“Even President Putin fears cameras: AI video analysis shakes up the powerful”

FT: Russia suspends Putin’s security surveillance system
AI analysis of surveillance camera footage used to identify assassination targets
The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei in February highlighted the existence of this technology.

Russian security services have temporarily suspended the operation of a special surveillance system designed to protect Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle, reports have revealed. This is due to the increased threat of assassination attempts made possible by advances in artificial intelligence (AI) intelligence gathering capabilities.

Yonhap News reported on the 8th (local time), citing the English daily Financial Times (FT), “Russia made this decision after learning that it has technology that uses AI to analyze closed-circuit (CC) television footage and pinpoint the location of assassination targets.” The FT headlined the article: “New AI spying ability makes Putin fear cameras.”

The existence of this technology became widely known on February 28, after Israeli intelligence successfully assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his close aides. At the time, it was reported that Israel used a combination of AI-based video analysis and information obtained through traditional intelligence methods to pinpoint the location and time of the meeting between Khamenei and other senior officials.

Specifically, Israeli intelligence agents used the technology to map Tehran’s complex terrain and discover behavioral patterns of bodyguards protecting senior officials. They filtered targets from millions of hours of footage captured by thousands of traffic cameras and combined it with information from other sources, such as intelligence agents, to ultimately determine the exact timing of the meeting.

Governments around the world have long known that security cameras can be compromised by skilled hackers and Israeli spies. But modern technology does more than just monitor video footage. Only in recent years has rapid advances in AI made such capabilities possible by identifying specific behaviors and patterns from vast amounts of data. AI can now scan millions of hours of footage to find scenes that match specified criteria, a task that humans cannot do.

Citing anonymous sources familiar with the field’s complex mathematical principles, the FT reported that AI’s ability to analyze visual information took a dramatic leap forward around 2023, followed by an even bigger breakthrough about a year ago. The technology is said to be far more sophisticated than past machine learning algorithms that have enabled facial recognition, gun detection, and vehicle license plate tracking.

The biggest difference is in the “search method”. While the old tool could only perform a few dozen preset searches, the new tool enables language-based searches within video footage. For example, you can search for conditions such as “two men exchanging bags,” “person whose appearance has changed,” “person who changes clothes many times a day,” “recently repainted car,” or “car that passed the same location multiple times in a short period of time.” “We can now search for actions instead of objects,” sources from European countries using the technology in their cities told the FT, adding: “It opens up a world of new possibilities.”

“For the first time in history, we are able to communicate with computers in language about what they see,” said Matan Goldner, CEO of Israeli startup Contour, whose clients include Israel’s intelligence services and Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs. “The ability to simply monitor enemy agents is not new, but being able to pinpoint the exact moment you’re looking for across thousands of hours and thousands of video feeds is truly revolutionary,” he said.

Aware of the threat, Russian security services temporarily shut down surveillance systems used to protect President Putin to prevent them from being exploited by adversaries, according to the FT. The system was reportedly rebooted after engineers completely disconnected it from the internet and rigorously checked that it was safe from hacking. The FT cited the US, UK and Israel as countries with such technology, and noted that China is also investing in and deploying similar technology.

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