Design World

  • Home
  • Technologies
    • 3D CAD
    • Electronics • electrical
    • Fastening & Joining
    • Factory automation
    • Linear Motion
    • Motion Control
    • Test & Measurement
    • Sensors
    • Fluid power
  • Learn
    • Ebooks / Tech Tips
    • Engineering Week
    • Future of Design Engineering
    • MC² Motion Control Classrooms
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • Webinars
  • LEAP AWARDS
  • Leadership
    • 2022 Voting
    • 2021 Winners
  • Design Guide Library
  • Resources
    • 3D Cad Models
      • PARTsolutions
      • TraceParts
    • Digital Issues
      • Design World
      • EE World
    • Women in Engineering
  • Supplier Listings

Russian Hi-Tech Spy Devices Under Attack Over Privacy Fears

By Germain Moyon, Phys.org | June 6, 2016

Share

New Russian technologies, including phonecall interception and a facial recognition app, have stirred a fierce debate about privacy and data monitoring.

Infowatch, a Moscow-based IT security company managed by businesswoman Natalya Kasperskaya, found itself in hot water last month after it revealed it had invented a system that companies can use to intercept employees’ mobile phone conversations.

Companies outside Russia have also devised call interception software, and Infowatch already markets products that monitor employees’ e-mails, USB keys and printers.

But Kasperskaya says she was taken aback by the storm that surrounded the mobile phone innovation.

“We weren’t expecting this. For us it was only another channel of communication,” Kasperskaya told AFP in an interview.

The Russian authorities and members of the public lashed the invention as a breach of law or infringement of privacy.

Infowatch traces its origins back to 1997, when Kasperskaya and her then-husband, now divorced, Eugene Kaspersky co-founded the Kaspersky Lab security software company, which has gone on to global success.

The goal behind phonecall interception, Kasperskaya said, is to provide large businesses with a tool to prevent information leaks, including companies whose success depends on protecting corporate secrets.

Communications minister Nikolai Nikiforov said a court ruling was needed to get permission to tap phones.

The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, Sergei Naryshkin, said he feared such technologies could be used to malicious ends.

Facing objections from the authorities, the company has refrained from designing a voice recognition system, even though there is demand from sensitive sectors including banking, the oil industry and large public companies.

Monitoring of communications by private corporations touches a nerve in a country where the shadowy KGB security service once monitored dissidents and where the state is keen to retain its grip on citizens’ personal data.

The KGB’s post-Soviet successor, the FSB, has long used a sophisticated system called SORM to carry out surveillance communications by telephone or on the Internet.

The revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden showed that the US National Security Agency also carries out surveillance on a mass scale.

Human rights advocacy group Agora has said that nine million Russians, including opposition figures and political activists, have come under state surveillance since 2007.

Their mobiles have been taped, their e-mails read and their movements tracked by what Agora calls a “political policing instrument.”

Infowatch has tried to assuage concerns, insisting its new system is still at a preliminary stage.

The company said that only a restricted number of telephone lines will be targeted and monitored with the employee’s consent.

The monitoring is done by software that picks out key words from the phone conversations, it said.

“We have to prove that our system does not constitute phone tapping. We would by no means release on the market a system that does not respect the law,” Kasperskaya said.

In any case, Kasperskaya observed, new technologies are nudging us toward a world where there are “no secrets.”

Finding faces

Another debate has been stirred by a new Russian smartphone app known as FindFace.

It allows users to photograph strangers on the street and identify their pages on social network site VK, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, which hosts 350 million accounts.

The app has had staggering success, with a million downloads since it was made available in February.

In half a second, the app can peruse a database of 300 million pictures and match one to a stranger’s photograph, said one of the creators, 26-year-old Artyom Kukharenko, who co-founded Moscow’s NTechLaB.

But in its first few weeks, the app has already brewed controversy.

Some users used it to identify the VK page of a porn actress and bombarded her with threatening messages.

On the other hand, police caught arsonists who set fire to a Saint Petersburg construction site after identifying their images on security camera footage using FindFace.

“This is a demonstration of our technology,” Kukharenko told AFP, adding that his app had garnered interest from companies throughout the globe.

“The real use of the algorithm will be for security services, banks, distributors and for leisure activities,” as well as for dating services and those who wish to meet strangers they saw on the street or even someone who just looks similar, he said.

IT security specialist Mikhail Yemelyannikov told AFP that FindFace does not violate any existing legislation because the social media pages it trawls contain pictures with unrestricted access.

“The problems start later: what will the result be used for?” he said. “Legislation will never evolve as fast as technology.”


Filed Under: M2M (machine to machine)

 

Related Articles Read More >

Part 6: IDE and other software for connectivity and IoT design work
Part 4: Edge computing and gateways proliferate for industrial machinery
Part 3: Trends in Ethernet, PoE, IO-Link, HIPERFACE, and single-cable solutions
Machine Learning for Sensors

DESIGN GUIDE LIBRARY

“motion

Enews Sign Up

Motion Control Classroom

Design World Digital Edition

cover

Browse the most current issue of Design World and back issues in an easy to use high quality format. Clip, share and download with the leading design engineering magazine today.

EDABoard the Forum for Electronics

Top global problem solving EE forum covering Microcontrollers, DSP, Networking, Analog and Digital Design, RF, Power Electronics, PCB Routing and much more

EDABoard: Forum for electronics

Sponsored Content

  • Global supply needs drive increased manufacturing footprint development
  • How to Increase Rotational Capacity for a Retaining Ring
  • Cordis high resolution electronic proportional pressure controls
  • WAGO’s custom designed interface wiring system making industrial applications easier
  • 10 Reasons to Specify Valve Manifolds
  • Case study: How a 3D-printed tool saved thousands of hours and dollars

Design World Podcasts

May 17, 2022
Another view on additive and the aerospace industry
See More >
Engineering Exchange

The Engineering Exchange is a global educational networking community for engineers.

Connect, share, and learn today »

Design World
  • Advertising
  • About us
  • Contact
  • Manage your Design World Subscription
  • Subscribe
  • Design World Digital Network
  • Engineering White Papers
  • LEAP AWARDS

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising | About Us

Search Design World

  • Home
  • Technologies
    • 3D CAD
    • Electronics • electrical
    • Fastening & Joining
    • Factory automation
    • Linear Motion
    • Motion Control
    • Test & Measurement
    • Sensors
    • Fluid power
  • Learn
    • Ebooks / Tech Tips
    • Engineering Week
    • Future of Design Engineering
    • MC² Motion Control Classrooms
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • Webinars
  • LEAP AWARDS
  • Leadership
    • 2022 Voting
    • 2021 Winners
  • Design Guide Library
  • Resources
    • 3D Cad Models
      • PARTsolutions
      • TraceParts
    • Digital Issues
      • Design World
      • EE World
    • Women in Engineering
  • Supplier Listings