Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 24 – There are approximately 1.2 million CCTV cameras in Russian cities; and officials estimate that by 2030, there will be five million. At present, these are operated and their tapes used and saved by city and regional authorities. Now, Moscow wants to centralize the storage and monitoring of all urban video surveillance.
The Ministry for Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media has proposed creating a national platform to do this, an effort that it says will cost some 12 billion rubles (120 million US dollars). Experts say it will cost five to six times more with costs passed on to local owners (kommersant.ru/doc/6352767 and nemoskva.net/2023/11/24/slezhka-iz-stoliczy-minczifry-rossii-predlagaet-czentralizovat-sistemy-videonablyudeniya-strany/).
Such a system, the ministry says, will include facial recognition technology; and thus it will really be possible, if this plan goes forward, for Moscow like Orwell’s Big Brother to literally watch almost everyone in the Russian Federation almost all of the time, helpful in fighting crime but extremely troubling as a means of political repression.
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