Context: In many public places in Hyderabad, there are signboards that read: ‘Big boss is watching you’. 

• Hyderabad city police is deploying lakhs of cameras connected in a real-time network managed by Hyderabad’s Command and Control Centre and can be used for facial recognition technology.
• In this article we discuss that to upkeep of law and order is paramount, the right to privacy and informed consent cannot be compromised.

Issue
Surveillance practices like data analytics, social media analysis capabilities and facial recognition are alleged to be an attempt to control citizens’ lives through technology.

• There have been protests in Hyderabad against surveillance and in support of the right to privacy, it was only after Amnesty International raised concerns that “extensive surveillance of Hyderabad is putting human rights at risk” that surveillance was brought to the fore.

How this Surveillance technology worked?

• In Hyderabad it largely follows a three-pronged approach: there is a wide web of CCTV cameras, facial recognition technology, and cordon and search operations. 

Need of this move

• To transform the Hyderabad City Police into a Global City Police. 
• To help achieve this aim, the public has been encouraged to install CCTV cameras and share footage when required. 
• Outcomes of this project include preventing crime and monitoring ‘high-risk areas’.

Problem associated with such technologies

• Under a cloud of the right to peaceful assembly as they can act as a tool of mass surveillance and pose a risk to disadvantaged communities.
• Two cases of the alleged violation of privacy by the police were reported recently. S.Q. Masood, an activist, said the police stopped him during the lockdown, instructed him to remove his mask and clicked photos of him. 
• Similarly, during a crackdown against ganja, the Telangana Prohibition and Excise Department teams checked the phones of people to verify if the word ‘ganja’ was used in their chats. 
• These incidents underscore crucial issues: the need for a data protection law and the concept of informed consent.

Issue with Cordon and search operations

• A fact-finding team from Hyderabad which probed cordon and search operations in some areas recently underscored the vulnerability of residents. 
• The team stated that cordon and search operations project such areas as “criminal areas”, target “lower rungs of society, and are an infringement of privacy”.

Road Ahead

• While upkeep of law and order is paramount, the right to privacy and informed consent cannot be compromised. They need to be protected by a law that defines the limits of use of citizen’s data by the state. 
• This Hyderabad model will motivate other state police departments and intelligence agencies to adopt similar measures throughout the country but the unequal power dynamic between security agencies and the common man who has no choice but to comply cannot be ignored.

By: Shubham Tiwari