Everyone will be identified! How Moscow is establishing mass surveillance system

Victoria Pavlova

Now the surveillance cameras have reached the garbage - the lawmakers of Moscow and the Moscow region last week suggested punishing the drivers who set up garbage dumps along the way on the basis of video cameras being fixed. But is it bad if they stop littering? Why are people unhappy again? Most likely because everyone understands that this is just one of the elements of the global capital's control system. After all, the Moscow mayor's office often monitors the residents of the capital far from openly, and if it tries to take care of the safety of personal data, it is unsuccessful.

How much does the digital cap cost to the budget and what does it consist of?

Previously, the authorities bought data on the movement of people from mobile operators (as they assure - impersonal), having spent about 500 million rubles for this purpose over the past 4 years. Now they are switching to independent collection of information: the Traffic Management Center last year announced a tender for the purchase of 220 hardware and software complexes for 155.2 million rubles, which will collect information about the location of people's mobile devices with reference to their MAC address (unique identifier each smartphone). Previously, the data on the location of people was rough - with an error of up to 500 meters, now the information will be much more accurate, and the city authorities will even be able to recognize groups of people in constant contact, for example, identify a family. They promise, again, impersonal.

The tax authorities are also not lagging behind: starting March 17, they receive expanded access to the data of bank clients. Now, upon their request, it is possible to obtain copies of account holders' passports and samples of their signatures - all for catching tax evaders. A subsidiary of Rostec has equipped 1,600 schools with a video surveillance system with the self-explanatory name Orwell. And the cherry on the cake is being set up by Sberbank: it has created the SberAnalytica platform and is bringing it to the commercial market: there they will collect and analyze payments from Russians with reference to the cards of 2GIS, which is part of Sberbank. The joke “if you are paranoid doesn’t mean that you are not being watched” is becoming more and more relevant. Moreover, Russia ranks third in the world in the number of CCTV cameras. The authorities insist on the unconditional benefits of such ubiquitous video surveillance.

In the Moscow budget for the Safe City program in 2020, 49.6 billion rubles were allocated. Street video cameras helped the Moscow Main Department of Internal Affairs in the search for criminals - in 2020, they solved 40 murders, 516 robberies, 129 cases of grievous bodily harm, and 2,713 thefts with their help. The system effectively worked to identify and prevent cases of violation of the coronavirus quarantine during the period of restrictive measures, according to the Central Internal Affairs Directorate.

Anti-loitering cameras

Moscow is allocating more and more funds for such law enforcement innovations - in February it became known that the city authorities would spend 932 million rubles. for the purchase and installation of 316 multimedia screens with cameras equipped with face recognition at 85 metro stations. The screens will be able to recognize, for example, fast movements, crossing lines and "loitering". The cameras have obvious benefits - since September 2020, 100 people have been found missing with their help, including 26 children. But not everyone liked the second side of the coin: after the unauthorized rallies in January 2020, their participants began to be identified by cameras.

“After the recent rallies, the use of big data is causing great concern among citizens”, - said Deputy Yevgeny Bunimovich at a meeting of the Moscow City Duma on March 10. - I am glad that such methods work for finding criminals, but often it is about something else. Ethical issues in the application of these technologies remain open. The police come home to people who have not committed any illegal actions, but simply found themselves in the lenses of video cameras at the wrong time and in the wrong place. How do the understanding of security and human rights correlate in this case?"

The Moscow government claims that it does not collect personal data, but only collects impersonal data, but, most likely, this is not true, said Moscow City Duma deputy Daria Besedina in an interview with Novye Izvestia. “Simple manipulations (matching the Troika number, the mos.ru database of public services, the digital pass service with face recognition data) can establish where and when a particular person used public transport and walked under surveillance cameras. This is the processing of personal data without consent, which does not in any way meet the requirements of the Federal Law “On Personal Data”, - says Besedina. Indeed, during the second wave of the coronavirus in October, the Moscow government obliged employers to provide the Troika card numbers of their employees who were transferred to a remote mode of work. It is not hard to guess that such information could form the basis for collecting data on quarantine violators.

"Operators will sell any information for 5 thousand"

The public project for self-regulation of the Internet industry "Roskomsvoboda" investigated vulnerabilities in the Moscow facial recognition system - those who have access to it sell data. Potential buyers include private detectives and collectors. A year ago, the price list was as follows: 3,000 rubles for a five-day access to the live broadcast of one Moscow camera from the Safe City system and a short archive of its recordings; 10,000 rubles for searching for a person using the face recognition system using ground cameras - as a result, you can get an extract in PDF format with the addresses of the cameras where the object of surveillance was noticed (mainly the cameras of the entrances) and photographs for 30 days. Such data is sold by only a few dealers, however, according to the data breakthrough market players, they still have their own sellers and buyers.

“There are several levels of security: physical - these are the servers, the hardware itself, are they closed enough? The second level is the software itself - it is very vulnerable. The third is that in the database itself, all data must be converted into a special form”, - explains data analyst Artur Khachuyan in an interview with Novye Izvestia. - The fourth level, the most at risk is people. System operators who will download and sell any information on the darknet for 5 thousand rubles. This is very difficult to track down. In fact, you can buy these cameras and follow, for example, a girl".

One of the most scandalous cases of personal information leakage occurred in December 2020 - the data of tens of thousands of patients of Moscow hospitals with coronavirus were freely available on the Internet. The archive weighing about 1 GB contains 362 files in Word, Excel, PDF and JPG formats. Some tables have more than 100 thousand rows, each of which has columns with name, place of residence, phone number, compulsory medical insurance policy, date of birth, diagnosis, etc. This is a leak of medical secrets, but not a single supervisory authority has responded to this egregious fact.

Why does the Moscow government have an "indulgence" on data leaks

“We have virtually no oversight body to monitor how the authorities collect data. In theory, this should be dealt with by Roskomnadzor, maybe partially the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs in case of leaks and the FSB, if it comes to state security. For some unknown reason, Roskomnadzor does not contact the government of Moscow, ”Ivan Begtin, Director of ANO Information Culture, said in a comment for Novye Izvestia.

“In an amicable way, on the same day after the leak of data on covid patients, they should have come with a check to the Moscow DIT, instantly, without warning. That did not happen. The prosecutor's office did not react either. Therefore, we conclude that federal bodies, formally independent of the capital's government, in fact turn a blind eye to violations in the city. Why the Moscow government has such an indulgence is an open question”, - the expert says.

To ensure that the security system in the city using digital technologies does not become a monster, public control is necessary, says Artur Khachuyan. “The problem of 'surveillance' is not a problem of the developer and progress, but the fault of the person who comes up with a punitive law. The state will never give up face recognition technology, public control is needed, since it will not be possible to “bury” it”, - the expert warns.

Even if you believe in the goodwill of the mayor's office, creating a gigantic surveillance system is simply dangerous, Daria Besedina is sure.

“Tens of billions of taxpayers' rubles are being spent on the development of the face recognition system. However, so far it is extremely weak in helping to search for criminals. So far, we see that the state is using its power to persecute political opponents”, - the Moscow City Duma deputy believes.

It seems that the self-help principle in the story of digital surveillance of all of us is more relevant than ever. Until it is possible to create a system of real public control over ... total control, the cameras will continue to function super efficiently when it is necessary to once again identify and fine a quarantine violator or a participant in an unauthorized rally, but in the case of serious criminal offenses, it is suspicious break down and switch off just at that very "X hour".