Iran Bought FindFace After Moscow Used It on Protesters

Leaked contracts show Iran licensed Russia’s FindFace in 2019, the same facial-recognition stack Moscow had already pointed at metro crowds. The Eyes of Iran investigation, published on March 3, 2026, traced the software from NtechLab through Iranian integrators to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence.

Sales files for the Iranian market advertise interaction tracking, a function that builds a social map from who walks with whom. A face match is only the first record in that file.

FindFace Builds a Map Around Each Face

NtechLab’s promotional material, reviewed with the leaked files, claims FindFace can search a database of 500 million faces in less than a second, with a 98 percent chance of a match. Those are vendor figures, not an independent test. A separate Iranian license covers searches against 100 million faces, a smaller cap in a local contract rather than a second reading of the same claim.

The feature Iranian officials kept is the one that turns a still into a network. Using a face grabbed on a subway platform in Tehran or Mashhad, operators can compile lists of a target’s relatives and regular companions. NtechLab calls that interaction tracking. License plates sit in the same file.

This system not only detects their faces and movements, but also creates a ‘social map’ of their friends and relationships, along with other information such as license plates. It allows you to track the targeted person’s movements and monitor everyone, everywhere. It is a centralized tool for learning who is who and how individuals are connected.

Nima Fatemi, founder of Kandoo, Eyes of Iran investigation

Fatemi, an Iranian cybersecurity researcher, said the setup is enough to follow thousands of people at once. Ali, an Iranian with close knowledge of the security trade who spoke under a pseudonym, put the public’s blind spot in plainer terms. “Facial recognition and other features that connect individuals based on their travel history, or their connections to each other, these are things that many people ignore,” he said.

That clustering logic is a stock FindFace function, not a custom Iranian patch. The product maps people who leave a camera frame together. Once the same engine sits on metro gates and campus doors, a protest is a later search, not a chase in the street.

Moscow Already Used the Same Metro Trick

FindFace did not arrive in Iran as an untested toy. NtechLab, founded in 2015, used the 2018 World Cup as a shop window, monitoring 1.8 million World Cup visitors against watch lists and claiming a match in two seconds. In April 2019, state defense holding Rostec said it would export face recognition to armed forces and special units. Iran’s partner deal was signed that August.

Moscow then ran the live version on its own cameras. City officials switched on mass live matching in January 2020. In 2021, metro cameras were used to stop known protesters on their way to rallies for Alexei Navalny, the method the EU later cited when it listed the vendor. Tehran’s turnstile demo is that play, moved south.

MOSCOW TO TEHRAN

1. 2018: FindFace is wired into World Cup stadiums, fan zones and host cities and advertised as a success.
2. April 2019: Rostec announces export of the face-recognition line for military and special-forces use.
3. August 2019: NtechLab CEO Alexander Minin authorizes Rasad Intelligent Technologies, also called Rasadco, as a systems integration partner in Iran.
4. January 2020: Moscow rolls out live matching on city cameras, with NtechLab in the stack.
5. 2021: Metro cameras in Moscow are used to intercept known protesters heading to rallies.
6. July 20, 2023: The EU lists NtechLab for backing that city system and for arbitrary detention of journalists, opposition activists and draft evaders.

The Iranian files sit inside that sequence, not beside it. By the time Brussels wrote NtechLab’s name down, the Tehran partner rights were almost four years old.

The Contract Path Through Rasadco and Kama

Rasadco received the 2019 right to integrate FindFace. Kama, a larger Iranian firm, was already licensing the software the next year. Two years after the partner deal, Kama took over from Rasadco after a financial and administrative merger. The head of Kama is a member of the IRGC, according to documents reviewed in the investigation. The EU designated the IRGC a terrorist organization on January 29, 2026.

On November 3, 2020, Kama granted a company called BPO a FindFace license for an unlimited period, priced at 4 billion rials, about €80,000 at the time. Investigators described BPO as a front used to hide confidential purchases. A 2021 agreement then covered live identification from 200 cameras and a database of 300 million events, with each event a face the algorithm flags. That contract was priced at nearly 9 billion rials, about €180,000 at the time, and was also signed by a shareholder of Zaeem Technology Development Company, a firm that works with Iran’s defense and intelligence ministries.

THE FINDFACE LICENSE CHAIN

Internal Kama records put the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence among users. Shell companies sit in the same chain so a ministry does not have to sign the invoice. The paper trail is a procurement story dressed as IT supply.

Sharif University and Mashhad Bought Licenses

Contracts from 2020 through 2022 did not stop at the security ministries. Clients included Sharif University in Tehran and the Mashhad city authorities. Mashhad, a holy city for Shia Muslims, has more than 3 million people. Live matching for its subway was bought for 3 billion rials, about €65,000 at the time.

WHO APPEARS IN THE CONTRACTS

• IRGC: Internal Kama files list the Guards among users, and Kama’s head is a Corps member.
• Ministry of Intelligence: The same internal records name the ministry as a user of the software.
• BPO: Took an unlimited FindFace license from Kama on November 3, 2020, and is described as a front for hidden buys.
• Sharif University: Named among 2020-2022 clients in the leaked contract set.
• Mashhad authorities: Named as clients, with a separate live-matching buy for the subway.

In December 2023, journalist Vahid Tafrihi posted a control-room photo from Mashhad’s subway cameras. “Photos of everyone passing in front of these cameras are displayed on large screens along with their age and gender. Can the municipality explain the purpose of this?” he wrote. He gave no product name. The leaked FindFace demos show the same age-and-gender overlay.

On March 14, 2025, the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s 2025 findings condemned far-reaching use of technology to restrict expression and cited new facial recognition software reportedly installed in April 2024 at the entrance gate of Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran. That UN note does not name FindFace. It does show campus gates as a live target for whatever matcher the state had on hand, after Iranian authorities had already announced public-space face matching in the summer of 2022, including for women’s clothing.

Iran ranks 176 out of 180 on the Reporters Without Borders press-freedom list, and the group counts 12 journalists in prison, among them Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, arrested on December 12, 2025, and sentenced to seven and a half years. Local reporters could not safely document the vendor. The contracts did that work instead.

What the Tehran Turnstile Demo Shows

The investigation obtained 2021 videos made to sell the Russian software to Iranian buyers. One clip shows the turnstiles at Panzdah E Khordad subway station in Tehran during a busy spell. A dense crowd moves under the camera. Nobody looks up.

In the live overlay, each face is circled in green and listed at the side of the screen with estimated age, gender and detected emotion, plus whether the person wears glasses, a surgical mask, or a beard. Ali said that live stream with moving faces beats anything he knew on the domestic market. “Some might work, but not as a live stream with moving faces,” he said.

That overlay is the specimen. Age and gender tags are the same labels Tafrihi saw on Mashhad’s wall screens. Emotion and accessory flags are extra fields on the same card. Interaction tracking then links those cards when people travel together. The metro is the funnel because everyone passes the same gates, including people who will later stand in a square.

During the Woman, Life, Freedom protests after Mahsa Amini’s death on September 16, 2022, Iranians already treated street cameras as a threat, covering their faces and, in later unrest, pulling cameras off poles. The 2021 sales tape shows why a hood is a rational reply to a green box.

Sanctions Arrived Years After the Software Did

The EU’s 2023 listing of NtechLab is dated July 20, 2023, almost four years after Minin signed the Iran partner paper. Brussels said the firm helped build Moscow’s face system and that city police used it to watch and arbitrarily detain journalists and opposition activists, including people at Navalny rallies and people avoiding mobilization for the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security added NtechLab to the Entity List in December 2024, with the listing effective December 11, for supplying face-recognition software the Russian government used to target peaceful protesters. NtechLab’s compiled open sanctions file now also shows Canadian, French, Belgian and Monaco measures on top of the EU file. None of those listings unwind a 2019 integrator grant or a 2020 unlimited license.

Protests over living costs began in late December 2025 at the Tehran Grand Bazaar and peaked in January 2026. Early estimates cited in the Eyes of Iran investigation put the death toll at more than 30,000 people over January 8 and 9, a 48-hour window. Fatemi said he assumes FindFace was running then because the system can work offline. He presented that as an assumption. The investigation did not verify a named arrest tied to a named match.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The 2019 grant: NtechLab authorized Rasadco as a FindFace systems integration partner in August 2019, in a paper signed by Alexander Minin.
• The resale path: Kama licensed BPO on November 3, 2020, for an unlimited period, and 2020-2022 contracts name security bodies, Sharif University and Mashhad authorities.
• The metro demo: 2021 sales video shows live boxes, age, gender, emotion and accessory flags on faces at Panzdah E Khordad station.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• January 2026 matches: No on-the-ground audit ties a specific FindFace hit to a specific arrest or killing in that crackdown.
• Amirkabir’s vendor: The UN reported facial recognition at the university gate in April 2024 without naming FindFace.
• Accuracy in Iranian streets: The 98 percent figure is a sales claim, and the files themselves note trouble with poor video.

The BPO license was granted for an unlimited period. The files do not say it has been switched off.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is FindFace Facial Recognition Software?

FindFace began as a consumer lookup tool that matched a street photo to profiles on VK, Russia’s main social network, before NtechLab shut that public app and sold the algorithm to police and city camera networks as FindFace Security and later FindFace Multi. The government product searches live video and archived footage, then writes age, gender, emotion and accessory flags onto each hit, which is the overlay shown in the 2021 Tehran metro sales tape.

When Did Iran License FindFace From NtechLab?

The partner paper is dated August 2019 and names Rasad Intelligent Technologies as a systems integration partner, with the sale kept confidential until the Eyes of Iran investigation published the contracts on March 3, 2026, after FindFace had already been on the World Cup stage in 2018 and on Rostec’s export list in April 2019.

Why Is NtechLab Under EU and US Sanctions?

The EU listing of July 20, 2023, holds the company responsible for technical support to serious human-rights abuses in Russia, including arbitrary detention and attacks on peaceful assembly, after Moscow police used the city face system against Navalny supporters, anti-corruption protesters and draft evaders; the U.S. Entity List entry of December 11, 2024, adds a license requirement for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations, with a presumption of denial.

Can FindFace Run Without a Live Internet Link?

Fatemi told investigators he assumed the Iranian installation was available during the January 2026 crackdown because the software can operate offline, which means a cut in international bandwidth or a local blackout does not, by itself, switch the matcher off if the cameras, the local servers and the watch lists are still powered.