Russia's New Biometric Surveillance "Experiment"
Russia is bringing biometric surveillance to a new level—with major implications for human rights in Russia, for Ukraine, and for the West.
Russia is rolling out a new biometric surveillance “experiment,” with serious risks to human rights in Russia, to Ukraine, and to the West. Brought to you by Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC-based research and advisory firm.
The One-Liner
Most foreigners entering Russia will soon be required to provide fingerprint scans and face photos upon entry, in the latest security-driven expansion of Moscow’s biometric surveillance activities.
Fingerprint Scans and Face Photos—with No Opt-Out
This is a reprint of the latest column from our founder and CEO, Justin Sherman, in Barron’s.
While frequent U.S. flyers may recognize optional face-scanning tech like TSA-approved Clear, Russia just rolled out a system that’s not so easy to opt out of: biometric data collection for foreigners entering the country.
The Russian government issued a decree in November requiring foreigners entering Russia through four airports in Moscow and a land border checkpoint with Kazakhstan to have their photo taken and fingerprints scanned upon arrival, starting on Dec. 1, 2024. Beginning June 30, 2025, the same requirements would then expand to all border checkpoints (presumably, also including airports) in Russia.
This development is a significant expansion of Russia’s border surveillance operations and its continued efforts to expand biometric data collection at home and in its “near abroad” vicinity. Strategically, it both reflects and plays into Moscow’s paranoid view that Western saboteurs are entering Russia to topple the regime. Russia’s new capabilities are likely to be negative for human rights, Ukraine, and the West.
Face cameras and fingerprint scanners have been rolled out at the Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo, and Zhukovsky airports in Moscow and the Mashtakovo road checkpoint in Kazakhstan. One photo from state-run news agency TASS shows a white kiosk, with a red-light fingerprint scanner, prompting a traveler with animated instructions to scan their two index fingers. It appears many visitors will use those stations at the airports and border crossing, while foreigners with visa-free entry must download a phone app to provide their biometric data.
Russia isn’t a newcomer to this kind of biometric surveillance. Moscow and other major cities greatly expanded their facial recognition usage during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. Those systems are still in place today, and are used routinely to crack down on dissent, including about Russia’s full-on war on Ukraine. The Moscow government launched “Face Pay” in October 2021, allowing citizens to use facial recognition to pay subway fares. In September, Russia began expanding the program to six other cities. And in the capital, Moscow’s central video data storage system that collects all CCTV feeds is connected to the police system used to search video footage for criminals.
While the Russian government can coerce private-sector companies to hand over their data, in this case it is the government itself that is intimately involved with biometric data activities across the country. Supplying many collection systems is the Center for Biometric Technologies, a company run by the state. Russia’s main database of biometric data on citizens, the uniform biometric database, is runby state-owned telecom Rostelecom and legally accessible to the Interior Ministry (national police) and the Federal Security Service, or FSB. (To say nothing of what’s extralegally permitted.) Each time these systems are expanded, they widen the state’s reach—by number of people, by geography, by data type—into biometric surveillance.
Russia’s latest biometric “experiment,” as the state calls it, brings surveillance to a new level. The June expansion will make it virtually impossible for foreigners to enter the country without uploading face photos and fingerprint scans. Notwithstanding the usual risks that state corruption yields subpar tech, it’s fairly safe to assume, given the border security focus, that the face cameras and fingerprint scanners are high-resolution.
Moscow’s decree exempts five groups from the initial surveillance expansion: Belarusian citizens, heads and employees of foreign diplomatic missions and consulates in Russia (and their families), representatives of international organizations recognized in Russia, diplomatic or service passport- or visa-holders, and children under six. But these exemptions will hardly limit Russia’s biometric surveillance. Belarus is effectively a Russian client state with extensiveintelligence cooperation and surveillance ties with Russia. Individuals on official business to Russia are already registered with the Russian government; authorities have their photos as-is and presumably watch them otherwise. And children under six are evidently not of surveillance interest to the Kremlin.
For every other person entering Russia, face photos could be fed into facial recognition systems to more efficiently track foreign visitors, in near-real-time, as they walk about major metropolises. The Russian government can watch as potential dissidents and others troublesome to the Kremlin visit Russia and meet with Russian citizens. The information that system produces can feed into dossiers on people within Russia who are perceived (accurately or not) to be working with the likes of non-Russian reporters or foreign states. The result will be more repression.
The Russian government can also use this new policy in its strategic struggle against Ukraine and the West. Of course, that’s much of the point: A core priority of Russia’s biometric surveillance has always been to track dissidents in Russia. That enables the Kremlin to root out—whether in reality or in its paranoid fantasies—foreign spies in the country.
Plus, Estonia and other Russia-bordering countries are increasing their electronic border surveillance. Russian security agencies likely feel they need to do the same. Conspiracies of foreign subversion grow greater in the Kremlin each day.
Pro-Kremlin voices used to describe biometric collection on foreigners as efficiency-focused, aimed at helping poor souls who lose their passports get back on their feet. That nonsensical veil has dropped. Russia’s biometric surveillance “experiment” is clearly a function of counterintelligence, repression, and general surveillance of foreign travelers that will last a lifetime beyond the experiment’s end date.
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