Russian citizens claim Moscow police are using facial recognition technology to track, trace and detain protesters who have attended rallies in support of leading Putin critic Alexey Navalny. Police have responded harshly to the protests sweeping Russia: more than 5,100 people have been detained so far, with a further 1,000 people arrested yesterday as a Moscow court sentenced the opposition leader to two years and eight months in jail. 

“They stopped my husband in the subway to check his documents, repeating the fatal words 'face control,” tweeted Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann on Sunday. Her husband, literary critic Mikhail Schulmann, was then taken to a police station in Moscow before later being released. Lawyer Mikhail Biryukov, who represents a number of detainees from the protests, said his client, historian Kamil Galeev, was detained at his home in Zelenograd outside Moscow and charged with attending a rally after he was tracked and identified using images of the protests from January 23. Others have voiced similar claims, including a journalist who said he was tracked using facial recognition after reporting on the protests, and a rapper who described being stopped on the subway after being identified using the technology.  

Why It Matters

Human rights groups and activists are concerned that Russia’s rollout of facial recognition technology is unregulated, invasive, and threatens citizen’s privacy. Moscow first began trialing the systems in 2017, and two years later announced it would install facial recognition software for over 200,000 cameras across the city.