<https://abcnews.go.com/International/russia-facial-recognition-police-corona...> [...] For now, the facial recognition technology is being used only to monitor a narrower category: those who have tested positive for the virus or deemed high risk of having it, including those returning from abroad, like Bykovsky. He described how passengers landing in Moscow were stopped by medics and photographed three times while being tested for the virus. They were then entered into a quarantine watch-list. The system can also be used for contact tracing, allowing police to follow an infected person’s movements over previous days, said Artyom Kukharenko, the head of research and development at NtechLab, the primary developer for the system. Kukharenko said the system can complete a search in under 10 seconds and that it largely works even when people are wearing face masks by identifying them by their eye line. The company soon hopes to roll out a function analyzing silhouettes, he said, meaning it could spot large gatherings and also automatically detect when people are standing too close together. Since March, Moscow’s authorities said the system has allowed them to catch several hundred people violating quarantine. Other Russian cities are also introducing similar systems. [...]