GLUKHIN v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT In none of these cases does the police ‘on paper’ admit that facial recognition technology was used in any way to determine a person’s identity. It is possible that law enforcement officers prefer not to document the use of facial recognition precisely because it is in the ‘gray zone’ of Russian legislation ... At the same time, in such cases there are no references to investigative activities, and there are also no answers to the question of how exactly it was possible to identify a particular person ... To identify the protesters, recordings from surveillance cameras ..., recordings made on the ground by law enforcement officers, photos and videos from the Internet (Telegram channels, chats, personal pages on social networks, YouTube) have been used. There are cases when cameras – for example, installed in the entrances of residential buildings or in the subway – were also used to determine the location of a person to hold him administratively responsible. For identification, the police use databases with photos from documents (internal and external passports, social cards) and from social networks ... Prosecution for participation in protests, delayed in time, is associated with additional difficulties and large negative consequences compared to detention during an event. Among other things, with a serious invasion of privacy and influence on other areas of human life. The practice of post factum detentions has a clear punitive orientation and has an intimidating and marginalising effect on potential participants of assemblies. Taking into account the fact that the statute of limitations of the most common ‘rally’ Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences has been increased to a year, protest participants remain waiting for a possible detention for a long time. There are already known cases when a report was issued more than six months after the event. Finally, post factum administrative liability gives law enforcement agencies the opportunity to manipulate the times of court hearings, creating the basis for the use of accusations of ‘repeated’ and ‘multiple’ violations (Part 8 of Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences and Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code), which are fraught with severe sanctions ... In some cases, the courts approve the use of facial recognition in the cases of demonstrators under the pretext of protecting public interests. Meanwhile, the lack of mass usage of this technology for many other types of offenses (such as crossing the road in the wrong place or stowaway) indicates that the main goal is not to protect public interests, but to persecute political opponents of the authorities. A number of issues related to the creation and functioning of the infrastructure necessary for the use of a facial recognition system to limit protests (street photography and video recording, storage of the received data, the formation of databases of photographs with personal identification), access of police officers to databases, protection of personal data are insufficiently regulated. In combination with the lack of transparency of usage and the lack of public control, it is possible to turn this technology into an instrument of politically motivated persecution.” 16