US technology helps Moscow Police detain protesters

Facial recognition technology using chips from the US companies Nvidia and Intel and deployed in the Moscow underground has helped police detain and question thousands of people on the way to and returning from protests against the Russia-Ukraine war. Nvidia and Intel are not thought to have breached sanctions. However, the Russian and Belarusian companies that provide the algorithms to perform face matching participated, and in some cases won prizes, in US facial recognition test programmes run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-detentions

Publication: Reuters

Writer: Lena Masri

Publication date: 2023-03-26