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That's because she's been detained five times in the past year, thanks to the system's pervasive security cameras with facial recognition. She says police would tell her the cameras \"reacted\" to her - although they often seemed not to understand why, and would let her go after a few hours.
\"It seems like I'm in some kind of a database,\" says Maksimova, who was previously arrested twice: in 2019 after taking part in a demonstration in Moscow and in 2020 over her environmental activism.
For many Russians like her, it has become increasingly hard to evade the scrutiny of the authorities, with the government actively monitoring social media<\/a> accounts and using surveillance cameras against activists.
Even an online platform once praised by users for easily navigating bureaucratic tasks is being used as a tool of control: Authorities plan to use it to serve military summonses, thus thwarting a popular tactic by draft evaders of avoiding being handed the military recruitment paperwork in person.
Rights advocates say that Russia<\/a> under President Vladimir Putin<\/a> has harnessed digital technology to track, censor and control the population, building what some call a \"cyber gulag<\/a>\" - a dark reference to the labor camps that held political prisoners in Soviet times.
It's new territory, even for a nation with a long history of spying on its citizens.
\"The Kremlin<\/a> has indeed become the beneficiary of digitalization and is using all opportunities for state propaganda, for surveilling people, for de-anonymizing internet<\/a> users,\" said Sarkis Darbinyan, head of legal practice at Roskomsvoboda, a Russian internet freedom group the Kremlin deems a \"foreign agent.\"
RISING ONLINE CENSORSHIP AND PROSECUTIONS
<\/strong>
The Kremlin's seeming indifference about digital monitoring appeared to change after 2011-12 mass protests were coordinated online, prompting authorities to tighten internet controls.
Some regulations allowed them to block websites; others mandated that cellphone operators and internet providers store call records and messages, sharing the information with security services if needed. Authorities pressured companies like Google, Apple and Facebook to store user data on Russian servers, to no avail, and announced plans to build a \"sovereign internet\" that could be cut off from the rest of the world.
Many experts initially dismissed these efforts as futile, and some still seem ineffective. Russia's measures might amount to a picket fence compared to China's Great Firewall, but the Kremlin online crackdown has gained momentum.
After Russia invaded Ukraine<\/a> in February 2022, online censorship and prosecutions for social media<\/a> posts and comments spiked so much that it broke all existing records.
According to Net Freedoms<\/a>, a prominent internet rights group, more than 610,000 web pages were blocked or removed by authorities in 2022 -- the highest annual total in 15 years - and 779 people faced criminal charges over online comments and posts, also a record.
A major factor was a law, adopted a week after the invasion, that effectively criminalizes antiwar sentiment, said Net Freedoms head Damir Gainutdinov. It outlaws \"spreading false information\" about or \"discrediting\" the army.
Human Rights Watch cited another 2022 law allowing authorities \"to extrajudicially close mass media outlets and block online content for disseminating 'false information' about the conduct of Russian Armed Forces or other state bodies abroad or for disseminating calls for sanctions on Russia.\"
SOCIAL MEDIA USERS 'SHOULDN'T FEEL SAFE'
<\/strong>
Harsher anti-extremism laws adopted in 2014 targeted social media users and online speech, leading to hundreds of criminal cases over posts, likes and shares. Most involved users of the popular Russian social media platform VKontakte<\/a>, which reportedly cooperates with authorities.
As the crackdown widened, authorities also targeted Facebook, Twitter, Instagram<\/a> and Telegram<\/a>. About a week after the invasion, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were blocked in Russia, but users of the platforms were still prosecuted.
Marina Novikova,<\/a> 65, was convicted this month in the Siberian city of Seversk of \"spreading false information\" about the army for antiwar Telegram posts, fining her the equivalent of over $12,400. A Moscow court last week sentenced opposition activist Mikhail Kriger to seven years in prison for Facebook comments in which he expressed a desire \"to hang\" Putin. Famous blogger Nika Belotserkovskaya, who lives in France, received a nine-year prison term in absentia for Instagram posts about the war that the authorities claimed spread \"fakes\" about the army.
\"Users of any social media platform shouldn't feel safe,\" Gainutdinov said.
Rights advocates worry that online censorship is about to expand drastically via artificial intelligence systems to monitor social media and websites for content deemed illicit.
In February, the government's media regulator Roskomnadzor said it was launching Oculus - an AI system that looks for banned content in online photos and videos, and can analyze more than 200,000 images a day, compared with about 200 a day by humans. Two other AI systems in the works will search text materials.
In February, the newspaper Vedomosti quoted an unidentified Roskomnadzor official as lamenting the \"unprecedented amounts and speed of spreading of fakes\" about the war. The official also cited extremist remarks, calls for protests and \"LGBT propaganda\" to be among banned content the new systems will identify.
Activists say it's hard to know if the new systems are operating and their effectiveness. Darbinyan, of the internet freedom group, describes it as \"horrible stuff,\" leading to \"more censorship,\" amid a total lack of transparency as to how the systems would work and be regulated.
Authorities could also be working on a system of bots that collect information from social media pages, messenger apps and closed online communities, according to the Belarusian hacktivist group Cyberpartisans, which obtained documents of a subsidiary of Roskomnadzor.
Cyberpartisans coordinator Yuliana Shametavets told AP the bots are expected to infiltrate Russian-language social media groups for surveillance and propaganda.
\"Now it's common to laugh at the Russians, to say that they have old weapons and don't know how to fight, but the Kremlin is great at disinformation campaigns and there are high-class IT experts who create extremely effective and very dangerous products,\" she said.
Government regulator Roskomnadzor did not respond to a request for comment.
EYES ON - AND UNDER - THE STREETS
<\/strong>
In 2017-18, Moscow authorities rolled out street cameras enabled by facial recognition technology.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities were able to trace and fine those violating lockdowns.
Vedomosti reported in 2020 that schools would get cameras linked to a facial recognition system dubbed \"Orwell,\" for the British writer of the dystopian novel \"1984,\" with his all-seeing character, \"Big Brother.\"
When protests over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny erupted in 2021, the system was used to find and detain those attending demonstrations, sometimes weeks later. After Putin announced a partial mobilization for Ukraine last year, it apparently helped officials round up draft evaders.
A man who was stopped on the Moscow subway after failing to comply with a mobilization summons said police told him the facial recognition system tracked him down, according to his wife, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because she feared retaliation.
In 2022, \"Russian authorities expanded their control over people's biometric data, including by collecting such data from banks, and using facial recognition technology to surveil and persecute activists,\" Human Rights Watch reported this year.
Maksimova, the activist who repeatedly gets stopped on the subway, filed a lawsuit contesting the detentions, but lost. Authorities argued that because she had prior arrests, police had the right to detain her for a \"cautionary conversation\" - in which officers explain a citizen's \"moral and legal responsibilities.\"
Maksimova says officials refused to explain why she was in their surveillance databases, calling it a state secret. She and her lawyer are appealing the court ruling.
There are 250,000 surveillance cameras in Moscow enabled by the software - at entrances to residential buildings, in public transportation and on the streets, Darbinyan said. Similar systems are in St. Petersburg and other large cities, like Novosibirsk and Kazan, he said.
He believed the authorities want to build \"a web of cameras around the entire country. It sounds like a daunting task, but there are possibilities and funds there to do it.\"
'TOTAL DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE'
<\/strong>
Russia's efforts often draw comparisons with China, where authorities use digital surveillance on a vast scale. Chinese cities are blanketed by millions of cameras that recognize faces, body shapes<\/a> and how people walk to identify them. Sensitive individuals are routinely tracked, either by cameras or via their cellphones, email and social media accounts to stifle any dissent.
The Kremlin seems to want to pursue a similar path. In November, Putin ordered the government to create an online register of those eligible for military service after efforts to mobilize 300,000 men to fight in Ukraine revealed that enlistment records were in serious disarray.
The register, promised to be ready by fall, will collect all kinds of data, \"from outpatient clinics to courts to tax offices and election commissions,\" political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya said in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
That will let authorities serve draft summonses electronically via a government website used to apply for official documents, like passports or deeds. Once a summons appears online, recipients cannot leave Russia. Other restrictions -- like suspension of a driver's license or a ban on buying and selling property -- are imposed if they don't comply with the summons within 20 days, whether they saw it or not.
Stanovaya believes these restrictions could spread to other aspects of Russian life, with the government \"building a state system of total digital surveillance, coercion and punishment.\" A December law mandates that taxi companies share their databases with the successor agency of the Soviet KGB, giving it access to travelers' dates, destinations and payment.
\"The cyber gulag, which was actively talked about during the pandemic, is now taking its real shape,\" Stanovaya wrote.
___
Associated Press writers Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, and Joe McDonald and Beijing contributed.
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网络古拉格:俄罗斯如何跟踪、审查和控制其公民
这是因为她被拘留五次在过去的一年中,由于与面部识别系统的普遍的安全摄像头。她说警察会告诉她摄像机“反应”——尽管他们似乎不明白为什么,会让她走后几个小时。
这是因为她被拘留五次在过去的一年中,由于与面部识别系统的普遍的安全摄像头。她说警察会告诉她摄像机“反应”——尽管他们似乎不明白为什么,会让她走后几个小时。
“就像我在某种数据库,“Maksimova说,他此前逮捕了两次:2019年在莫斯科参加示威后,2020年在她的环保运动。
对于许多俄罗斯人喜欢她,越来越难逃避当局的审查,与政府积极监控社交媒体账户和对活动人士使用监控摄像头。
甚至吸引了一次在线平台用户轻松地导航官僚任务被用作一个工具的控制:当局计划使用它为军事传票,从而挫败了一个受欢迎的策略草案者避免传递军事招聘文书工作的人。
权利倡导者说俄罗斯在总统弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)利用数字技术跟踪、审查和控制人口,建设一些所谓的“网络古拉格”——暗指的是劳改营,政治犯在苏联时期。
新领域,即使是对一个国家有着悠久历史的刺探中国公民。
“克林姆林宫确实已经成为数字化,使用所有的受益人国家宣传的机会,对侦查人来说,de-anonymizing吗互联网用户,”Sarkis Darbinyan说,法律实践主管Roskomsvoboda,俄罗斯互联网自由集团克里姆林宫认为“外国代理人”。
网络审查和起诉
克里姆林宫关于数字监控似乎漠不关心的想法改变2011 - 12大规模抗议后在线协调,促使当局收紧互联网管制。
一些法规允许他们阻止网站;其他规定,手机运营商和互联网提供商存储通话记录和信息,如果需要共享信息与安全服务。当局的压力像Google这样的企业,苹果和Facebook在俄罗斯服务器上存储用户数据,但无济于事,宣布计划建立一个“主权互联网”可以从世界其他国家的剪除。
许多专家开始认为这些努力是徒劳的,和一些似乎仍然无效。俄罗斯的措施可能会一个尖桩篱栅相比中国的防火长城,但克里姆林宫在线镇压势头。
俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后2022年2月,网络审查和起诉社交媒体文章和评论飙升,它打破了所有现有的记录。
根据网络自由著名网络人权组织超过610000个网页被屏蔽或删除被当局在2022年最高的年度总15年,779人面临刑事指控在网上的评论和文章,也有记录。
一个主要因素是一个法律,采用入侵一周后,有效地将反战情绪,说净自由头一Gainutdinov。它禁止“散布虚假信息”或“怀疑”军队。
人权观察引用另一个2022年的法律允许当局“法外关闭大众媒体和块在线内容传播“虚假信息”的行为,俄罗斯武装力量或其他海外国家机关或传播呼吁对俄罗斯的制裁。”
社交媒体用户不应该感到安全的
更严厉的互联网法律2014年采用有针对性的社会媒体用户和网络言论,导致数以百计的刑事案件在帖子,喜欢和股票。大多数涉及用户的俄罗斯社交媒体平台VKontakte据说,这与当局合作。
随着镇压扩大,当局还针对Facebook, Twitter,Instagram和电报。大约一个星期后入侵、Facebook、Instagram和Twitter被封锁在俄罗斯,但是用户的平台还起诉。
玛丽娜Novikova,65年,本月被判在西伯利亚城市Seversk“散布虚假信息”的军队反战电报的帖子,罚款相当于超过12400美元。莫斯科一家法院上周反对派活动家米哈伊尔·Kriger被判处七年监禁Facebook评论中他表达了渴望“挂”普京。著名博客Nika Belotserkovskaya,居住在法国,收到了九年有期徒刑缺席Instagram发布的关于战争,当局声称对军队“假货”传播。
“任何社会媒体平台的用户不应该感到安全,“Gainutdinov说。
权利倡导者担心网络审查即将大幅扩大通过人工智能系统监控社交媒体和网站的内容视为非法。
今年2月,Roskomnadzor政府的媒体监管机构表示,将推出眼睛——一个人工智能系统,寻找禁止内容在网上的照片和视频,并且可以分析每天超过200000张图片,而由人类每天约200。另外两个作品的AI系统将搜索文本材料。
今年2月,报纸Vedomosti援乐动扑克引一位身份不明的Roskomnadzor官员感叹“前所未有的数量和速度传播的假货”的战争。这位官员还提到了极端主义言论,呼吁抗议和“LGBT宣传”是禁止内容的新系统将识别。
活动积极分子表示,很难知道如果新系统操作及其效果。Darbinyan,互联网自由的集团,将它描述为“可怕的东西,”导致“审查”,在总缺乏透明度,系统如何工作和监管。
当局也可以工作的机器人系统上收集信息从社交媒体页面,信使应用和封闭的在线社区,根据白俄罗斯黑客团队Cyberpartisans,获得该文档的一个子公司。
Cyberpartisans协调员Yuliana Shametavets告诉美联社预计机器人渗透到俄语社会媒体集团监测和宣传。
“现在常见的嘲笑俄国人,说他们有古老的武器和不知道如何战斗,但克里姆林宫是伟大的假情报活动和有高级专家创建非常有效和非常危险的产品,”她说。
政府监管机构Roskomnadzor没有回应记者的置评请求。
眼睛——在街道上
在2017 - 18年,莫斯科当局推出街头摄像头通过面部识别技术。
COVID-19大流行期间,当局能够跟踪和那些违反封锁。
Vedomosti报道2020年,学校将相机与面部识别系统被称为“奥威尔,”英国作家的乌托邦小说透视人物“1984年”,“大哥哥。”
当抗议反对党领袖人的监禁喷发是在2021年,该系统被用来发现和拘留那些参加示威活动,有时几周后。去年普京宣布了乌克兰的局部动员后,它显然帮助官员围捕者草案。
停止在莫斯科地铁的人未能遵守动员传票后说,警方告诉他面部识别系统跟踪他,根据他的妻子,对美联社在匿名的情况下,因为她害怕报复。
2022年,“俄罗斯当局扩大控制人的生物特征数据,包括从银行通过收集这些数据,并使用面部识别技术监视和迫害维权人士,”人权观察报告。
Maksimova,维权人士一再被停止在地铁里,提起诉讼争夺拘留,但输了。当局认为,因为她之前逮捕,警察有权扣留她的“警示谈话”——这军官解释公民的“道德和法律责任。”
Maksimova说官员拒绝解释为什么她在他们的监测数据库,称这是国家机密。她和她的律师上诉的法院裁决。
有250000个监控摄像头在莫斯科通过软件——在住宅入口,在公共交通和街道上,Darbinyan说。类似的系统是在圣彼得堡和其他大城市,像新西伯利亚和喀山,他说。
他认为当局想要构建“网络摄像机在整个国家。这听起来像一个艰巨的任务,但有可能性和资金去做。”
“总数字监控”
俄罗斯与中国的努力经常画比较,当局在大规模使用数字监控。中国城市是由数以百万计的覆盖摄像头识别人脸,体型和人们走路去识别它们。敏感的人经常跟踪,通过相机或通过手机、电子邮件和社交媒体账户扼杀任何异议。
克里姆林宫似乎想追求类似的途径。去年11月,普京下令政府创建一个在线注册资格的兵役后努力动员300000人战斗在乌克兰透露,征兵记录严重混乱。
注册,承诺在秋天,准备将收集各种数据,“从门诊到法院税收办公室和选举委员会,“政治分析家Tatyana Stanovaya评论称:卡内基国际和平基金会。
会让当局提供草案传票电子通过政府网站用来申请官方文件,如护照或行为。一次召唤出现在网上,接收者不能离开俄罗斯。其他限制,比如暂停驾照或禁止买卖财产——如果他们不遵守实施20天内召唤,他们是否看到它。
Stanovaya认为这些限制可能会蔓延至俄罗斯生活的其他方面,与政府“构建一个国家的总数字监控系统,强制和惩罚。”A December law mandates that taxi companies share their databases with the successor agency of the Soviet KGB, giving it access to travelers' dates, destinations and payment.
“网络古拉格,流感大流行期间积极讨论,现在把它真正的形状,“Stanovaya写道。
___
美联社作家yura呢Karmanau在塔林,爱沙尼亚,和乔·麦克唐纳和北京的贡献。
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