Does face recognition video surveillance in Moscow violate citizens' privacy? Court says no

A Moscow court will have guaranteed this Tuesday that the city's facial recognition function since the beginning of this year does not violate citizens' privacy. The news comes after a lawsuit imposed on the Moscow Department of Technology, responsible for the management of the video surveillance program, accused of jeopardizing the privacy of citizens.

Since January, Moscow has been using facial recognition technology in video surveillance cameras on the streets, after a government contract with the Department of Technology. At the time, the system was not well received by activists and politicians, even leading to a case against that department. However, a Moscow court has already ensured that the technology does not violate citizens' privacy.

The information was released to the Reuters agency by a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs, after lawyer and activist Alena Popova and politician Vladimir Milov of the opposition party, Solidarnost, sued the Moscow Department of Technology. The objective would be to prohibit the use of technology in events and demonstrations with crowds.

The city of Moscow completed the implementation of the technology with the award of a software contract in December 2019, and, according to Reuters, has already spent at least 50 million dollars on hardware. Currently, the system has more than 105,000 surveillance cameras equipped with this technology.

While the lawsuits were being analyzed, the system continued to be used, with the authorities using the technology to ensure that people remained at home due to the coronavirus, when so requested.

However, and quoted by the agency, Alena Popova's lawyer, Kirill Koroteev, considers that this decision "shows that there are no legal defenses for complaints in the area of ​​facial recognition". So far, the Technology Department has not responded to questions posed by Reuters, but on the official website the institution guarantees that the video surveillance system in very busy spaces "ensures the safety of people, with video recordings to be deleted within five days after an incident, except in cases of specific requests from people or the law.

In Portugal, the concerns are mainly related to the PSP's proposals for video surveillance with artificial intelligence (AI), with D3 advancing that it is urgent to launch the debate about the use of video surveillance systems with AI. Even before that, the National Data Protection Commission failed the PSP's AI video surveillance requests and one of the factors that the Commission did not like is related to the high risk for fundamental rights, data protection and respect for private life ".