On October 30, 2026, Polish media reported the detention of a 55-year-old Russian who had been photographing trains and railway infrastructure.
Professional photographic equipment was found on him, and on his storage devices, thousands of files, mostly images of transport infrastructure in various countries.
The man turned out to be Alexander Mashovets, whose hobby is photographing trains in every country he visits. Alexander has been charged with espionage and remanded in custody for three months.
An “Exiles” lawyer tried to work out since when photographing trains has been a crime.
Quite recently, on June 25, 2025, the Polish legislature amended the defense law, removing critical and strategic infrastructure objects from the photography ban. Even before that, the ban applied only to infrastructure objects bearing special prohibitory markings.
And now, just over a year after these changes, a person is accused of espionage for photographing ordinary trains.
Here the Google corporation immediately comes to mind. For many years, this company has been systematically photographing roads, bridges, railway crossings, stations and other infrastructure objects around the world. It does not merely photograph them, but systematizes the data, ties the images to geographic coordinates and makes them available to an indefinite circle of people. Including, imagine that, Russian and Chinese intelligence officers! I suppose no one seriously doubts that these services actively use Google Maps in their work.
So we get a curious situation. One person photographs railway rolling stock, and he is a spy, because in the future he might pass this information to a foreign intelligence service. A multinational corporation photographs the infrastructure of entire states and makes this information available to every intelligence service in the world, and that is ordinary commercial activity.
What is the difference from a legal standpoint?
Of course, intent. Espionage can only be intentional, and the person must knowingly work for a foreign intelligence service. Even indirect intent presupposes that the person fully understands what action he is committing. Knowing that your photographs might be used by a foreign intelligence service, and taking part in that intelligence service’s activities, are not the same thing.
And here a fundamental question arises: if the state itself has permitted photographing transport infrastructure, what additional circumstances turn this lawful activity into espionage? The number of photographs? Professional equipment? A Russian passport? Trips to Russia? None of these circumstances individually, nor all of them together, proves intent to commit espionage. And that is precisely the aim that must be proved. In addition, a direct link between the person and an intelligence service must be proved.
Polish police claim that the detained Mashovets collected photographs with the intention of passing them to a foreign intelligence service. Perhaps the investigation has evidence of this. We do not know. But the published materials give us at least reasonable grounds to doubt it. It is strange to show the public an ordinary camera and say not a word about any recorded contacts with intelligence officers of a hostile state.
This gives rise to particular concern about law enforcement practice.
In the modern world, the concept of state security increasingly becomes a universal justification for restricting human rights. We are told: a hybrid war is under way, foreign intelligence services are active, and there are threats of sabotage. And all of this is true.
But when it comes to criminal proceedings, the most demanding in terms of evidence and the most responsible in terms of respecting a specific person’s rights, a mere reference to the international situation is not enough.
It is especially alarming to observe such a trend against the backdrop of Russian realities, where the concepts of treason, espionage, extremism and terrorism have acquired such broad interpretation that they are used for mass political repression. I would very much not want such a vicious logic to gradually seep into the criminal justice of democratic states.
The difference between a state governed by the rule of law and an authoritarian one is not the absence of security threats. Such threats exist everywhere and always. The difference is that a state governed by the rule of law is obliged itself to prove the crime and the guilt of a specific person, rather than demand that the person prove his innocence.
I do not know whether the man detained in Poland is a spy. But I am absolutely convinced: it is not he who must prove his innocence; the state is obliged to prove his guilt irrefutably. And not by suppositions and conjecture, but by direct and irrefutable facts of his intentional participation in intelligence activity.
Otherwise, one day, in the not-so-distant future, it will be we who have to convince police officers that yet another photo on our phone is an ordinary selfie, not a threat to national security.
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