Legal basis

Internal Ministry of Internal Affairs authorisation; no independent judicial warrant process reported for routine use

Oversight

None independent identified

Built around a Unified Data Storage and Processing Center in Moscow that aggregates CCTV feeds, with NtechLab supplying the facial recognition software. Official figures reported in 2024 put the national camera count above one million, with around 230,000 in Moscow and roughly a third connected to facial recognition. The European Union placed both NtechLab and Tevian, the two companies most directly documented as having supplied the system, under human rights sanctions in July 2023 (Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1495), for involvement in serious human rights violations including arbitrary arrests and detentions. NtechLab is owned via Rostec, Russia's state military-industrial holding company. A further contributing algorithm, Kipod, was developed by Belarusian company Synesis, separately sanctioned over its use identifying protesters in Belarus. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in July 2023, in a case brought by a solo protester identified via Moscow metro CCTV, that the system's use violated Articles 8 and 10 of the Convention. Russia left the Council of Europe in 2022 and is no longer bound by ECHR rulings, so the judgment carries no domestic legal effect but remains a significant international finding. Scale claim, August 2026: Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin stated that more than 30,000 federally wanted people had been detained over the past year with the help of the Sphere system, now operating in 60 Russian regions. This is an official Russian claim reported by state-linked media, not independently verified, and if accurate would make this a near-national rather than a Moscow system. A change that degrades future evidence quality and should be read alongside every figure above: OVD-Info, the principal independent monitor of this system, was designated an extremist organisation by Russian authorities in June 2026 and banned from operating in Russia. Its documented case counts, including at least 595 cases recorded in the 2021 to 2022 window, are likely to be the last comprehensive independent record for some time, and future counts should be assumed to undercount.

Source: OVD-Info documentation; Meduza, RFE/RL and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting · last checked 2026-08-20