Russia's AI Surveillance Paradox: Putin's Paranoia Grows Amidst Network Expansion

Russia's increasing reliance on internet shutdowns to control its population, a tactic intensified since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, is now overshadowed by a heightened security concern for President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.

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Russia began developing a 'smart' camera system in 2015. Before 2015, videos could be saved on memory cards, which could be extracted and reviewed in case of a crime or a specific event. The system was centralized on servers and, above all, there was no artificial intelligence, these videos were not analyzed by artificial intelligence.

Following the assassination of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Russian security services reportedly disabled a surveillance system designed to protect Putin and his close associates. This move underscores the growing threat posed by AI-driven video analysis, as demonstrated by an incident where Israeli intelligence used footage from Iranian traffic cameras to pinpoint Khamenei's meeting time and location.

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In 2015, a company called NTech Lab, founded by Rostech, a state-controlled company, became responsible for installing 'smart' cameras that could analyze images and not only save them but also send them to a server.

Experts note that AI can process vast amounts of video data to identify patterns and secrets on an industrial scale. Russia's own development of 'smart' camera systems began in 2015, with a state-controlled company, NTech Lab, taking charge of installing AI-equipped cameras that send data to central servers. By 2023, Russia had over 508,000 such cameras, with Moscow alone accounting for 216,000, covering 74% of its public spaces.

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In 2023, there were 508,000 cameras equipped with artificial intelligence in Russia. That's not a lot. Moscow, of course, had the most cameras equipped with artificial intelligence in Russia with 216,000 devices.

Despite the widespread surveillance, which has reportedly gone unquestioned by Russian citizens regarding privacy rights, concerns about hacking persist. The incident involving the Iranian leader has apparently amplified Putin's long-standing paranoia about internet-enabled surveillance, prompting a temporary shutdown of a system meant to safeguard him.

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Moscow was also a pilot city for this project, and NTech lab already installed these AI-equipped cameras in the capital in 2017. Seventy-four percent of public spaces are equipped with these 'smart' cameras, bus stations, metro stations, museums, of course, government locations.