related to national security. Whether you admit it or not, you will be tried in a military court.

Gerdrian crossed his arms, fully displaying the posture and imposing presence he had learned from the KGB.

“Citizen, if you are willing to provide some clues, you can try to get a reduced sentence. The central government attaches great importance to this case, as it concerns national unity and national information security, and will protect key witnesses.”

The person in charge's lips trembled slightly, his eyes flickered a few times, and then he said, "I was ordered to install it by my superiors."

"Who?"

He named a deputy director of an administrative committee in a certain district of Azerbaijan.

Great, the third step is to find this deputy director.

The deputy director was a kind-looking middle-aged man in his fifties. Gerdrian could tell at a glance that he was the kind of old hand who had worked at the grassroots level his whole life, could talk to everyone, and never missed a dinner party.

The deputy director initially denied it, saying, "I don't know the person in charge of the information center." "I didn't ask anyone to install anything on the server." It wasn't until Gerdrian presented him with the testimony of the person in charge of the information center.

The deputy director's expression changed.

"Okay, I admit I did have him block some posts on the forum. But it was to maintain social stability! Those posts were all fabricated! They said there was corruption in housing allocation—pure fabrication! I did it to prevent the rumors from spreading—"

“Who told you to do it?” Gerdrian interrupted him.

The deputy director hesitated.

"My own decision."

"You, a deputy director of a district administrative committee, can manage the entire information center of Azerbaijan?" Gedrian said. "Do you have enough authority? Do you have enough budget? Can you make the head of the information center get up at 3:30 in the morning to install software for you with just one phone call?"

The deputy director fell silent.

Gedriyan changed his approach: "I've checked your background. Your wife works for the Azerbaijan Construction Committee, your brother-in-law works for the Planning Bureau, and you worked in the construction system for ten years before joining the Administrative Management Committee. You just want to take advantage of some low-level officials within the system. Their cadre rank isn't high enough to afford the specially provided good housing, so they use their connections to get through you, right?"

He looked at the deputy director.

"I bet the person who asked you to delete the post is in the construction committee, right?"

The deputy director's lips twitched slightly.

Obviously, things seem to be that simple, just an ordinary case of rent-seeking. Officials use their power to approve certain projects and applications to engage in rent-seeking, and they choose to keep quiet for fear of residents' opinions. That's how it is, right?

When the time comes, those who should be arrested will be arrested, those who should be dismissed will be dismissed, and those who should be investigated will be investigated. When the public sees the announcement, they will shout "Thank you, upright and just official!" and the matter will be over.

Now he only needs to go to the construction committee to clarify the last few details and the people involved before he can return to Moscow.

Gedriyan's investigation has alarmed local Azerbaijani officials, and the news that an Armenian prosecutor from Moscow is investigating and questioning people all over the country has spread throughout Azerbaijani officialdom.

Gerdrian knew his whereabouts had been exposed, but he didn't care—he had authorization from Moscow, he had the right to investigate, and he would investigate anyone who dared to stand in his way.

Just as he was preparing to go to the workplace of the deputy director of the Azerbaijan Construction Committee's wife to continue his investigation—

The information center suddenly caught fire.

It was in that information center where he discovered the filtering module. The fire broke out late at night, and by the time the fire department arrived, the server room was completely burned—the circuit boards, hard drives, and memory of dozens of servers had all melted in the high temperature.

The KGB's Azerbaijan branch concluded that a rat had crawled into the server rack, chewed through a cable, caused a short circuit, and started a fire.

mouse?

Gerdrian looked at the investigation report.

In a server room, a facility with strict environmental control, including dust filters, sealed doors, and constant temperature and humidity systems, how did a mouse get in?

Moreover, this rat happened to die in the server right after Gerdrian found evidence of the filtering module, just before he was about to go to the Construction Committee to continue his investigation.

It seems this rat had a better sense of timing than most Soviet bureaucrats.

The server was burned out; the code for the filtering module was gone, the installation logs were gone, the login records of the person in charge were gone, and all the electronic evidence that could prove "someone installed filtering software on the server to delete the report posts" seemed to be gone as well.

The investigation seems to have run into some problems, but it's still under his control. It's just a minor incident, and the bureaucrats' death throes won't change their fate.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Gerdrian decided to change direction for the time being; he wanted to go out into the community and talk to the people.

If these bureaucrats are so capable, then they should shut up the mouths of the general public!

Gerdrian spent two weeks visiting more than a dozen communities in southern and eastern Azerbaijan.

The stories he heard were all similar:

An elderly worker who had been waiting in line for nine years to be allocated housing said that the new building was finished and the list was out, but he wasn't on it. On the list was the nephew of the district Soviet chairman; the nephew was only twenty-three years old, unmarried, and lived alone—according to the OGAS system's queuing priority, he shouldn't be ahead of an elderly worker from a family of five.

A single mother with two children said that when she went to the community office to check her waiting list information, the community official told her, "Your file shows that your housing area has met the standard, but you do not meet the allocation criteria"—but she clearly lives in a 35-square-meter Khrushchev-style apartment with two children, so how could she meet the standard?

Gerdrian noticed a common thread: all the residents who had been removed from the allocation list had their OGAS file information altered.

The living space was altered to be larger; the actual living space was 25 square meters, but the file states it was 40 square meters.

The number of family members has been reduced; the file clearly shows three people instead of five.

The waiting period has been shortened; the file clearly shows a nine-year wait but only three years.

These modifications were made on the community terminal, which is located in each community office and can be used to input and modify residents' profile information.

The community officials have the authority to operate the terminals themselves, and residents are not allowed to operate them on the grounds of "national information security".

"Information security".

Every time Gerdrian hears those four words, he wants to laugh. Just like in the United States, the Cold War was an era in which the government could respond to any complaints or dissatisfaction from the general public with the phrase "national security."

He contacted the cybersecurity department of the 16th Bureau for technical support. He needed someone to check the operation logs of those community terminals to see who modified which residents' files and when.

Lazi Bartomos became interested in this and personally connected remotely to those community terminals.

The findings came out very quickly.

He found numerous records of file modifications, with hundreds of resident files altered in the past few months. The modifications were remarkably consistent: housing area increased, family size decreased, and waiting time shortened. These modifications occurred primarily within two to three weeks before the Ivanov housing allocation list was finalized.

And who got the spots freed up after the files were modified?

Barthes traced the files of those who replaced them; most of them were relatives of officials, family members of construction committee staff, children of planning bureau officials, and relatives of street office directors...

Ah, what a network of connections.

Gerdrian originally planned to close the net and arrest the community officials who tampered with the files, the relatives of the officials who benefited, and the deputy director who made the information center head install the filtering software.

The evidence is sufficient. Tampering with data from the national information system, abusing power to seize public housing allocation quotas, obstructing judicial investigations, deleting posts, and arson—each of these offenses is enough to warrant several years in prison!

But that night in his hotel room, Gerdrian suddenly stopped while going through the materials he had collected.

Something seems off.

His legendary intuition warned him that he might have overlooked some crucial information. He quickly went through all the documents he had, and stumbled upon a file about the burned-down information center—a description of its functions before the fire.

The information categories stored in the information center include:

OGAS production data for this region (factory output, raw material consumption, inventory);

This region's internet cache data (forum posts, webpage cache);

This region's citizen records data (resident information, housing information, social security information).

The third type of data, citizen files, is also backed up in other information centers, and can be recovered if burned.

The second type of data, if lost due to internet caching, is simply lost; forum posts can be reposted.

Is there only the first type of data—OGAS production data?

Gerdrian's finger stopped on this line.

He immediately called his friend in cybersecurity and asked:

"Comrade, if I want to block certain posts on all forums in Azerbaijan and prevent them from being published on the internet, do I just need to deploy deletion software in a specific information center?"

The reply was: "No, you need to deploy the deletion software on all servers in Azerbaijan. Messages from other regions are stored on local servers."

Oh?

If the goal was simply to destroy evidence of the filtering software, the mastermind would have burned down more than just this one information center. Besides, the filtering software is just a piece of code; a skilled operator could have remotely deleted it without setting it on fire.

If it's for the purpose of destroying records of tampering with citizens' files, then it's not worth it, as those records are backed up in other information centers.

Why burn it?

Unless, among the burned items, there is some data that exists only on this server, has no backup, and would expose even greater problems if seen by someone.

What data exists only on the local server and has no complete backup?

OGAS local production data is the original version before it is sent back to the central server.

The central database stores the final versions reported by various regions. The original data can be stored on local servers before reporting. If the data is adjusted locally before reporting, there will be differences between the original and reported data.

If this difference were to be seen by others, it would be irrefutable evidence of corruption.

This information center happens to be the node responsible for storing data on building material production in southern Azerbaijan. Data on the production units of the building materials used to construct the Ivanovsky Tower—precast concrete components, steel bars, insulation materials, etc.—are all stored here.

Gerdrian recalled the notification from the Planning Commission: After the information center was burned down, the OGAS system detected the loss of node data, and the central government urgently activated the backup server and retrieved the data from the central database.

The retrieved data conflicted with the last production plan received by the local production unit, differing by 5%.

The Azerbaijani Local Information Committee explained that it was a local fine-tuning of the automated algorithm.

Five percent is indeed within the normal range of algorithm fine-tuning, and this explanation is reasonable. To reduce the burden on the central authority, local OGAS nodes are allowed to make minor local adjustments to the production plan without reporting everything to the central authority; they only need to send the final adjusted data back to the central authority.