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On September 24, a video appeared on YouTube that has been viewed more than a million times. Search officers standing next to a protester lying on the ground, shouting that he was only 15 years old.
The image then stops at one of the officers wearing the mask, the program selects the “segmentation” function, then “select match.” Soon a photo appears on the screen showing the same officer, only without a mask, as well as his personal information. The show then “sticks” the officer’s face onto the scene.
VIDEO: Artificial intelligence helps remove OMON officers’ masks
“Your children will look you in the face when you commit the most horrible crimes of your life, and it seems that you don’t fully understand the true fragility of your situation. You don’t have masks, “says the author of the video.
It’s Andrei Maksimov, 30, born in Minsk and immigrated to Los Angeles, California, eight years ago. He told RFE / RL that his purpose was to show officials that they should not think that they can act with impunity.
“The goal is to show people that, instead of enforcing the law, they break it every day, that there are technological possibilities to put their face on the evidence of crime in the form of photos and videos,” Maximov said.
“Although Belarusian society is very active deanonization initiatives, we think we can make them more visual by bringing faces back to the crime scene. To make the effect bigger, ”he added.
According to A. Maksimov, he was “on the front lines of the protests” in 2010, and this year “he felt he had no moral right to remain silent.”
Add to black book
RFE / RL writes that protesters are finding various ways to deal with employees of security structures. For example, more and more people dare to rip the masks off the faces of violent officials, which often forces them to withdraw.
Another technological tool is the fight: the encrypted correspondence platform Telegram. With more than two million followers, NEXTA has become a vital tool in organizing protests without clear leaders.
NEXTA often shares the recordings of another channel, the Black Book of Belarus. The channel publishes photos and videos of officials who are violent against protesters, with the aim of identifying them and revealing personal information, writes RFE / RL.
The callers, known as “cyberpartisans,” have recently released the personal details of more than 2,000 officials. 15 minutes has already written that it is effective for psychological pressure on officials, especially for those who live in smaller cities.
A barcode scanner for mobile phones has been developed to help identify products of companies that have sided with Lukashenko or whose shares belong to de facto head of country.
“I created the database, and my friend, who is a programmer, created the application,” Siarhei Kastrama, a Prague-based lawyer, told Current Time.
Maximov RFE / RL acknowledged that their technology is not perfect and “unfortunately mistakes will be made.” However, according to him, the harm of misidentifying a person outweighs the benefits of the perpetrators not avoiding responsibility.
“The privacy concerns of any such system are very important to us and we prefer that[el sistema]does not exist at all. But when it comes to playing with unequal forces, with hundreds of people illegally injured every day, if that can help quell the violence, then we have to try, ”he said.
VIDEO: Detainees in Belarus spoke of incomprehensible cruelty: “You could hear people being beaten outside all night.”
In Belarus, protests erupted after the Aug. 9 announcement of allegedly more than 80 percent Lukashenko, a former leader of the country, gathered votes and was re-elected president. Peaceful demonstrations are being suppressed through arrests and the use of force: some 12,000 people have reportedly been detained since the protests began. people who have come out of isolation report torture.
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