Russian authorities using video footage to identify and arrest people who attended Navalny’s funeral

Police in Moscow have begun arresting people who attended Alexey Navalny’s funeral on March 1, according to the human rights project OVD-Info.

Several of the arrestees were either filmed by surveillance cameras at the event or appeared in footage that was posted online. One Moscow woman, for example, was charged with “displaying a banned symbol” after the police heard her say “Glory to the heroes,” the traditional response to the salute “Glory to Ukraine,” in a video.

Commenting on the arrests, OVD-Info spokesman Dmitry Anisimov told journalists from the news site Agentstvo that Moscow’s facial recognition system allows the authorities to “trace the path of every individual right up to their door.”