The mere idea of losing a son – even for a few days – is panic-inducing. As a father, though, I can relate to what a sensitive and painful topic this must be for Kaspersky.

Kaspersky says that I accused him of using his son as 'bait.' Nowhere in my profile is that stated or implied. Because there we have very good relations with both FSB cyber security department and the Moscow police department.'īut while Kaspersky volunteered those details in April, he's now upset by the way I characterized the aftermath of his son's kidnapping, which became a bit of a political topic in Russia. 'They started to cooperate without any pressure, without any message from the power.

'Usually police and FSB, they don't cooperate,' Kaspersky explained in an April 21 interview in his Moscow apartment. When Kaspersky's son was abducted, he told me, his government connections paid off: The FSB and the cops immediately began working to track down the kidnappers. However, in a speech to an audience of reporters and technology analysts on February 9, Kaspersky said the following: In his blog post, Kaspersky says he's all for these social networks to continue unfettered: 'I constantly stress that social networks can be used for positive things, and would never wish this medium to be shut down or censored,' he writes. Social networks like LiveJournal are already suffering as a result. Kaspersky has also espoused positions about internet policy that are practically identical to those of the Russian government, which recently passed a bill blacklisting sites promoting so-called extreme speech and other illegal activity. During our talks, Kaspersky repeatedly mentioned that he had 'very good friends' in the cybercrime divisions of Russia's Interior Ministry, the local Moscow police department, and the FSB, the bureaucratic successor to the KGB. In 2008, for example, he showed off to a reporter a Christmas card from the Deputy Director of Intelligence for the FSB. Sometimes Kaspersky has been reluctant to discuss his relationship with official Moscow at other times, less so. Today, Kaspersky Lab is one of only two companies licensed by the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, to sell anti-virus and similar security software to the Russian government.

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