By ROBYN DIXON | The Washington Post | Published: April 17, 2021
MOSCOW — Russian authorities are ramping up the use of facial recognition technology to track opposition protesters to their homes and arrest them – a powerful new Kremlin tool to crush opposition.
But when state security agents are suspected of murders or attacks on journalists and opposition activists, surveillance cameras have at times been switched off or "malfunction."
And the system is so leaky that surveillance data on individuals can be bought for a small sum on Russia's notorious black market in data, along with all kinds of other personal information. There is even a name for the clandestine cyber-bazaar: probiv.