Corruption cuts both ways in Russia's surveillance state Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg FacebookTwitterEmail The relationship between the surveillance state and corruption is one of the most fascinating aspects of today's increasingly data-based governance. The means by which Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny claims to have discovered the names of the eight secret police agents who allegedly tried to poison him in August show how the same tech-based methods that governments use to track citizens also enable citizens to fight back. Theoretically, corruption should be impossible in a strong surveillance state, which can constantly watch and track every potentially greedy official and every citizen hoping to grease the wheels. There are cameras everywhere, telephone, email and even online messenger records are routinely kept by operators and accessed by investigators, cash dealings have become far more difficult than in the 20th century. But, as Keith Darden from Yale University wrote back in 2002, a powerful surveillance state can also be corrupt: