Russian officials want to install surveillance cameras aimed into hotel rooms. (It's an ‘anti-terrorist’ thing.)

Officials in Russia's Culture Ministry want to install video cameras aimed into hotel rooms, as part of a new effort to ensure greater public safety. The ministry is also proposing new searches of hotel guests' luggage, and metal detectors in hotel lobbies, according to the newspaper Izvestia.

State officials say the privacy afforded to hotel guests is partly to blame for terrorist attacks that have occurred throughout the world in recent years. Hotels are insufficiently protected from terrorism and should be monitored more closely, officials argue.

Note: This text originally claimed that the government wants cameras inside hotel rooms. Readers have pointed out, however, that Izvestia's source says the Culture Ministry has proposed installing cameras at the entry ways of hotel rooms, suggesting that officials want to put cameras in hotels' hallways, without literally adding video surveillance to the inside of hotel rooms.