Murmansk gets comprehensive facial-recognition surveillance system

Murmansk is one of the pilot cities in Russia to feature a Georg Orwell-style system aimed at monitoring the movements of its inhabitants. On Monday, Minister of Digital Development in the region, Aleksandra Nikipelova, announced the size of the ongoing implementation.

In the Murmansk region, 1,400 CCTV cameras are already operating. By the end of 2022, 1,658 cameras will be installed at 868 different locations.

“The first 600 new cameras will be installed by September 1,” Minister Nikipelova said.

The cameras are to be interconnected and controlled from the city’s new video analytic management center, located in the building of the former Norwegian Consulate General, on Sofia Perovskaya Street in central Murmansk.

The computer vision-based video management system allows for analysis of the video stream from all connected cameras and recognizes people in the frame, comparing them with loaded databases. This can also be done retroactively by playing back and analyzing events. Or, you can search for a specific person, when you select one in the recognized images.

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With facial recognition, the software system can match a photo of a person on the street against a database to identify the person.

The system can show all the movements of this person from he came into the first camera and further by viewing other cameras, the Ministry of digital development of the Murmansk region wrote in a news release posted after the monitoring center’s opening in late 2020. 

With about 300,000 inhabitants, Murmansk is Russia’s biggest city above the Arctic Circle.