Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofyev / Sputnik / Kremlin pool / EPA
After the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, carried out by the United States, Russian security services temporarily shut down the video surveillance system used to protect Vladimir Putin and his inner circle. Financial Times sources reported this.
Details. The system in question is a video surveillance complex separated from the nearly 300,000 cameras monitoring Moscow residents. It was switched back on only after specialists inspected it and tried to isolate it from the internet as much as possible.
According to the FT article, the move was driven by concerns over new artificial intelligence capabilities in intelligence work. Those fears intensified after Israel, using data from Iranian road cameras, helped the United States strike the supreme leader of the Islamic republic, Ali Khamenei.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to reporters’ request for comment. At the same time, in May, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov called Khamenei’s killing using surveillance system data an “alarming signal.”
Cameras in Moscow, including around the Kremlin, remain vulnerable and are regularly hacked, an anonymous Ukrainian hacker told FT. He did not say whether Ukraine has the capability to analyze such a volume of data.
The United States and the United Kingdom do have such tools. Journalists noted that those countries had previously provided the Ukrainian armed forces with precise targeting data, including high-quality images from reconnaissance drones.
Context. The article says Russian authorities had already been concerned about Putin’s personal security, especially given that Ukrainian intelligence services had gained access to road camera systems in Russia. In addition, Kyiv used mobile phone geolocation data to organize the killings of high-ranking Russian military officers in central Moscow.
Beyond that, the Kremlin tightened security measures around Vladimir Putin because of fears of a possible coup, according to an intelligence report from an unnamed European country. Because of this, in particular, the politician stopped visiting military infrastructure sites and appearing at residences in the Moscow region and Valdai.
The realization that a country’s own surveillance cameras could be used against it caused concern not only among Russian security officials but also among counterintelligence services in other countries, FT noted.
As a result, intelligence services in different countries tried to address vulnerabilities on their own. In particular, Indian authorities set a goal of getting rid of Chinese surveillance cameras by April 1.