GLUKHIN v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT
THE FACTS
2. The applicant was born in 1985 and lives in Moscow. He was
represented by Mr N. Zboroshenko and Ms A. Rossius, lawyers practising in
Moscow.
3. The Government were initially represented by Mr A. Fedorov, former
Representative of the Russian Federation to the European Court of Human
Rights, and later by his successor in that office, Mr M. Vinogradov.
4. The facts of the case may be summarised as follows.
5. In May 2017, the official website of the mayor of Moscow reported that
more than 3,500 CCTV cameras had been installed in Moscow. In September
of the same year, more than 3,000 CCTV cameras were equipped with a live
facial recognition system. In the spring of 2018, facial recognition CCTV
cameras were installed in the Moscow underground. According to the mayor
of Moscow, a live facial recognition system was tested in 2019. By
1 September 2020, all CCTV cameras in Moscow – there were about 175,000
by then and more than 220,000 in 2022 – were equipped with live facial
recognition technology.
6. On 12 August 2019 a political activist, Mr Konstantin Kotov, was
arrested and charged with a repeated breach of the rules on “public events”
under Article 212.1 of the Russian Criminal Code. Mr Kotov’s detention and
the criminal proceedings against him attracted a great deal of media and
public attention and caused a public outcry.
7. On 23 August 2019 the applicant travelled by Moscow underground
with a life-size cardboard figure of Mr Kotov holding a banner stating: “You
must be f**king kidding me. I’m Konstantin Kotov. I’m facing up to five
years [in prison] under [Article] 212.1 for peaceful protests.”
8. It appears from a police report dated 24 August 2019 that “monitoring
of the Internet” by the anti-extremism unit of the Moscow underground police
(“the police anti-extremism unit”) had revealed a photograph of a man
standing at an underground station with a human figure holding a banner.
9. The police anti-extremism unit then took screenshots of a public
Telegram channel containing photographs and a video of the applicant
holding the cardboard figure of Mr Kotov at an underground station and
inside an underground train. The text written on the banner mentioned in
paragraph 7 was clearly readable in the screenshots. The screenshots were
printed out and stored by the police anti-extremism unit “in accordance with
Chapter 26 of the Code of Administrative Offences” (“the CAO”; see
paragraphs 26-27 below).
10. It follows from another police report dated 24 August 2019 that the
police anti-extremism unit obtained video-recordings from CCTV cameras
installed at Chistye Prudy and Sretenskiy Bulvar underground stations. The
police anti-extremism unit watched those recordings on 27 August 2019, took
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