Big Brother Really has Returned to Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 4 – The Moscow city government has been investing massively in the exploitation of data from the cellphones almost all Muscovites carry to track where they are at all times with incredible precision ostensibly to improve the design of urban transit, Svetlana Yastrebova of Vedomosti says.

            Since 2015, the city’s Department of Information Technology has spent more than half a billion rubles, including 101.8 million this year (eight million and 1.6 million US dollars respectively) to acquire and process this data and both using it to make decisions about transportation and business (vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2019/03/03/795527-moskvichi).

            This is only the tip of the iceberg of the ways in which Russian officials are using high technology to serve their ends, many of which correspond to what is happening in Western countries but without the legal traditions and court systems that generally but not always even there prevent official overreach and abuse. 

            In addition to using IT data to locate people, Russian officials, including police and security agencies, are using facial recognition technology to track visitors to shopping centers, those who have not paid their bills, and others taking part in protests of one kind or another (kommersant.ru/doc/3903255 and fontanka.ru/2019/02/15/024/).

            Not surprisingly, given Russia’s history, ever more people are frightened by how the Putin regime is likely to use the data it collects against them.  In St. Petersburg, graffiti has appeared that makes reference to Orwell’s Big Brother (neva.today/news/graffiti-s-bolshim-bratom-poyavilos-v-centre-peterburga-167959/).

            And in Perm, the use of high tech to control access to schools there has been likened by some to the control mechanisms that the Soviets and the Nazis used in concentration camps (chitaitext.ru/novosti/kak-rabotaet-sistema-raspoznavaniya-lits-v-permskoy-shkole-i-pochemu-ee-nazyvayut-kontslagerem/).

            What is frightening, Russian writers say, is that the possibilities for control these technologies open are exploding but that there is no serious effort being made to create a legal environment to protect the population against official abuse (krsk.sibnovosti.ru/enterprise/372936-proverka-za-tri-sekundy-krasnoyarskie-razrabotchiki-vnedryayut-sistemu-raspoznavaniya-litsники).

            That almost certainly means that the Russian authorities will abuse their powers in this sphere just as they have abused them in others.  And that is especially worrisome because some in the West are using this technology in ways that protects the Putin regime from the kind of monitoring and criticism that it surely deserves.