Sergey Vyborov was on his way to the Moscow Metro's Aeroport station last September when police officers stopped him. The 49-year-old knew that taking the metro could spell trouble. During a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, police had fingerprinted and photographed him. He'd already been detained four times in 2022. But he was rushing to his daughter's birthday, so he took a chance.

Biometrics are reaching a crucial point in the adoption curve, with a Mastercard survey showing and a Juniper report forecasting that people are ready to use new technologies, and convinced of the main value proposition of biometric technology. People have privacy and security concerns, however, and a hacker group showed why this week. Facial recognition also made headlines for research from Herta and academics on look-alikes, a possible new regional HQ for NtechLab, and UK trust framework certification for Amiqus. NIST's image quality standard is now on a timeline, meanwhile, and details emerged in IriTech's search for a strategic investor. A Mastercard survey indicates that roughly seven out of ten consumers find biometrics easier and more secure than other authentication options, but just over half are willing to use the technology to save time.

TBILISI, July 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - (Editor's note: contains offensive language and terms of racial abuse) From scanning residents' faces to let them into their building to spotting police suspects in a crowd, the rise of facial recognition is accompanied by a growing chorus of concern about unethical uses of the technology. A report published on Monday by U.S.-based researchers showing that Russian facial recognition companies have built tools to detect a person's race has raised fears among digital rights groups, who describe the technology as "purpose-made for discrimination." Developer guides and code examples unearthed by video surveillance research firm IPVM show software advertised by four of Russia's biggest facial analytics firms can use artificial intelligence (AI) to classify faces based on their perceived ethnicity or race. There is no indication yet that Russian police have targeted minorities using the software developed by the firms - AxxonSoft, Tevian, VisionLabs and NtechLab - whose products are sold to authorities and businesses in the country and abroad. But Moscow-based AxxonSoft said the Thomson Reuters Foundation's enquiry prompted it to disable its ethnicity analytics feature, saying in an emailed response it was not interested "in promoting any technologies that could be a basis for ethnic segregation".

A blank stare and dark face, just like in the movie Red Heat: Russians are global leaders in hiding their emotions. But a new generation of tech entrepreneurs is trying to get under the tough guys' skin and also inside their brains. Among pioneers of emotional intelligent tech in Russia are Moscow-based startups Neurodata Lab and NTechLab. Rosbank, a subsidiary of Paris-based Société Générale financial group, is now testing an emotion recognition technology developed by Neurodata Lab at its call centers. The solution calculates a "Customer Satisfaction Index" in real time by analyzing both voice and speech.

When news broke that a mistaken match from a face recognition system had led Detroit police to arrest Robert Williams for a crime he didn't commit, it was late June, and the country was already in upheaval over the death of George Floyd a month earlier. Soon after, it emerged that yet another Black man, Michael Oliver, was arrested under similar circumstances as Williams. While much of the US continues to cry out for racial justice, a quieter conversation is taking shape about face recognition technology and the police. We would do well to listen. When Jennifer Strong and I started reporting on the use of face recognition technology by police for our new podcast, "In Machines We Trust," we knew these AI-powered systems were being adopted by cops all over the US and in other countries.

Tens of thousands of Russian schools will soon use a facial recognition technology called'Orwell' to monitor children and teachers during school hours. According to a report from the Russian business newspaper, Vedomosti, the systems will be introduced to 43,000 schools across the country and are currently already being used in 1,600. Elvees Neotech, the company behind'Orwell' says that the technology is designed for'automatic detection and classification of targets' which includes identifying people as well as'situations.' NtechLab, a facial recognition company, will support the Orwell system. On the company's website, Elvees Neotech says that the software is capable of identifying crowds of people, when targets have crossed a preset boundary, and even specific license plates.

It was the first day of school in Russia, a much-beloved unofficial holiday, and President Vladimir Putin was on stage in a national TV broadcast, chatting with jeans-clad teenagers about the future. "Artificial intelligence is the future," he told them, "not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world." Then, this March, in the final moments of Putin's re-election campaign, came a stern message to lawmakers at his annual address to parliament: "The speed of technological progress is accelerating sharply... Those who manage to ride this technological wave will surge far ahead. Those who fail to do this will be submerged and drown."

Moscow's local authorities are giving the city's 170,000 security cameras a power-up. Moscow's extensive network of security cams have been keeping an eye on the city and recording millions of hours of video since 2012. Processing all that footage proved to be a daunting task, however: police officers quickly realized that it was impossible to look through them all to find culprits to arrest. Authorities believe facial recognition is the answer to that problem. The city will use a facial-recognition technology developed by Russian startup Ntechlab.

New emotion reading technology claims to stop agitated criminals and potential terrorists on the street before they act. A Russian firm has created software that can be embedded in CCTV cameras to track the age, gender, emotional state and identity of people and keep track of suspicious behaviour. If someone is feeling particularly stressed or angry the algorithms will flag it up with authorities who could intervene before anything happens. The company claims it can track the emotional state of a person from CCTV with more than 94 per cent accuracy. NTchLab's software, which can be used in CCTV cameras, claims to read people's emotional states and will know if they might be about to do something dangerous (stock image) NTechLab has created a tool that can track the age, gender, emotional state and identity to monitor citizens and keep track of any suspicious behaviour.

Every day, we provide data to companies in exchange for great experiences powered by machine learning (ML). Facebook's ability to tag friends in a photo seems obvious. Gmail's ability to prioritize messages provides an intuitive way to triage conversations. Our user data makes these ML-based experiences possible. We provide this data under the assumption of trust that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.