Ukraine’s National Police currently has access to almost 60,000 video surveillance cameras located across Ukraine, and the Interior Ministry conducts daily inspections of employees who have access to the video monitoring system.
Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Leonid Tymchenko stated this in an interview with Ukrinform.
“We can now talk only about the systems that are operating in the National Police or the Interior Ministry. The inspection is carried out every day and is random. Respective examinations are conducted once a month, and information about them is provided to the management of regional units and personnel – in terms of the illegal use of certain video surveillance systems,” Tymchenko said.
According to him, all employees who get access to such information sign a non-disclosure agreement and are responsible for possible dissemination of this information for non-official purposes.
“The employee leaves their ‘trace’ from their automated workplace, which allows them to go in and check, for example, any car. And we always have the opportunity to see who exactly and for what reasons checked the movement of a certain vehicle or person,” he said.
He recalled that as of today, the National Police has access to almost 60,000 video surveillance cameras located throughout Ukraine.
“All these cameras are distributed in different structures and united in different systems of regional and local levels. At the highest level, the cameras are united by the integration platform of the National Police. The Interior Ministry plans to combine all existing levels into one, which will be located in the ministry. The rest of the already deployed systems now operating in Ukraine can be connected to the indicated top-level platform,” Tymchenko said.
According to him, there are currently more than 600 of these systems belonging to entities of various forms of ownership.
Commenting on the fears of experts that any excessive concentration of information from video cameras is a threat, he explained that the Interior Ministry, like information security specialists, is of the opinion that there should be a single administrator in this matter.
“Then it’s easier to administer and determine the person responsible and implement uniform information security standards. If there are no standards, and if the responsibility is scattered among the 600 administrators of the existing systems, then of course there are many more vulnerabilities. Therefore, the bill on a unified system of video monitoring provides for the implementation of a unified system, which should be integrated in the Interior Ministry,” he said
According to him, the Interior Ministry will determine the rights of administrators, terms of storage of information, volumes of information, as well as mandatory logging of all accesses.
Source: National Police has access to almost 60,000 video surveillance cameras
