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For Moscow’s quarantined, 100,000 cameras are watching
MOSCOW, March 24, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – A vast and contentious network of facial
recognition cameras keeping watch over Moscow is now playing a key role in
the battle against the spread of the coronavirus in Russia.
The city rolled out the technology just before the epidemic reached Russia,
ignoring protests and legal complaints over sophisticated state surveillance.
Since last month, thousands of Muscovites have been confined to their homes
for 14 days of compulsory quarantine after returning from virus-hit
countries, being in contact with those infected or diagnosed with mild
symptoms.
Police have logged their details and warned them that sneaking out into the
city of 16 million residents and daily visitors could lead to a five-year
jail term or deportation for foreigners.
“We are constantly checking that this regulation is being observed,
including through the use of automated facial recognition systems,” Mayor
Sergei Sobyanin wrote in his blog in February.
The Russian capital already had a tight network of 170,000 security
cameras, set up in streets and metro stations throughout the city over the
past decade.
Around 100,000 have now been linked to artificial intelligence systems that
can identify people being filmed. The remaining cameras are due to be
connected soon.
Moscow police said last week that the cameras that are linked have allowed
them to identify almost 200 people who broke quarantine rules.
As well as the cameras, Russia has said it is drawing on an array of
technology to fight the virus, including telemedicine consultations, the
real-time monitoring of supermarket shelves and identifying and removing
false news stories from social media.
President Vladimir Putin last week toured a hi-tech centre set up to
monitor the virus situation and Russia’s response.
The country, as of Monday, had reported 438 coronavirus infections, most of
them in Moscow. One person who was infected has died but officials are not
linking the death to the virus.
– 600 neighbours –
Moscow City Hall has boasted that the network of cameras is a particularly
effective tool.
Sobyanin has said that the authorities have contacts and work addresses for
95 percent of those quarantined after returning from high-risk countries.
“We’ve identified where they are,” said the mayor, who heads a working
group on combatting the virus set up by Putin.
Last month on his blog he praised the efficiency of the facial recognition
system with a story of a Chinese woman who tested positive soon after arrival
and was hospitalised.
Her flatmate was quarantined but security cameras filmed her walking
outside and meeting a male friend.
The mayor added that the authorities swiftly gathered contacts of more than
600 of the woman’s neighbours and even her taxi driver from the airport.
Facial recognition technology was first tested during the 2018 World Cup in
Russia before going fully online in January, just before the pandemic hit.
“The probability of a mistake by our facial recognition algorithm is 1 in
15 million,” said Alexander Minin, CEO of NtechLab, the company that won the
city’s tender to supply the technology.
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The firm’s devices, which have been exported to China and Latin America,
can identify someone from their silhouette alone “80 percent of the time,” he
told AFP at the start of the year.
Russia alongside China lead the field globally with the most sophisticated
technology, which they export to some 100 countries, Valentin Weber, a
researcher in cybersecurity at the University of Oxford, wrote in a 2019
paper.
– ‘Big Brother’ –
“Due to stronger data protection laws in Europe, facial recognition has not
yet been implemented on a large scale. Russian and Chinese companies have had
less legal constraints to gather and use data than their European
counterparts,” Weber told AFP.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, critics warned of the potential for
excessive state surveillance reminiscent of the all-seeing “Big Brother” in
George Orwell’s novel “1984”.
The fear was that rather than protecting the general public, the cameras
would be used to monitor Kremlin opponents and undermine civil liberties.
“The security argument is the one always used to justify loss of privacy
and personal liberty. That’s where the greatest problem and the greatest
danger lie,” said French cybersecurity researcher and renowned hacker
Baptiste Robert.
The technology’s creator Minin says that he has confidence in the Moscow
authorities and insists that personal data like passport details and phone
numbers is not stored on the same databases as camera images.
He says the data sets can only be matched by law enforcement if deemed
strictly necessary.
But opponents see such technology as threatening, given the Soviet history
of mass surveillance of those deemed by the KGB secret police to be state
enemies.
Vocal rights activist and lawyer Alyona Popova launched legal action
against the use of facial recognition at an officially authorised opposition
protest in September last year.
She said cameras were attached to metal detectors that every participant
had to pass through.
“The massive use of facial recognition technology amounts to state
surveillance of its citizens and the state will certainly use it against
political opponents,” she told AFP.
Her complaint was eventually thrown out, but an online petition she
launched on Change.org against the technology’s use gained almost 75,000
signatures before the COVID-19 crisis.
The mayor’s office denies the technology is used to monitor the opposition.
Yet to highlight the issue, four activists in February protested outside
the presidential administration offices, their faces brightly painted with
geometrical shapes and lines said to confuse cameras.
A similar protest took place in London.
“There have already been cases of political activists who were detained in
the metro after being identified with the help of cameras,” said one of the
protesters, artist Katrin Nenasheva.
Four of the activists were later fined 15,000 rubles ($185) after being
charged with organising an unsanctioned protest.
NtechLab chief Minin warned that face painting or covering up ultimately
won’t help those wanting to avoid being identified.
“We can work even when up to 40 percent of the face is covered by a helmet
or medical mask,” he said.
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