Russia's Academy of Scientists is to begin monitoring contacts between its members and foreigners, bringing back a practice not seen since the Cold War.
The Academy, representing most Russian science establishments, says contacts and collaboration with foreign scientists will be reported to "special departments" in a directive that takes effect this month.
It says the measures are necessary "to prevent the transmission abroad of information concerning national security". But the move has been attacked by liberals. A prominent human rights activist and MP, Mr Sergei Kovalyov, who made the directive public, warned that the order showed Russia "becoming a country where the KGB has taken power. What seems dangerous to me is that this directive is quite in line with today's Kremlin policy."
What happens to the information, or to scientists who fail to report, is unclear.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Valentina Matviyenko, played down the significance of the directive, saying she doubted claims by opponents that the information would be forwarded to the FSB, the security service.
The move may be hard to implement: Russia's huge scientific establishment has an ever-growing amount of work internationally, and computer companies are just beginning to attract work from foreign clients. This announcement comes amid a flexing of muscles of the security services under President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent. The country has seen a number of high-profile spy trials.
Last year saw the first American tried for espionage since the Cold War, when businessman Edmond Pope was jailed, and later released on compassionate grounds, accused of stealing navy secrets.
And the FSB, successor to the KGB, is spreading its wings. A former FSB general, Sergei Ivanov, is defence minister, and the FSB has been given control of the Chechnya war. The service has opened a department to monitor internet traffic, and several former FSB officers have posts supervising regional governors.