Edward Snowden, the guy who told the world about the NSA mass surveillance pratices is now living in Russia, and decided to ask Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, about the existence of similar pratices in Russia.
Putin told that Russia doesn’t have similar practices, that the country doesn’t even the financial capacity for a operation that massive, but also said that they know that criminals and terrorists use technology for their crimes and that the Russian special services have the capacity to respond to those crimes, but that everything is done inside the limits of the law.
Source: The Verge.