In Moscow, at the Frunzenskaya metro station, the police detained a man who was wanted and hiding from the investigation for over a year. The signal about the discovery of the wanted person was given to the police by a 4 billion-ruble facial recognition system, which they began to implement in the Moscow subway for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The system signaled to the police that one of the passengers was wanted. After the arrest, it turned out that the man had previously fled from Yegoryevsk, where he was wanted for robbery. This is the first criminal in Russia who was detained using such a system.
The technology allows checking up to 20 people per second through cameras. Earlier, the system, created by Russian engineers, was recognized as the best in its field by US intelligence.
The practical application of this technology already took place in August 2016. When an unknown man broke into a branch of one of the capital's banks and took several people hostage, thanks to the cameras, the police found out in a matter of minutes that it was a bankrupt businessman Aram Petrosyan.
In the capital, there are now several thousand street lenses connected to the face identification system.
Soon, the effectiveness of human identification technology will become even more effective. The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications developed a procedure for transferring biometric data of Russian citizens by the operator of the Unified Information System (Rostelecom) to the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The corresponding document is published on the federal portal of draft regulatory legal acts.
This is the face image data and the voice data. This information allows a high degree of accuracy to identify a specific person in a large volume of voice traffic ("voice verification") or on video surveillance cameras.
The operator will be obliged to provide this data within 24 hours through a unified system of interdepartmental electronic interaction in a form that allows the person to be identified. In this case, the provision of this information will be carried out free of charge, the document says.
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“The implementation of this project is an important step towards the development of the Digital Economy in Russia. The launch of the Unified Biometric System as part of solving the problems of the financial industry, as well as its further use in various industries - from telemedicine and remote elections to e-commerce - will increase the availability of digital services for residents of remote regions and sedentary citizens, and will also contribute to improving the quality life of Russians,”said Mikhail Oseevsky, President of PJSC Rostelecom.
Mikhail Oseevsky assured that the developed mechanism is transparent and guarantees that no personal data leaks will occur. He also believes that the society has developed a wrong attitude towards the collection of biometric information and this attitude needs to be changed.
“There is always a need for a certain balance between preserving freedoms and ensuring security. But in our country recently, based on false ideas about the vastness of democracy and absolute freedom, security issues have receded into the background. As a result, the terrorist threat throughout the world has not yet been overcome. Therefore, society should be calm about such mechanisms and focus more attention not on denying them, but on their improvement and public control over their use,”he said.
According to earlier statements, the system will be used in banks to remotely identify citizens when opening accounts. This is a natural method of monetizing the system for Rostelecom. But if the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are able to receive biometric data of citizens upon request at no cost, then the banks will have to pay. To pay off the project, Rostelecom plans to charge 200 rubles from each bank that will open an account for an individual using a biometric system.
The initial collection of biometric data is also entrusted to banks. According to the plan, out of each payment of 200 rubles, Rostelecom will transfer 100 rubles to the bank that collected the primary biometric data for a particular citizen. Thus, for banks, this is also an additional source of income - they will also be interested in collecting biometric data from their customers.
Banking is just the beginning. In the future, the biometric database should find wide application in many other spheres of public life: for receiving state and municipal services, health care, education and in other areas.
Rostelecom plans to invest about 200 million rubles in the project. The payback period of the system is stated at 8-10 years.
Nikolay Khizhnyak