Tracking Deployment of Russian Surveillance Technologies in Central Asia and Latin America

Insikt Group assesses that several countries in Central Asia and Latin America likely base digital surveillance on Russia’s SORM, with at least eight providers exporting to these regions and around fifteen telecommunications firms as likely customers; SORM enables direct interception of telecom and internet traffic (with SORM-3 supporting long-term metadata storage), raising abuse risks where oversight is weak. Foreign deployments likely carry risk of Russian access due to vendor–government ties and reported backdoors, while companies should mitigate by using strong encryption and VPNs where legal, avoiding local TLD-hosted services, limiting sensitive data access during travel, and conducting surveillance risk assessments. Providers are actively marketing abroad and will likely expand further, sustaining data security risks in states closely aligned with Russia.