Facial Recognition

Identifying the Faces of War in Ukraine

Artificial intelligence and facial recognition are helping identify war criminals and track the shipment of looted goods across Russia. And murderers too…

The wonder of modern day parcel tracking

Ukraine software specialists have deployed artificial intelligence and facial recognition coupled with some smart hacking into courier services to track looted goods back to Ivan’s home on the other side of Russia.

The text of the Telegram post

Three TV sets were sent home by a looter-soldier of the Russian army Shchukovsky Yuri Alexandrovich, a native of Ussuriysk, from the Belarusian city of Mozyr through the courier service SDEK — Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov.

“Imagine, this is almost 10 thousand km. away. Four air conditioners to the same city were sent by the Russian looter Stepanov Nikolay Nikolaevich (a photo on the left).

And looter Shchebenkov Vadym Alexandrovich (photo on the right) sent as much as 106.1 kg of clothes to his hometown Cheta. … There are thousands of them. But they did not take into account one thing — modern technology allows you to restore everything.

It was the property of peaceful Ukrainian families. Ukrainians will restore everything and build the best country, and the looters will rot in their Mordor” — wrote (https://t.me/zedigital/1500) the minister.

Mordor?

I had to look that one up.

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional world of Middle-earth, Mordor ( from Sindarin Black Land and Quenya Land of Shadow) is the realm and base of the evil Sauron — Wikipedia

I guessed it was some kind of hell.

Tolkien’s work never appealed to me as fantasy is not my thing. There’s quite enough to deal with in the real world.

Looting is a war crime

Article 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court stipulates that “pillaging a town or location, whether taken by assault or not,” is a war crime. The looting of civilian property during a conflict is expressly forbidden in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

Worse

There have been many worse war crimes recently in Ukraine but I guess it’s very unlikely (although not impossible) that those Russian cellphone videos (if they exist) will come to light. But they might.

After all, videos of mistreatment of prisoners have appeared from other conflicts and the military forces of ‘Western’ governments are not exempt from blame either.

However, with the inventive approach of Ukraine then tracking the criminals is likely to be a lot easier.

What were the practicalities of the tracking?

The published photos are presumably from a social media site, probably the Russian equivalent of Facebook, VKontakte.

The key link would have been through the regiment that the looters served in, which could have been identified by the victims, if they were not shot. But photographs at source?

It’s certainly possible that Ukraine hacked into the Russian Army logistics system, but tracking looted goods?

As I see it, the tracking within Russia via the courier services would have been easy with a simple hack and the least difficult part of the exercise.

But those key links at the victim sites, the source photographs? That puzzles me.

Misinformation?

Or perhaps psychological warfare? I really don’t know, but it’s an interesting story nevertheless and certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility.

And maybe Stepanov Nikolay Nikolaevich and Shchebenkov Vadym Alexandrovich will come looking for me to settle the score because I impugned their good characters with misinformation. But somehow I doubt it. Few people in Russia will be leaving the country for many years to come, unless they serve in the Russian Armed Forces.

You’re being tracked Ivan

So, Ivan, you’re being tracked and you’d better think twice before you steal an air conditioner or four and ship them home to the family in Novokuznetsk on the other side of the Urals.

I’ve been to Novokuznetsk and it’s like hell on earth and I’d want an air conditioner too, to clean the smog from the aluminium smelter.

Maybe that is where Ivan really belongs and not in Ukraine fighting a senseless war.

Here’s the link to the story on Telegram:

And here’s an update following the reports of the alleged Bucha and Irpin atrocities, using AI and facial recognition to identify the perpetrators:

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