Normalisation of facial recognition technologies. Interplay of top-down enforcement by the government and internalisation by the public. Case study of Moscow Metro

As the COVID-19 crisis stabilises, the boost in surveillance infrastructure leaves us with extensive hardware and software infrastructures, new habits and routines incorporating FRT into our daily lives. The fears that FRT would become normalised and discussions around shifting norms proliferate. There is an urgency to operationalise the notion of normalisation, provide safeguards against undesirable normalisation and develop a comprehensive conceptual framework of normalisation that would guide policy research and design. This research aims at addressing these gaps with a case study of a facial recognition system in the Moscow subway.