Moscow police have reportedly been ordered to delete all photos on social media that could allow them to be facially recognized

Supervisors have ordered all Moscow police officers to change the information posted on their personal social-media accounts, to make it harder to identify them, according to the website Baza, which doesn’t specify how it obtained this information. Officers have supposedly been instructed to remove any photographs where their faces are visible.

The new orders are reportedly linked to threats against the families of police officers who dispersed a protest on July 27 in Moscow, and whose names and hyperlinks to their accounts on social media were shared online.

“Captain Syakin’s family was the first to file a complaint. Thanks to data published online, certain activists managed to find his relatives, and slipped a note under the door at the home of Syakin’s mother that read, ‘We’ll burn down your home,’” Baza reports.

• On July 27 in Moscow, police officers and National Guardsmen used force to disperse several thousand demonstrators, leading to the hospitalization of several activists. The city’s Investigative Committee, meanwhile, has opened three criminal cases against protesters for attacking police officers.