The New Moscow: A Digital Utopia Doubling as a Surveillance Trap

[MsAmerica]

For me, this is particularly interesting because I've been shocked at the amount of surveillance Londoners have allowed.

The New Moscow: A Digital Utopia Doubling as a Surveillance Trap
Cutting-edge technologies have reshaped the Russian capital, making it safer, more convenient — and more closely watched.
By Ivan Nechepurenko

On the surface, today’s Moscow is a technological wonderland. You can use your face to pay for almost anything, like subway fares, or even to finalize the purchase of an apartment. Robots scurry across sidewalks making 15-minute grocery deliveries, and driverless taxis are set to begin commercial service this year.

Underpinning many of the modern amenities is a robust digital infrastructure developed by the city government that has made life not only easier, but also safer. Policing aided by digital tools has helped cement Moscow’s transformation from the raw, unforgiving place it was 25 years ago, plagued by home burglaries, street muggings and murders.

But there is a cost to the convenience and security: an expanding surveillance state.

Moscow’s roughly 300,000 CCTV cameras make it one of the most heavily watched cities in the world. It is impossible to avoid a lens while simply walking through the city. The same cameras that whisk subway passengers through turnstiles are also used to monitor and flag people....

These databases help the authorities target political dissent in addition to crime. Biometric feeds can be used to hunt down critics of the government after they hold gatherings. The days when outspoken Russians could flee to remote towns to avoid the authorities, as they did during Stalin’s purges, are largely over.

As of July, around 10 million Russians were using biometrics-driven applications in some form, and the Kremlin wants to increase that number, pushing citizens to adopt the tools for identification not only at train stations, but also at airports. This year, Moscow City Hall announced that a biometric system would recognize passengers on buses and trams, automatically deducting their fare once they confirmed the transaction in an app.

Other major European cities also have large CCTV networks, most notably London. Moscow’s, however, is more centralized and uses biometrics to identify people spotted by cameras with fewer restrictions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/world/europe/moscow-russia-putin-digital-surveillance.html

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-boston-globe/20260915/281595247428477?srsltid=AU7gw4Vqq8YpVtcD1HXBoJ1IF-D_o2Fpexz6yshm3Wq5xvO1COwu0WjN

Thanks for this. Getting on the thread to read those articles later.

How nice. Luckily, with this one I was able to find a link without a paywall.

On a similar topic, there's increasing concern in the US about the private surveillance network Flock which has been expanding rapidly.

It's a worst of all worlds: Flock is a private company and sells the data to whoever's willing to pay. That includes state agencies. It also includes other private companies who might be pursuing their own agendas of control.

Since Musk so publicly joined the White House we can't ignore the fact that the tech broligarchy are deeply involved in politics. We also can't ignore their ambitions to gain even more control of the population. Flock data is the sort of thing they're hungry for and will find a lot of uses for – for their benefit, not ours.

Flock says its cameras make US safer - so why are they being sabotaged?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cew9kz1kxpvo

[ETA article title]

More about Flock.

Some people have actually read the small print. They're not keen.

Then there are the security technologists who successfully hacked Flock cameras. They're also not keen.

‘Creepy surveillance’: why some cities are shutting down Flock cameras amid privacy concerns
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/06/flock-cameras-privacy-concerns

Oh, thank you, @PerkingFaintly, for posting about Flock. I try not to shoehorn in too much about the U.S., so I hadn't mentioned it. But it's amazing how there is suddenly such public outcry against Flock - I'm delighted!

What the heck?

Not only does no one know who owns some of them, but they're doing numberplate recognition.

One of the cameras disappeared as mysteriously as it was erected, when the county officials put up notices demanding the unauthorised cameras' removal.

Flock cameras appear in FL town but nobody knows who is running them
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/flock-cameras-appear-in-fl-town-but-nobody-knows-who-is-running-them/ar-AA2dmcVE

The discovery has raised questions about who installed the cameras, whether they were collecting motorists' data and who could access it.

When it comes to surveillance, my pondering leads me to coffee shops.

Where I live, cameras all over. And a few years back the cops even visited to take my photos, for the facial recognition. Cameras were going up everywhere. On the short walk to the local shop, a couple hundred yards, I counted about 7 that pointed straight at me.

And when you add it all together. The cameras, the phone pay, the bus fares being by phones, it struck me that all this adds up to an amazing set of data that could be sold to coffee shop companies.

Who is going to coffee shops, how do they get there, when do they go, where do they live, how many people from area A go the area B for coffee, would a coffee shop in area A work ?

What a powerful tool all this data could be for town planners. And what a temptation it must be for people to buy and sell the data.

I went to China in the summer and in a square where we sat to recoup briefly, we counted no less than 21 cameras. They are everywhere. It was so disturbing.
In the West, we have walked blindly into surveillance due to our uptake of social media. My Mother lived and defected from east Germany and she is aghast how much data people willingly divulge - also on AI as there is suggestion the prompts can be made public.

WTF???

The police came to your home to take photographs to facilitate camera recognition? Is that legal? Is that common? Are you in England?

I am totally shocked. As my grandmother would have said, I never heard of such a thing. At least, outside of someplace like China.

@MsAmerica , that poster is indeed "someplace like China."

To the point they're a little cautious about saying outright on the internet exactly where they are, although they do make it clear in elliptical terms.

Hope it's OK I've said that, @RedTagAlan .

We know each other quite well from other threads!

I must be very dense, then, as I didn't catch it.

But I would certainly be pleased if the forum had posters from places like that. I was so grieved that the Iranian poster here was chased away.

No no, not you being dense. I just know that poster from other threads!

It happens that we have some of the same interests, so are more likely to run into each other.

Oh, okay. Are you allowed to whisper where she is, or is that too risky?

This, to me, is one of the aspects of a forum at its best - people across the world connecting, sometimes in real time.

Sorry, I realise I've probably already been rude talking about them – even if not actually behind their back.

Apologies, @RedTagAlan . It seemed relevant to the discussion but I think I overstepped.

And I don't want to derail this important thread!

You said nothing rude.
:)

On reflection, I suppose even this bit of the conversation is relevant on a thread about the surveillance trap inherent in the digital utopia of online discussion fora...

My understanding is that it is always worth skimming through data protection laws, and trying to get the intent of them. And no, I have no legal training at all.

The way I see it, is there are two intents, and each of these form a column, side by side. And branches come off them., And these branches can intermingle, but they are still rooted to one of the headers. Or I suppose it's more like 2 shrubs, planted in two separate pots, side by side.

On one side, lets call it the left header, or pot, we have the intent " Protect the individual from the state". And on the right column, the other pot, the header is " Protect the State from the individual".

And I think, if one sticks to just those 2 columns, and force ourselves to think about where other parts of data protection fit , we can get a complex tree, but we can weight it.

Some other reasons for data protection.

Protect from crime. Protect the individual from themselves. Protect other individuals from other individuals. Enforce ideology. Protect individuals from big business ( see also potential crime), and so on.

The EU is firmly in the Left column. Other states are firmly in the right column, Some of the new UK laws I find worrying. And the current US POTUS defo wants the US to be in the right column.

So when they put cameras up. Is it to protect the individual from the state, or the state from the individual ? It's not as clear cut as it seems. I don't think so anyway. Take a democracy for example. The overriding thing is, or should be, to preserve democracy. So a "law and order" party, that promises low crime, is more likely to use the tech to protect it 'self. It will not care so much about the rights of individuals. It has to get crime down to be re-elected. And if the opposition to that "law and order" party say, you are infringing on individual rights, the law and order folk will yell " you are protecting criminals"

Beyond that odd theory I have formulated in my head, I have no idea. I think it's a case of seeing new laws that are being proposed, things being done, and putting it under one of the two columns. And the more thinking that is needed to decide what heading it fits under, the more worried one should be.

If that makes sense. Sorry for the ramble.