Moscow:
Russia stated Monday it has created computer software that monitors social media to assist authorities avoid young men and women from harming themselves and other individuals, but which critics say could be used to silence dissent.
The initiative comes immediately after an 18-year-old student at Perm State University last month shot dead six men and women in the most up-to-date in a developing quantity of campus shootings in current years.
Russia’s youth affairs agency Rosmolodyozh stated an NGO founded in 2018 at the behest of President Vladimir Putin has created computer software that can “quickly track the spread of destructive subcultures among young people”.
“The system is used to monitor the open circuit of the Russian-speaking segment of popular social networks,” Rosmolodyozh told AFP in a statement.
Rosmolodyozh added that the Centre for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment had also created a separate program known as “Angel.Destruktiv” to monitor telecommunications networks and the world-wide-web.
The programme alerts authorities to facts that leads “children and young people to take actions that pose a threat to their life”, it stated, as effectively as “signs of fatally negative deviant states”.
Rosmolodyozh stated that the NGO currently offers law enforcement agencies with facts “about intent to commit illegal or antisocial actions”.
Russian company dailies RBK and Vedomosti reported last month that the government had allocated more than 1.5 billion rubles ($20 million, $17 million euros) for the development of a related program.
Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer with the Roskomsvoboda digital rights NGO, stated that the computer software would automatise “the repression of online activity,” calling it a “very serious threat to freedom of speech”.
“It is very doubtful that the ultimate goal will be achieved, but this system can lead to problems for many users and activists.”
It carries “huge risks to the freedom of people who express opinions against the government,” he added.
The Russian government has in current years applied the pretext of guarding minors and fighting extremism to manage the Russian segment of the net and has begun building a so-known as sovereign world-wide-web.
Authorities have blamed foreign influence for college shootings, saying young Russians have been exposed on the internet and on tv to related attacks in the United States and elsewhere.
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