Listen, I know that, with the pandemic happening, talking about Russian election-meddling has fallen off the front page of the news, but it remains a pertinent civic issue all over the world. In this blog post, I’ll be talking more generally about the Russian approach to authoritarian technology and the right to privacy, as well as how this related to their coronavirus response (I know, I said I was done talking about this, but it is such a quintessential example of pandemic response ushering in the end of privacy) and also the famous election meddling we’ve all heard about, which is, beneath all the coronavirus coverage, coming back with the US elections this year. Though the meddling is not usually an issue of privacy, it is an essential civic issue that threatens the very foundation of society.
Like China, Russia is developing an increasingly high-tech society with low expectation of individual privacy. Russia’s coronavirus containment response has been one of the more effective ones out there (though one always has to question whether case counts accurately reflect reality, due to lack of prevalent and timely testing, the lag between testing and reporting, and the desire for a country and its strongman figurehead to appear superior and capable). They started early and severe with quarantine measures, and have captured this moment to expand on citizen surveillance in the name of pandemic protection. Indeed, the novel coronavirus will be a testing ground for many technological advances new to Russian citizen surveillance. Just like many other countries, it is unlikely these changes will all be rolled back after the crisis passes, particularly because Russia’s crisis response has focused so intensely on the introduction and integration of new technology (such as thousands of security cameras) that would go to waste if dismantled after the outbreak.
What, specifically, are they putting in place? A map built on phone and credit card information, tracking the locations of those that are infected and reports, similar to those being built in other nations, including the United States. The Russian map goes a step further, however, aiming to alert friends and family of those who have been quarantined to stay away, and also aiming to automatically quarantine anyone who has been with twenty meters of a quarantined person for at least ten minutes. The ripple effect of this system within a network demonstrates the vast amount of information about people’s interpersonal webs the government is drawing on. Indeed, analyzing the social networks of the infected is a key point of the Russian containment program. For example, a Chinese woman who flew to the city from Beijing was promptly tested in February. The test came back negative, but not before the government had notified and collected data on all six hundred inhabitants of the building she lived in, as well as her friends and the taxi driver that had taken her home.
Other new developments include a massive network of security cameras and software programs with facial recognition capabilities. Moscow’s current 170,000 camera system has allegedly already caught over two hundred people violating self-isolation. In some cases, individuals had been outside for less than half a minute before being reported. Moscow’s police chief is currently installing 9,000 more cameras, and hopes to add as many more as necessary until “there is no dark corner or side street left”. The growing omnipresence of constant closed-camera surveillance is an issue that has been on the rise for a while all over the world, but this pandemic is giving it the public-relations boost it needs to be seen as a necessary measure for societal health. Even after the current crisis ends, facial recognition, universal cameras, and location tracking developments in Russia will only expand.
On a largely unrelated note, Russia has continued to meddle in elections around the world, after having been found responsible for meddling in many previous national affairs, most notably the 2016 US election and possibly the 2016 Brexit referendum. Just last month, a classified briefing was revealed warning the White House that Russians is currently meddling in the 2020 elections in favor of the re-election of Donald Trump. While most of the 2016 campaign was centered in Russia itself, much of the 2020 influence campaign has been outsourced to Ghana and Nigeria, aiming to promote social unrest and primarily racial division among Americans. Facebook recently discovered and closed a network of Facebook and Instagram accounts and pages created for this very purpose, most of which purported to be operated from within the United States. Altogether, these pages created content regularly seen by hundreds of thousands of users- perhaps millions. Though this particular network has been closed down, this is only the beginning, as the world prepares for the 2020 elections. Meddling is more than direct tampering with voting equipment- it also includes mass propaganda in favor of unrest or of any particular government on behalf of a foreign government. Staying educated about this is essential for the American voter, as well as anyone consuming online content with any social, civic, or political bent.
Here are the sources used for this blog post:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/29/europe/russia-coronavirus-authoritarian-tech-intl/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/world/russia-ghana-troll-farms-2020-ward/index.html