The Western theme of tracking sentiment on the Internet is finally arriving to Russia - at the government level. Amidst the active commentary on politics across various Social Media channels, the powers realised the importance of monitoring the comments and the opportunities such tracking presents to better control the social life.

      Kommersant newspaper reports that the software, aptly titled "Prizma" (Prism), is being developed to allow the State officials to monitor online activity in blogs (LiveJournal, LiveInternet), social networks (vK, Facebook), and realtime updates (Twitter). Literally speaking, the government will look through the Prism at over 60mln online resources in real time. The software will also be able to predict the DDOS attacks that seriously jeopardised the work of many bloggers, including the then President, in LiveJournal in 2011.

      Very similar in purpose and opportunities to the likes of Comcast and Radian6, Prism will be exclusively used to track political expressions of Russian citizen journalists, public figures, and ordinary bloggers. The authorities openly acknowledge that they plan to use the findings to prevent political upheavals, manipulate or react to the public opinion, and especially to tackle extremist actions and track the discontent with various social problems.

      The software is still at the stage of development and testing; the sales will start in 2013.