A new spy will soon be keeping an eye on the activities of all Russian Internet users. His name from him? oculus This computer system is financed by Roskomnadzor, the federal service for the supervision of communications in Russia. It should be used to track just about everything people do on the web.
Only one million euros put on the table
Sites, images, videos but also messaging: the Oculus will be everywhere, at least in theory. The goal of the project is to hunt down forbidden information. At the head: “homosexual propaganda”, cites the Russian newspaper Kommersant, pointed out by Numerama. But it is also about detecting signs of extremism and terrorism, disrespectful expressions towards society, the state or the official symbols of Russia, information about methods of suicide or even about the manufacture of drugs or weapons.
In order to build this spy 2.0, the Eksikyushn company, appointed after a tender, received 57.7 million rubles. Or almost a million euros (963,600 euros, exactly). The Oculus system will have to rely on deep learning to analyze up to 200,000 images a day in real time.
The only problem is that Russia is expecting a working system by December 12. This leaves the company only four short months to design its software. A task that seems impossible to achieve in such a short time, but also with so few means.
The alternatives are already back in the customs.
Above all, the Russians have already taken their precautions since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The use of VPN (Virtual Private Network) to surf the Internet anonymously and to locate outside of your country has skyrocketed. An increase in the use of these systems of more than 2000% was recorded when Russia restricted access to foreign media.
Also, Oculus message monitoring could fail. WhatsApp or Telegram applications – which escape Russian blockades – have become a habit for Russians. With their default end-to-end encryption, these services already allow users to protect their conversations. At the moment, the Oculus surveillance system isn’t likely to pin many people.
Source: BFM TV
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