Israel’s veiled threat to Moscow came just after Russian media warned traffic cameras in Moscow were vulnerable to the same exploits that Israel reportedly used to monitor Ayatollah Khamenei’s residence before assassinating him.
CCTV security camera in 2011. (Andrey Zolotov / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0)
Israeli military spokeswoman Anna Ukolova has drawn outrage in Moscow after threatening that Russian authorities who “wish Israel ill” could be subject to “elimination,” while suggesting Israel could hack into Russian closed-circuit television cameras to identify and track targets.
Asked by a journalist with Russian radio broadcaster RBC whether Israel had access to Russian traffic cameras, Ukolova declined to answer directly but warned that “Khamenei’s elimination shows our capabilities are serious” and that “no one who wishes us harm will be left aside.”
She added, ominously, “I hope Moscow does not wish Israel ill right now – I’d like to believe that.”
In response to a post by Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, who wrote that the IDF spokeswoman threatened that “Russian authorities [will] be killed if they take [an] anti-Israel position,” Ukolova claimed Dugin was spreading “fake news.” But she declined to clarify how her remarks had been incorrectly interpreted.
Ukolova’s statements came just days after it was revealed that a large number of Russian CCTVs were potentially using BriefCam – an Israeli video analysis software that closely matches the description of a program the Netanyahu regime reportedly deployed to track Iranian movements outside the home of Iran’s Supreme Leader before they assassinated him during their February 28 sneak attack.
On March 12, Russian outlet Mash revealed that the Israeli software BriefCam “has been used in Russia by private providers since the 2010s.” Founded at Israel’s Hebrew University in 2007, BriefCam uses AI to let users “review hours of video in minutes” and “make [their] video searchable, actionable and quantifiable.”
In 2024, BriefCam was absorbed by a Dutch subsidiary of the Canon Group named Milestone Systems, which publicly pledges to “amplify what organizations of any size can see, do and achieve with video.”
“Our patented VIDEO SYNOPSIS® technology condenses hours of surveillance into a short summary by overlaying multiple events—each tagged with its original timestamp—onto a single frame, letting you filter them by object type and attributes,” the company’s BriefCam page crows.
An analysis by Al Jazeera revealed those attributes include “gender, age group, clothing, movement patterns and time spent in a given location.”
Originally deployed by Israel’s Ministry of Housing and Construction to safeguard illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, BriefCam has been used by governments all over the world, including those in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Pakistan, Israel, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, Germany, South Africa, Netherlands, Australia, Japan, India, Spain, Taiwan.
It’s also been deployed in the U.S., with police in Hartford, Connecticut, adopting the software in 2022.
In 2025, a French court found the government’s use of BriefCam was illegal, citing multiple violations of French and European privacy laws.
As of publication, BriefCam appears to be incorporated into dozens of so-called “video monitoring systems,” including Milestone’s own VMS XProtect surveillance system.
A promotional video shows the numerous surveillance systems that BriefCam operates within. (Grazyone)
According to the Russian outlet Mash, a number of prominent Moscow businesses, institutions, and buildings use VMS XProtect surveillance system, including the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a 72-story skyscraper named “Eurasia,” and a huge exhibit space known as the Zotov Center.
Though Milestone officially ended operations in Russia in 2022 amid the war in Ukraine, Mash reports that some software distributors in Russia “still offer to install the hacked software and hide this in the documents.”
Wyatt Reed is the managing editor of The Grayzone. As an international correspondent, he covers stories in more than a dozen countries. Follow him on Twitter at @wyattreed13 .
This article is from The Grayzone
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Israel had the means to tap into Epstein’s video systems and copy everything in his tape library.
Well, we know that even as far back as Golda Meir, the Samson Option was floated.
Samson destroyed the creme de la creme of the Philistines all at once, by pushing those two pillars apart and bringing the Temple of Dagon firearm on their heads, his own included. They have the nukes (stolen from US stocks in, I think it was, Ohio).
As a Christian, I am always wary of the coming of Armageddon.
The threat was of Russia falling to Ukraine and we remember Dugin being targeted by a car bomb, which instead killed his daughter.
These people are a race of psychopaths.
Of course I don’t mean Jews, but Likudniks, and Zionists in general.
Einstein refused the offer to be made the first President of Israel because he recognized they were Fascists, as did also Hannah Arendt.
Peoples,dont forget after 9/11…probably long before, any shadow of privacy,freedom….& so on was swiped over, this is just another icing on the cake,nothing mayor.
It’d be so simple for some politician, any politician, to merely get up and say no BriefCam, no BriefCam anywhere in the US, period! But the parasites who stand to benefit from the contracts are the problem. Connecticut should be embarrassed.
There you have it folks, Israel is run by thugs.
Do not forget that Russia has been holding off US Cyber Command for years now. They are frequently one of the most cyber-attacked nations in the world. I would not be too certain that those ‘back doors’ are not really ‘honey pot traps’. What appears to be a point of vulnerability can be turned into a trap for unwary hackers. Its just code.
One big weakness the Empire of the Free World has always had against Russia was this silly notion that the Russians are somehow stupid and backwards. The Empire of the Free World has stepped on that rake many times over the last century, and continues to do so even in the last few years.
Don’t forget the one I’d cyclops .
The orchard of plastic plants and fruit .
Hung upon the gable or in a basket , centerpiece of table
An open bury above the urban prairie
As viewed from the door I saw staring from the pole .
Maybe it was he who saw me ?
How can anyone with common sense not realize that little Israel has been a major, perhaps THE major, obstacle to world peace. And this situation will continue until Big Daddy Washington DC stops funding Israel’s war machine and assisting in fighting its forever wars.
SO true. It’s time to defund both the poisonous parasites – the Pentagon & ‘Israel’. Then carry out war crimes tribunals for their denizens.
As Joe Kelly suggested, as the solution, on Scott Horton’s YouTube show one day ago.
I think Iran is trying to take care of that problem, since there is nobody in the US with ‘spine’ enough to do so.