1 The dozens of human rights activists and ex-dissidents who swapped hundreds of diverse stories of torture and repression at a meeting Monday had one common message: The KGB is back.
2 Joining the growing chorus of critics of the KGB's successor, the Federal Counterintelligence Agency, the activists accused it of returning to such practices as psychological torture and forced medical experimentation on political prisoners.
3 'In some ways, they're getting more and more aggressive,' said Sergei Grigoryants, a former dissident and now president of the Glasnost Fund, a Moscow-based human rights organization.
4 Grigoryants cited recent reports of medical experimentation on soldiers refusing to fight in Chechnya, as well as reports of phone tapping and unexplained imprisonments -- practices thought to have died out with the once-dreaded KGB.
5 'We're still meeting them at every step. They're still tapping phones, they're still listening at doorways,' Grigoryants said.
6 Vladimir Oivin, a dissident who spent eight years in a prison camp for political crimes, called the new agency, known by the Russian acronym FSK, a 'criminal organization.'
7 'At first, when they were trying to pretend to be `democratized,' I actually thought it might be getting better,' Oivin said. 'At least they had put on a friendly face.'
8 But now, Oivin said, the agency has abandoned its 'charade,' and is donning its old Big Brother image.
9 'I've had my friends disappear, my phones again bugged, people are afraid again. I don't know what to think.'
10 The KGB was well-known for spying on millions of Soviet citizens at home and carefully monitoring their contact with the outside world.
11 Immediately after the Soviet collapse in 1991, it was split into two organizations dealing with foreign and domestic spy issues -- the Foreign Intelligence Service and the FSK, initially called the Security Ministry. It has also reduced its size from about 135,000 official employees to about 75,000.
12 Last month, a respected Moscow daily raised international alarm by publishing a document allegedly from the FSK, accusing American research organizations of espionage against the Russian government.
13 'It makes my skin crawl,' said Marina Shemakhanskaya, an activist at Monday's conference, who said the KGB had threatened hospitals into denying her husband medical treatment for cancer because of his political views.
14 She also said that she is regularly visited by counterintelligence agents at her apartment, nine years after her husband's death.

" In some ways , they ' re getting more and more aggressive , " said Sergei Grigoryants , a former dissident and now president of the Glasnost Fund , a Moscow - based human rights organization .
more and more aggressive , "
How are they getting more aggressive?