Moscow buys movements of citizens data from carriers

On March 4, 2019 it became known that the Moscow authorities buy several years data on movement of citizens from mobile operators. On the basis of this information the mayor's office changes transport and infrastructure in the city.

According to Vedomosti with reference to materials on the website of state procurements, the Department of Information Technologies (DIT)  since 2015 spent 516 million rubles for acquisition of geoanalytics. In the 2018th budgeted expenses on it were measured by 101.8 million rubles.

In the Russian Government Analytical Centre which mediates between DITOM and operators, specified to the edition that work is based on the depersonalized statistical data. Call the amount which the center receives from the general budget his representatives did not become.

The Department of Information Technologies (DIT) of Moscow since 2015 buys geoanalytics from telecom operators to monitor movements of citizens on the movement of their sim cards

Follows from materials that for convenience of processing of user data Moscow and the Moscow region were divided into sections of 500 × 500 m. Thanks to cooperation with operators, the authorities know how many people live and work at each such section. The house — the place where the person constantly spends the night, and work — the place where he spends most of all time on weekdays from 10 to 17 o'clock. Operators are also able to define summer residents and tourists and fix how many people go by the subway and also when and as long they go to work and back.

The received these Moscow authorities use, in particular, at construction of transport infrastructure or for management of traffic flows. State agencies can also send operators additional requests — for example, about forecasts of social and economic development of the territory, diseases and incidents, strategy of transport behavior of the population.

The partner of KPMG auditing company in Russia and the CIS Nikolay Legkodimov considers that behind use of geoanalytics by the state control is necessary. According to him, local authorities can use such information for advertizing and propaganda.^[1]

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