cameras security everywhere: Russia monitors citizens nationwide using digital technology

Activists are arrested using facial recognition in subway cameras security, online summonses put pressure on conscientious objectors: The Russian state massively controls its citizens with digital technology – and is now also using artificial intelligence.

If Yekaterina Maximova doesn’t want to be late, the journalist and activist prefers not to take the Moscow subway, even though it would probably be the fastest option. She was arrested five times last year because of the surveillance cameras security with facial recognition installed everywhere. She was told by the police that the cameras security would react to her – after a few hours she was allowed to leave.

“Apparently I’m stored in some kind of database,” says Maximova, who has previously been arrested twice: in 2019 after taking part in a demonstration in Moscow and in 2020 for her commitment to environmental protection.

All developments on the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Russian citizens like Maximova to escape the authorities’ control: the state monitors social media accounts and uses surveillance cameras security against activists. Even an online platform that was once praised for its official service is now being used as a control instrument. The authorities plan to use the platform to serve summonses to the military, thwarting the conscientious objectors’ tactic of avoiding handing over their recruitment documents in person.

According to human rights activists, the Russian state under President Vladimir Putin is using digital technology to track, censor and control the population. In doing so, he set up a kind of cyber gulag – a dark allusion to the labor camps in which political prisoners were interned during Soviet times.

Kremlin uses all possibilities of digitalization-cameras security

Even for a nation that has long spied on its citizens, this is new territory. “The Kremlin has indeed become a beneficiary of digitalization and is using every opportunity for state propaganda, cameras security, for surveillance of people and de-anonymization of Internet users,” said Sarkis Darbinyan, head of legal department at the Russian Internet freedom group Roskomsvoboda, which the Kremlin supports referred to as a “foreign agent”.

The Kremlin’s apparent indifference to digital surveillance appeared to change after the 2011-2012 mass protests were coordinated online, prompting authorities to tighten internet controls. Some regulations allowed them to block websites, others required mobile operators and internet providers to store conversations and messages and pass them on to security services if necessary.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, online censorship and prosecution of social media posts skyrocketed to record levels. An important factor in this was a law passed a week after the invasion that effectively criminalized anti-war sentiment, cameras security says the head of the Net Freedoms group, Damir Gainutdinov. It prohibits the spread of false information or discrediting the army and is used against those who publicly oppose the war.

cameras security

AI searches for “banned content”

Human rights activists fear a drastic increase in online censorship through artificial intelligence systems designed to scan social media and websites for content deemed illegal. In February, state media regulator Roskomnadzor announced the launch of Oculus – an AI system. It can search for banned content in online photos and videos and analyze more than 200,000 images per day, compared to around 200 images per day that a human can search. Two more AI systems will soon be able to search texts.

Authorities may also be working on a system of bots that collect information from social media sites, messenger apps and closed online communities, according to Belarusian hacker group Cyberpartisans, which obtained documents from a subsidiary of media regulator Roskomnadzor. Cyberpartisans coordinator Juliana Shametavets says the bots created by the state are expected to infiltrate Russian-language social media for surveillance and propaganda purposes.

In 2017 and 2018, Moscow authorities introduced a system of street cameras security, powered by facial recognition software. During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, authorities were able to track down and punish people who left their homes in violation of lockdown rules.

In the same year, Russian media reported that schools should also be equipped with cameras. The daily Vedomosti reported that they would be connected to a facial recognition system named Orwell, after the British author of the dystopian novel “1984” and his omniscient character “Big Brother.”

When protests against the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny began in 2021, the system was used to track down and arrest demonstrators – sometimes weeks later. When Putin announced a partial mobilization of men for the war in Ukraine in September 2022, the system apparently helped track down conscientious objectors: According to his wife, a man was stopped on the subway after failing to comply with a summons to mobilize. The police told him that facial recognition had alerted them to his presence.

The activist Maximova sued against her repeated arrests in the subway, but lost. Because of her previous arrests, police had the right to detain her for a “cautionary interview,” authorities argued. The authorities did not want to explain to her why it was stored in the surveillance databases – it was a state secret. Now she wants to appeal the verdict.

According to Darbinyan, there are 250,000 surveillance cameras security equipped with the software in Moscow – at entrances to residential buildings, on public transport and on the streets. Similar systems exist in St. Petersburg and other large cities such as Novosibirsk and Kazan.

Political scientist: “Cyber ​​Gulag is taking shape”

In November, Putin ordered the government to create an online register of all conscripts after the mobilization of 300,000 men to fight in Ukraine found that draft lists were in a chaotic state. The register, which should be ready by autumn, will record all types of data, from clinics to courts and tax offices to electoral commissions, emphasizes political expert Tatjana Stanovaya in a commentary for the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace.

This allows authorities to serve subpoenas electronically through a government website used to request official documents such as passports or certificates. Once a summons appears online, cameras security, the recipient will no longer be able to leave Russia.

Other sanctions – such as revocation of a driver’s license or a ban on buying and selling real estate – will be imposed if he does not comply with the summons within 20 days, regardless of whether he has seen it or not.

According to Stanovaya, this could also be extended to other aspects of Russian life, creating a state system of “total surveillance, coercion and punishment”: “The cyber gulag, which was actively discussed during the pandemic, is now taking shape .”

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