Moscow mayor announces plans to build one of the largest facial recognition systems in the world

Before the end of 2019, the Moscow municipal government will hold a competition for a contract to install a facial recognition system that will encompass more than 200,000 cameras in the Russian capital. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin announced the competition, which will be held in conjunction with Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry.

Sobyanin said the resulting facial recognition system will be “one of the largest in the world. Its only possible rival might be the Chinese system.” According to TASS, the mayor said existing facial recognition systems in the capital’s metro system and entranceways had already recognized “dozens of criminals.” The news agency Moskva reported that Sobyanin has also expressed interest in voice recognition technology, saying that the same mechanisms used in automatized call centers could be applied in “schools, clinics, hospitals, and public transport.”