All Russian schools to install new ‘Orwell’ surveillance camera systems

All schools in Russia are set to install surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology, Vedomosti reports. 

The National Center for Informatization (a subsidiary of the Russian state corporation Rostec) will carry out the project by order of the regional education departments. According to Vedomosti’s calculations, which were based on data from the government’s procurement website, the total value of the contracts for supplying the surveillance systems to the schools exceeds two billion rubles (around $28.9 million).

All of these cameras will all be connected to the platform “Orwell” — a video surveillance system with computer vision capabilities. The cameras will also be equipped with facial recognition technology from NtechLab (the creators of the service FindFace). Presumably, these surveillance cameras will be installed inside and outside of educational institutions.

To date, these surveillance systems have been supplied to 1,680 schools in 12 of Russia’s regions. There are plans to set up these cameras in more than 43,000 schools in the near future.