Facial recognition helping Putin curb dissent with the aid of U.S. tech

Record ID: 1717665

  • Title: Facial recognition helping Putin curb dissent with the aid of U.S. tech
  • Date: 28th March 2023
  • Summary: BERLIN, GERMANY (FILE) (Reuters) ESCALATOR / COMPUTER VARIOUS OF FACES ON THE SCREEN
  • Embargoed: 11th April 2023 10:52
  • Keywords: Putin critic Russia-Ukraine war Russian dissident civil rights activist facial recognition
  • Location: MOSCOW, RUSSIA / URALSK, KAZAKHSTAN / SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES / DARESBURY, ENGLAND, UK / FILE LOCATIONS
  • City: MOSCOW, RUSSIA / URALSK, KAZAKHSTAN / SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES / DARESBURY, ENGLAND, UK / FILE LOCATIONS
  • Country: Russia
  • Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Europe,Military Conflicts
  • Reuters ID: LVA00C437402032023RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: 32-year-old civil rights activist Alexander Zharov had just entered a Moscow metro station on August 22, 2022, when police officers stopped him, told him he was on a wanted list, and escorted him away.
    "When the police approached me in the metro for the first time and demanded that I follow them I asked them to name the reason for the detention and their demands. One of the police officers justified this by saying that I was on the wanted list," Zharov.
    He had previously been fined and jailed for protesting and had also been detained in the metro station on May 9 and June 12. Reuters reviewed a video he shared of him entering the metro station on August 22, then being stopped by police. “It's scary,” he said. “Now I know that the subway can be a dangerous place and a place of potential detention.”
    To avoid further attention from the police, Zharov moved to Germany via Khazakzstan.
    It’s no secret that the Russian government uses facial recognition to keep an eye on citizens. In 2017, Moscow’s mayor’s office announced that the Russian capital had launched one of the world’s largest video surveillance networks, with 160,000 cameras, including more than 3,000 connected to a facial recognition system.
    A Reuters review of more than 2,000 court cases shows these cameras have played an important role in the arrests of hundreds of protesters. Most of these people were detained in 2021 after they joined anti-government demonstrations, court records show. But after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, authorities began using facial recognition to prevent people from protesting in the first place, according to interviews with more than two dozen detainees and information gathered by a Russian monitoring group. Facial recognition is now helping police to identify and sweep up the Kremlin's opponents as a preventive measure, whenever they choose.
    Western technology has aided the crackdown. The facial recognition system in Moscow is powered by algorithms produced by one Belarusian company and three Russian firms. At least three of the companies have used chips from U.S. firms Nvidia Corp or Intel Corp in conjunction with their algorithms, Reuters found. There is no suggestion that Nvidia or Intel have breached sanctions.
    Reuters also found that the Russian and Belarusian companies participated in a U.S. facial-recognition test program, aimed at evaluating emerging technologies and run by an offshoot of the Department of Commerce. One of the firms received $40,000 in prize money awarded by an arm of U.S. intelligence.
    Approached for comment, Nvidia and Intel said they halted all shipments to Russia in March 2022 after the United States tightened export restrictions. They added that they can't always know how their products are used.
    Reuters interviewed 29 people who were stopped by police in Moscow metro stations. All but one said they understood from officers that they were flagged for detention by facial recognition.
    On May 9, a police officer approached Sergei Pinchuk, a 27-year-old courier, seconds after he entered the Moscow metro. Pinchuk, who wore blue and yellow, the colours of the Ukrainian flag, that day, said police had a handheld electronic device with about 10 photos of him, all seemingly taken by metro security cameras on different dates.
    At a nearby police station, a detective pushed him into the wall, grabbed him by the neck, and called him names, he said.
    A month prior, Pinchuk had stood alone in front of the Kremlin building holding a sign with the words ‘353 Criminal Code of Russia. Stop Putin,' referencing a Russian law that says waging an aggressive war is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The detective asked about this. "He said ‘why did you do that? It's a hard time for our country'," said Pinchuk, who had been arrested, charged, and fined for the protest. The detective also threatened to jail him for years and create problems for his family, he said.
    In mid-August, Pinchuk and his friend climbed a cell tower in his town Naro-Fominsk, southwest of Moscow, and placed a Ukrainian flag at the top. The next day, while Pinchuk was visiting his parents, his brother called and informed him that police had stopped by Pinchuk's home and were looking for him. A few hours later, Pinchuk was at the airport, catching the first flight he could find to Tbilisi, Georgia. Later police called his mother and texted his friends asking where he was. He decided to relocate to the United States where he said he felt safer. He now lives in Seattle and is seeking asylum.
    (Production: Lena Masri/Matt McKnight/Matt Stock)
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