For Moscow's quarantined, 100,000 cameras are watching
24 March, 2020
A vast and contentious network of facial recognition cameras keeping watch over Moscow is now playing an integral role in the battle against the spread of the coronavirus in Russia.
The town rolled out the technology right before the epidemic reached Russia, ignoring protests and legal complaints over complex state surveillance.
Since last month, a large number of Muscovites have already been confined with their homes for 14 days of compulsory quarantine after returning from virus-hit countries, being in touch with those infected or identified as having mild symptoms.
Police have logged their details and warned them that sneaking out into the location of 16 million residents and daily visitors could lead to a five-year jail term or deportation for foreigners.
"We are constantly checking that regulation has been observed, including through the utilization of automated facial recognition systems," Mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote in his weblog in February.
The Russian capital already had a good network of 170,000 security cameras, set up in streets and metro stations throughout the town over the past decade.
Around 100,000 have been associated with artificial intelligence systems that can identify persons being filmed. The remaining cameras are because of be connected soon.
Moscow police said the other day that the cameras that are linked have allowed them to recognize almost 200 persons who broke quarantine rules.
In addition to the cameras, Russia has said it really is drawing on a range 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 center setup to monitor the virus situation and Russia's response.
The country, by Monday, had reported 438 coronavirus infections, almost all of them in Moscow. One person who was simply infected has died but officials aren't linking the death to the virus.
600 neighbors
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 recognized where they are," said the mayor, who heads a working group on combatting the virus set up by Putin.
Last month on his blog page he praised the efficiency of the facial recognition system with a story of a Chinese woman who tested positive immediately after arrival and was hospitalized.
Her flatmate was quarantined but security camera systems filmed her walking outside and meeting a male friend.
The mayor added that the authorities swiftly gathered contacts greater than 600 of the woman's neighbors and even her taxi driver from the airport.
Facial recognition technology was initially 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 business that won the city's tender to provide the technology.
The firm's devices, which were exported to China and Latin America, can identify someone from their silhouette alone "80 percent of that time period," he told AFP in the beginning of the year.
Russia alongside China lead the field globally with sophisticated technology, which they export for some 100 countries, Valentin Weber, a researcher in cybersecurity at the University of Oxford, wrote in a 2019 paper.
'Big Brother'
"Due to better data protection laws in Europe, facial recognition hasn't yet been implemented on a sizable scale. Russian and Chinese companies experienced less legal constraints to assemble and use data than their European counterparts," Weber told AFP.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, critics warned of the prospect of excessive state surveillance similar to the all-seeing "YOUR GOVERNMENT" in George Orwell's novel "1984".
The fear was that instead of 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 lack of privacy and personal liberty. That is where the best 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 telephone numbers is not stored on the same databases as camera images.
He says the info sets can only just be matched for legal reasons enforcement if deemed strictly necessary.
But opponents see such technology as threatening, given the Soviet history of mass surveillance of these deemed by the KGB secret police to be state enemies.
Vocal rights activist and attorney Alyona Popova launched legal action against the application of facial recognition at an officially authorized opposition protest in September this past year.
She said cameras were mounted on metal detectors that every participant had to feed.
"The massive usage of facial recognition technology amounts to state surveillance of its citizens and the state will surely utilize 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 employed to monitor the opposition.
Yet to highlight the problem, four activists in February protested beyond your presidential administration offices, their faces brightly painted with geometrical shapes and lines thought to confuse cameras.
A similar protest took place in London.
"There have been cases of political activists who were detained in the metro after being discovered by making use of cameras," said among the protesters, artist Katrin Nenasheva.
Four of the activists were later fined 15,000 rubles ($185) after being charged with organizing an unsanctioned protest.
NtechLab chief Minin warned that face painting or covering up in the end won't help those attempting to avoid being identified.
"We can work even though up to 40 percent of the face is included in a helmet or medical mask," he said.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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