ACTIVISTS APPEALED TO THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS FOR THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY OF FACIAL RECOGNITION AT RALLIES

 It became known that the former Deputy Minister of Energy Vladimir Milov and activist Alena Popova filed a lawsuit to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The reason was the face recognition technology used by the Moscow authorities at the rally in 2019.

We are talking about the protests on September 29, 2019 - the opposition passed along Sakharov Avenue shortly after the elections to the Moscow City Duma. To get to the rally, it was necessary to go through the metal detectors, where the CCTV cameras were attached. According to RBC, the plaintiffs are sure that it was the first event in Russia with a use of a mass facial recognition technology.

Milov and Popova have already appealed to the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, to the the Ministry of Internal Affairs and to the Moscow Department of Information Technologies on this issue, arguing that such measures are a direct violation of the Constitution - in terms of interference with privacy, and the law on the protection of personal data has been violated as well.

The plaintiffs noted that no one gave permission for “recognition”, especially since the majority of the protesters are not included in the databases of criminals and suspects.

As a result, the courts of Moscow considered the use of face recognition technology justified, and the information technology department sides with them. However, Popova and Milov were not ready to dwell on this and noted that such a decision was a violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Private Life. In cases where people refused to go to the rally for fear of cameras, the right of assembly provided for by the convention was violated as well.