Certain new Russian technologies, which include phone call interception and a facial recognition app, have now stirred a fierce debate about privacy and data monitoring. Infowatch, which is a Moscow-based IT security company and managed by businesswoman Natalya Kasperskaya, found itself in trouble last month after the company revealed that it had invented a system that companies can use to intercept employees’ mobile phone conversations. Many companies outside Russia have also devised similar call interception software, and Infowatch anyway already markets products that monitor employees’ e-mails, USB keys and printers.
image source: covertresource
Also read: STUDY: TEENS HEAVIEST DATA USAGE FOR WATCHING VIDEOS
But Kasperskaya says she was taken aback by the storm that surrounded the mobile phone innovation. She said we weren’t expecting this. For us it was only another channel of communication. Kasperskaya told AFP in an interview. The Russian authorities and even the members of the public lashed the invention as a breach of law or infringement of privacy. Infowatch was founded in the year 1997, when Kasperskaya and her then-husband, Eugene Kaspersky co-founded the renowned Kaspersky Lab security software company, which has now gone on to achieve global success.
The company has been facing objections from the authorities and therefore has refrained from designing a voice recognition system. This is in spite of demand from sensitive sectors including banking, the oil industry and large public companies. Monitoring of employees’ communications by private corporations is a sensitive matter in a country where the shadowy KGB security service once monitored dissidents. One must also note that it is a place where the state is keen to retain its grip on its citizens’ personal data. The KGB’s post-Soviet successor, the FSB, has been using a sophisticated system called SORM to carry out surveillance communications by means of the telephone or on the Internet.
