The media reported that Moscow’s law enforcement authorities are locating protesters using data from the surveillance system. ForkLog spoke to experts about how legal such actions are and whether privacy under cameras can be preserved.
As reported by Dozhd, citing an anonymous participant in the protests on January 23, a week later a precinct officer came to his home. At the rally, the man wasn’t detained. The policeman said he had been identified by cameras.
According to the man, the precinct officer asked several questions about the January 23 rally and what he did there. He then filled out a document stating that the man had not faced administrative liability, and warned — if he is detained at the next rally, he will be jailed immediately.
The officer also said that law enforcement officials survey all protesters identified by cameras, and advised wearing a mask, the interviewee told Dozhd.
The precinct officer, according to the interviewee, asked several questions: whether he attended the January 23 rally and what he did there. In the end, the officer filled out a document stating that the man had not been subject to administrative liability, and warned: “If detained at the next rally, you’ll be jailed immediately.”
Earlier, a journalist who filmed the January 23 protests for editorial assignment spoke of detention at one metro station. According to him, the police found him using data from the city’s video surveillance system.
The Village wrote about several similar incidents.
GMT Legal’s CEO Andrey Tugaryan noted that processing of personal data may be carried out without an individual’s consent on the basis of a request from a state body under the law on personal data.
“There was a violation, because people’s presence was unauthorized. Accordingly, all those indirectly and directly ‘involved’ — including people who were simply nearby — can be fined, according to the law,” he said.
According to Mikhail Tretyak, a partner at Digital Rights Center, there are no fully legal grounds for using CCTV footage and facial recognition technologies from a legal standpoint.
“Perhaps law enforcement agencies are ‘pulling in’ the use of such technologies to pre-empt possible crimes at any protest,” he told ForkLog.
However, the lawyer stressed that ultimately law enforcement officers come to “peaceful citizens, most of whom have not even been charged administratively, they are not on a wanted list, and, based on their actions, have not committed any serious criminal offences or preparations for them”:
“It turns out that the law enforcement agencies use all official and unofficial tools to identify both active and potential participants in a protest, instead of using it to catch real criminals.”
Defending against facial recognition is quite difficult, though possible, said Roskomsvoboda’s technical director Stanislav Shakirov:
“Masks currently save us from this. Conditionally, by wearing some mask and glasses, one could hypothetically hide from the facial recognition system.”
“Roskomsvoboda” called for a moratorium on the facial recognition system in Moscow last year.
Tretyak emphasized that to identify faces, “definitely or possibly involved in unsanctioned actions”, not only facial recognition technology, but also geolocation data.
Last week in the Ministry of Digital Development RF proposed to disclose the location of mobile phones from under telecommunications secrecy.
By June 2020, Moscow’s city CCTV system comprised more than 190,000 cameras, of which 105,000 were connected to the video analytics system, according to the Moscow Department of Information Technology (DIT).
According to data provided by the DIT in response to ForkLog’s request, today about 204,000 cameras are connected to the city CCTV system — more than 162,000 under state contracts and more than 41,000 cameras from external CCTV systems.
The Moscow facial recognition system was planned to be rolled out in ten more Russian cities.
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