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Although the second wave of the virus has long surpassed the first in terms of disease levels, in Russia, as in Europe (where Kremlin trends are strikingly similar to European ones), quarantine measures are far from reminding the previous spring. Then the whole month of April was declared as the month of unemployment, people did not have the right to leave the house, in some regions this prohibition was valid until the summer.
To control the movement of the population, the government used various technological advances. You will not say that the number of such achievements was sensationally huge, he still applied them for the first time in practice, he writes ru.delfi.lt.
Census of homosexuals
From October 19. A registration system for visitors to nightclubs and bars began to operate in Moscow. A QR code hangs at the entrance of said institutions, which each person who enters must scan and then register their phone on the institution’s website.
If any of the visitors become ill within 14 days, the rest will receive an SMS with a recommendation to be examined. Authorities officially announce that they will not establish a visitor base or verify that recommendations are being followed; messages will simply be sent to the indicated numbers, etc. Similar mechanisms have been argued to operate in England and France. Still, people do not particularly believe in privacy and create anecdotes about the “census of all homosexuals in Moscow”, bearing in mind that visitors to gay clubs will also have to provide their phone number.
This fact also shows that the information is actually collected and processed: at the beginning of the pandemic, Russians who arrived from countries where there was an outbreak of the virus received an SMS from the Moscow municipality with a reminder of 2 weeks of isolation. You might think of it as a reminder sent to all recently used phones abroad, but later similar messages also reached email boxes. So there are profiles of all these people with their phone number, email address and who else knows who.
Memory photo
The Russian government has long been interested in digital technologies, although its implementation depends on the region: the rich have come a long way, and the poor don’t even have the internet everywhere. Moscow is undoubtedly in the lead, all the more so since Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin is a huge fan of digitization. Therefore, the Moscow government has long been buying large amounts of structured data from mobile operators for various purposes. For example, to analyze passenger flows in transport or estimate the number of people, movement (knowing where a smartphone usually sleeps, it is possible to determine in which area its owner lives, who can be formally registered in another area).
According to the calculations of the BBC service in Russia, from 2012. to date, 500,000 million dollars have been spent in the creation of services to collect data from Muscovites. rubles (5.5 billion euros) (this is about one sixth of Moscow’s budget this year).
About 200 thousand settled in Moscow. video cameras, not only on the streets, but also in offices. Camcorders are also built into some types of intercoms. They are connected to a single network, their data is stored on a server and can be analyzed. In terms of the number of video surveillance systems, the Russian capital is among the top ten cities in the world, with China leading the way.
Still, the crucial question is whether computers have learned to recognize the faces in the frame on their own. The developers claim that even a person wearing a motorcycle helmet can be identified. 2018 During the 2006 World Cup, video cameras installed at stadium entrances identified 49 football hooligans and 19 wanted people from the crowd, the BBC service in Russia reported.
Moscow Mayor S. Sobianin has repeatedly said that the video surveillance system can recognize faces before quarantine. But skeptics believe that a person can only be identified if they are standing directly in front of the camera (in front of the intercom) or if the correct face is manually selected from the big picture and the system is encouraged to search for it.
Probably in this way, one of the first violators of the quarantine in Moscow, about whom the media wrote, was automatically identified: Artyom, who left the apartment to take out the garbage. The following day, the police fined him with a piece of paper containing two photographs, one from his passport and the other from his intercom.
“Older brother”
Starting April 15. By the end of May, a strict quarantine had been introduced in Moscow, and each exit from the house required a digital permit from the Moscow municipality with its own details and route. The message received contained a QR code that they had to show to police officers who were in the street when taking a taxi or public transport.
“We see all the cars of those who have to comply with the quarantine of those who transit through the city,” said Mayor S. Sobianin, referring to the license plate recognition system used by the police for a long time. The fine for arbitrariness was 4 to 5 thousand. rubles (44-55 euros), in Russia it is quite a fine. A fine of 500 rubles (6 euros) is imposed for minimum speeding.
Without permission, it was only possible to go to the nearest pharmacy, store or guide the dog no more than 100 m from the house. In the summer, when the quarantine ended, authorities said they had deleted all personal data obtained at a time when permits were needed.
The “Social Monitoring” application has become a true embodiment of G. Orwell’s work. The 1984 book describes special television screens that hang in the homes of party members and follow them, and in real Moscow, their function was performed by smartphones, in which all the sick, but not hospitalized, had to install said application.
She not only captured the changing location of the phone, but also periodically demanded that the owner take a selfie with the background of the interior of the house to verify that he was complying with quarantine instructions. Fines were imposed on violators.
The fine was also received by a disabled woman who did not get out of bed (not even twice: she could not download the application to the smartphone and, of course, did not take a selfie) and the woman was taken to the hospital (she left the apartment). Summarizing the results of the spring quarantine, the Moscow municipality announced that it has allocated 54 thousand. fines received by 30%. application installed on smartphones.
Population monitoring
To help less prosperous regions that cannot bite their own “big brother”, Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications has developed an open-access digital licensing system. It was used by several dozen units of the federation of 85 (Moscow had a separate system). In principle, the system worked in a similar way to the capital system, requiring personal data, the reason for leaving home and the purpose of the trip. Time away from home and the number of permits per person is limited.
In some regions, government officials were ashamed to admit that they were following their own population. In Tatarstan, on the permit website, there was a message: “If you consistently move from home during the day, the system will see it and action will be taken.” It is true that the message was removed after the scandal, reports Kommersant.
In the Murmansk region, the problem has been solved more simply: people in quarantine have decided to buy electronic bracelets, those under house arrest must wear them. This idea has not been very helpful: Murmansk is not wealthy, so as the number of diseases increases, they may experience financial difficulties due to these bracelets.
The level of rigor used by the different regional authorities in monitoring quarantine measures did not depend so much on the speed of spread of the infection or technical feasibility, but on political expediency. In Saint Petersburg, for example, where a fairly extensive video surveillance system has been developed, not only electronic disease control is available, but also the introduction of digital permits. It can be assumed that the government was concerned about his rating and decided not to anger people without much need. And Tomsk Governor Sergei Zhvachkin called the permits with a QR code “a means to degrade human dignity.”
Eventually, Moscow became a leader in the severity of the quarantine, although there is a political explanation for this. It is believed that Mayor S. Sobianin wanted to appear before President Vladimir Putin as a determined man to trust in difficult times.
The ghost of Xinjiang
The Muslim province of Xinjiang of China is today the main symbol of the “electronic concentration camp”. In addition to the traditional criminal methods of “re-education” used by the government for these populations, the image of technological anti-utopia is formed from fragments of damaged information.
With tracking apps that everyone must download to their phones, lowered social scores if the camcorder detects you with the wrong person or in the wrong place, video surveillance systems that automatically send alerts to the police if more people gather, etc.
It is not possible to introduce all these measures in Russia, firstly due to lack of funds and secondly due to the limited administrative capacity of the government. There are still fears that the government could use the experience gained during the quarantine. All the more so since, according to social polls, more than half of Russians are in favor of law enforcement using personal identification technology and collecting personal data from those infected. Only a third of those surveyed believe that the data collected will not be sold on the black market.
It is true that so far in all the Russian stories involving the “big brother”, there is more comedy than terrible things. For example, during elections, there are periodic scandals in which the heads of institutions demand that subordinates who have voted send a photo of the ballot. In this case, it is recommended to put a mark of the black thread in the newsletter, take a photo and then express your will based on your beliefs.
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