Muscovites Achieve Cancellation of Coronavirus QR Codes?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The struggle of conscientious citizens of Russia, in particular, Muscovites, continues for the right to remain human and not labeled with a personal code "bio-objects". The petition against the unconstitutional PFZ, which gives the regional authorities the right to give citizens any orders in the "high alert" mode (without declaring an emergency, state of emergency and even quarantine - as it happens today in our country) has been signed by almost 21 thousand people at the moment.

Meanwhile, the head of the Moscow Department of Information Technology (DIT), Eduard Lysenko, on the air of Echo of Moscow, denied the revelations of independent IT specialists, confirmed by screenshots, regarding the Social Monitoring application released by the Moscow authorities.

On the eve of Mediazon, citing the Telegram channel Non-Digital Economy, reported that the app for spying on Moscow residents cost the mayor's office 180 million rubles. The developer of the application indicated the organization GKU "Information City" subordinate to the Moscow mayor's office. After downloading, the application requires you to give access to the transmission of geolocation, to control Bluetooth and wearable devices. For authorization, you need to provide a phone number and take a photo. There are only two buttons in the application interface: for calling emergency services and another one that leads to the city hall's portal about the coronavirus.

Programmer Vladislav Zdolnikov published in his telegram channel the code obtained when unpacking the application. It follows from the code that Social Monitoring sends data to the address registered on the mos.ru domain. In addition, the app uses the Estonian face recognition service Identix. As Zdolnikov told Mediazone, photographs for face recognition are sent to an address belonging to the German hosting company Hetzner.

The project presentation, published by the liberal protestant from Navalny's team, Leonid Volkov, said that Muscovites would have to register on the city government's website, indicating their “actual place of residence”, identifying their “home area” and attaching their own photo. After that, the user has a personal account, in which he can leave "requests" to leave the house (one way out of the house - one QR code, if we are not talking about permanent routes to work).

As Katyusha previously reported, only holders of special status certificates will be able to move around the city without any restrictions: security officials, employees of the mayor's office, deputies, senators, officials. Its commissioning is scheduled for April 4.

Then, in the telegram channels, curious messages began to appear about the "stuffing" and other features of the "Social Monitoring". So, IT and COPM announced the appearance of the application in the Google Play store and noted that information in it is transmitted via the http protocol without any encryption, which is extremely unsafe for Muscovites. Also, one of the logs proves that the application has used the services of Identix, a company registered in Estonia and specializing in person identification. The owners of identix.one, which is used by DIT in its tracking application, are Kirill Shirokov, who lives in Tallinn, Vladimir Alekseev from Helsinki and Anton Rudov from St. Petersburg.

Also, IT specialists yesterday said that the personal data of Russians (personal photos) "are transferred to servers in Estonia (a NATO country) and returned back in the form of their analysis" and noted that there is work here for Roskomnadzor and the Investigative Committee.

And on the morning of April 1, the head of DIT Lysenko tried to refute the hard-hitting facts, saying that it was a "test version of the application", which was posted in order to "collect feedback from the professional community." Then he made an important clarification: it turns out that it is supposed to be used only for confirmed patients with coronavirus who are being treated at home. Moreover, if a citizen, for some reason, does not want to put it on his phone, the mayor's office will provide him with a separate gadget, which will have to be given at the end of the “strict regime”.

Lysenko stated the following about the transfer of the Russians' PD to the servers of NATO countries:

“This is some kind of speculation. In fact, nothing is transmitted anywhere. Firstly, no photos are transferred at all. Secondly, the biometric code that appears, it goes exclusively to the DIT servers. That is, we have a video analytics system. She handles it all here. And we do not break any laws.

We do not use this service (Estonian) from abroad at all. We use different algorithms in order to give a biometric code. But there (to Estonia) no appeals, let alone data transmission, are not carried out."

However, IT people put forward their own counterargument, which sounds quite weighty:

“What are you talking about, Edward?

In the screenshot below this post, the code for your application that transfers personal data to the api.identix.one server.

Let's do some elementary procedures:

1. Find out the IP-address of the domain api.identix.one: 213.239.199.3;

2. Find out who owns this IP address and where it is located: German hoster Hetzner, data center in Nuremberg.

Once again, Eduard Anatolyevich: your application transfers photos of Moscow residents to an Estonian company to servers in Nuremberg.

It is a fact.

You will not turn away from this in any way."

The application, by the way, was promptly removed from Google Play on the morning of March 1. But besides this notorious "Social Monitoring", there are plans of the Moscow authorities to control every exit of residents by QR codes. As Lysenko said in the same interview on Echo, “QR codes will start working when the corresponding act of the Moscow government is signed,” technically everything is ready to start the launch. According to the official, it will be possible to register in the control system on the portal of the mayor of Moscow.

“A person receives a code that can be left on the phone screen, or he can print it, having received it via e-mail. Authorized organizations will check for the code. If such an order with the obligatory provision of the code on the street is introduced, then the citizen will be obliged to show it, Lenta.ru quotes Lysenko as saying.

That is, all the questions that the opponents of compulsory electronic identification put before the draconian, digital-fascist measures of the capital's authorities remain relevant. Lysenko somehow indistinctly hinted that for those citizens who do not have the opportunity to obtain such a code at home, a call center will be created. But he did not specify whether the codes will be delivered to the house of every person at every exit who urgently needs to buy medicines for an elderly relative, throw out the trash, or, for example, walk the dog. But what if a citizen does not have a printer or a smartphone at home? What if he has no money to pay or, in principle, there is no Internet? Finally, what if a citizen, guided by religious or other personal convictions protected by the Constitution, does not want to forcibly and without alternative give his passport data, photo, car number for processing to the personal account of the mayor's website? Does he not have the right to leave for the reasons permitted by the mayor of the city Sobyanin himself without hanging a digital collar and a personal number around his neck? Such violation of personal and family secrets, the right to process personal data is not provided even in a separate article of the Constitution on the introduction of a state of emergency by the President.

In the meantime, the authorities of Tatarstan have already launched a simpler system for issuing individual codes to a citizen on the phone in the form of an SMS message when it is necessary to go out. It looks like this:

Let us once again remind all readers of the basic, inalienable constitutional rights of every citizen. And also that in our state of law there is an excessive amount of identity documents. And no one is free to mark citizens with digital codes, like animals in a veterinary laboratory - especially in the framework of vague "high alert" regimes. Caring citizens can defend their rights and ask relevant questions on Internet resources (registration is required), as well as in the electronic reception of the Moscow Government.