Russian Oculus monitors websites for misinformation and anti-national activities

The Russian firm Roskmnadzor is working on a neural network which will employ AI to scan websites for any prohibited details.

The automatic scanner is called ‘Oculus’ and is used to analyze URLs, videos, chats and images on social media, chat apps, forums, and websites to identify alarming information that needs attention and should be taken down as per Kommersaunt.

What is Russian Oculus?

The Russian Oculus is a mission to dive deep into the internet and have more control over its citizens by scanning the conversations, information and data shared online, using machine learning and neural networks and develop an advanced AI.

Russian Oculus might target information like homosexuality, weapons, drugs and any misinformation on official state, army and authorities, discussions on revolts, mass protests, disrespect towards the nation, signs of terrorism and extremism.

Russian Oculus can scan up to 200K images in a day which is 2.3 images per second, it is supported by 48 servers with powerful GPUs. The new AI scan tool will be integrated into the network monitoring systems called Unified Analysis Module for a strong control over the internet and the information that circulates through it.

The Russian Oculus and Challenging times ahead

The Russian Oculus mission is expected to be completed by Dec 12, 2022 and can cost around $965,000. Experts predict that the cost can go up during the process and also building such a strong AI with deep insights can take a lot of time, and machine learning protocols will take time, four months will be a short duration to get a efficient AI that can deep scan internet for alarming data.

Considering the strict laws in Russia, any misidentification of false information spreader may cost him 15 years in prison.

Can Russian citizens escape Russian Oculus Scans

It will be a major challenge to evade Oculus scanning, the citizens will loose their freedom to participate  in public forums, and they will be in need of tools like VPNs, Tor Browsers, Encrypted Chat Apps and other tools that doesn’t get personal data and PII of users.

As per a recent report from Top10VPN, the usage of VPNs in Russia increased by 2692%, and the state agencies had spent $8 million dollars in VPNs to bypass excessive online censorship and restrictions.

According to Top10VPN, between February and March 2022, VPN demand in Russia increased by 2,692%, despite the blocks imposed by Roskomnador in 2021.

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