The Indian city of Hyderabad is taking photos of people who do not comply with restrictive measures to combat Covid-19, through a video surveillance system, the Associated Press (AP) news agency revealed on Tuesday.
Facial recognition and artificial intelligence have exploded in India in recent years, becoming important law enforcement tools.
However, law enforcement doesn’t just use technology to solve crimes. The AP gained access to the operations in early 2022 as part of an investigation into the proliferation of artificial intelligence tools used by law enforcement around the world.
After two Islamist bombings rocked Hyderabad in 2013, authorities installed 5,000 video surveillance cameras to bolster security, with 700,000 currently in and around the city.
Police forces and government departments have access to real-time video surveillance 24 hours a day through the Command and Control Center.
Hyderabad was one of the first cities in India to use a mobile application to detect traffic violations and restrictive measures applied to Covid-19, namely the use of a mask on the street.
Police Commissioner CV Anand told the AP that photos of traffic and pandemic rule-breakers are kept long enough to ensure they are not needed in court, and then discarded.
“If we need to control crime, we need to have surveillance,” he emphasized.
But questions remain about the accuracy of the system and a lawsuit has been filed to challenge its legality. In January, a Hyderabad official scanned a journalist’s face to show how the facial recognition app worked.
Within seconds, five potential felon matches appeared in the state database. Three were men.
“Hiderabad has invested hundreds of millions of euros in patrol cars, video surveillance cameras, facial recognition and geo-tracking apps, and several hundred facial recognition cameras, among other technologies,” Anand noted.
The investment helped the state attract more private and foreign investment, according to the commissioner, including an Apple development center, opened in 2016, and a Microsoft data center, announced in March.
“When these companies decide to invest in a city, they first analyze the public order situation,” he stressed.
Jewelry theft, for example, dropped from 1,033 incidents per year to less than 50 per year after cameras and other technology were implemented.
Hyderabad’s trajectory is in line with that of the country. The country’s National Criminal Records Bureau (NCRB) is trying to build what could be one of the largest facial recognition systems in the world.
Building on government efforts, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have taken advantage of increased technological surveillance since they took power in 2014.
Narendra Modi’s flagship campaign, Digital India, aims to reform the country’s digital infrastructure to govern using information through technology.
The Government has promoted intelligent surveillance through drones, video surveillance cameras with artificial intelligence and facial recognition.
Source: TSF
