The Ministry of Internal Affairs intends to gain full control over all information from traffic cameras

The Ministry of Internal Affairs intends to gain full control over all photo and video materials obtained using traffic cameras. Today, regions can edit pictures and videos before sending them to the traffic police, but from September 1, according to a draft decree of the Russian government, this will be prohibited. The police department also plans to prohibit the transfer of information from the cameras to “other persons” without the consent of the police. System operators, including, for example, the Moscow data processing center, fear that at the same time the ability to use the information received for transport analytics, combating traffic jams and accidents will be limited.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs posted on regulation.gov.ru a draft government resolution, which for the first time sets out the rules for transferring traffic camera data to the police. Let us remember that the complexes (there are now about 30 thousand of them) are operated, as a rule, by regional authorities, and the traffic police only receives data from them, which subsequently becomes the basis for “chain letters”.

From September 1, according to the project, “the authorized executive body of the subject” (most often we are talking about the regional analogue of the Moscow Traffic Management Center) will have to transfer to the police data on “each recorded event” – the date, time and place of recording; the vehicle and its license plate number; signs of violation made by measurements. Information must be transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs “immediately and free of charge in an automatic mode without intermediate server equipment that has the ability to process (accumulate, change or delete) information.”

It is emphasized that transferring data on recorded events to regional information systems “for accumulation of processing and use by other persons” will be prohibited without the consent of the police. Who should be understood by “other persons” is not specified in the text.

Regional officials and camera operators often resort to pre-processing of photo and video materials to weed out defects (for example, incorrectly recognized license plates). In some regions of the federation, artificial intelligence is involved in the process. The Code of Administrative Offenses stipulates that all this work is the exclusive prerogative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – other institutions or companies should not participate in the process. Now the “raw” data will be stored, apparently, in the “Web” – the police system to which all regional traffic police departments are connected. The system allows you to track the movement of any car across the country in real time.

The published project is part of a large package of regulations that tighten the requirements for the operation of cameras. The anchor document is Federal Law No. 197, which comes into force on September 1, which includes, among other things, an exhaustive list of places for installing the complexes. Together with it, a government resolution with rules for installing cameras will also come into force – the document is being prepared by the Ministry of Transport, it has not yet been approved (“Kommersant” talked about him on March 11).

The exclusion of intermediate stages of processing, on the one hand, will make uncontrolled filtration of materials impossible, on the other, it will increase the workload on traffic police officers, says traffic camera expert Grigory Shukhman. “Operators previously stated that they were screening out obvious faulty devices, the identification of which under the new procedure would fall on the traffic police,” notes Mr. Shukhman. “It will be necessary to either increase the number of employees to compensate for the increase in workload, or we will witness an even greater number of errors in fines.” . With this document, the Ministry of Internal Affairs wants to exclude any abuse of cameras in the field, according to traffic safety expert Katerina Solovyova.

“All data provided for in the proposed document has been transferred in full directly to the Web since March 2022,” Rifkat Minnikhanov, director of the State Budgetary Institution “Road Safety” of the Republic of Tatarstan, told Kommersant. “Approval of a uniform transfer procedure for all users and owners of highways data will allow us to systematize control and supervisory activities on the road network.”

The authorities also use road complexes as part of an intelligent transport system, analyzing, for example, data on the number of vehicle passages per day and other flow parameters, pay attention to the Urbantech group of companies (implements and services photo recording systems in a number of regions). “This makes it possible to determine the congestion of road sections and take measures to reduce congestion,” the company says. “The document under consideration will make this impossible.”

In this regard, the company recalled that the government decree will limit the circle of users of the materials.

The Moscow Data Center agrees with this position: “Thanks to constant monitoring, we identify areas where the number of accidents with casualties is increasing. The draft resolution may limit this possibility, which may have a negative impact on traffic safety.”

Ivan Buranov