Mohammed Khadeer, a 35-year-old every day wage laborer, died in a hospital within the southern Indian metropolis of Hyderabad on February 16, days after being arrested. During his hospital keep, he recorded a video during which he accused the police of extreme brutality. Khadeer had been arrested over an alleged chain-snatching case caught on a CCTV digital camera, and was launched 5 days later. According to enterprise portal Moneycontrol, the police admitted that unclear CCTV footage could have led to Khadeer being misidentified as a suspect.

Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) utilizing CCTV footage is usually touted as an answer to counter crime. According to a 2022 data report by U.Okay.-based expertise analysis agency Comparitech, a handful of Indian cities are amongst a number of the most surveilled cities globally. But these cities even have a number of the highest crime charges. Hyderabad, as an illustration, is the third most-surveilled metropolis on the earth, in accordance with Comparitech, with 41.8 cameras per 1,000 individuals. But its crime index — an estimation of the general degree of crime in a given metropolis or nation — stands at 42.9, in accordance with Numbeo, an internet database that makes a speciality of price of dwelling. Internationally, cities like Zurich and Munich fare effectively on the dimensions, with their crime indices as little as 19.1 and 18.8, respectively.

The lack of regulation across the use and the storage of knowledge collected via CCTVs poses a severe menace to residents’ privateness, in accordance with specialists, particularly when FRT is used along with these programs. “This trend is something we witnessed across the board in our study, demonstrating that more CCTV cameras don’t necessarily mean lower crime rates,” Rebecca Moody, head of knowledge analysis at Comparitech, advised Rest of World.

Crime charges are growing at an alarming fee in India. In 2021, in accordance with the most recent knowledge from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), there was a 15.3% improve in crimes in opposition to ladies in comparison with the earlier 12 months. In India’s capital, New Delhi, crimes in opposition to ladies surged by greater than 40% in the identical interval. All this whereas, the town had a community of 1,446.03 surveillance cameras per sq. mile — 26.7 cameras per 1,000 individuals.

Data rights specialists and activists have raised issues over the alarming rise of video surveillance in India, however Delhi’s authorities has been celebrating it. “Feel proud to say that Delhi beats cities like Shanghai, NY n London with most CCTV cameras per sq mile,” Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, had tweeted in August 2021, sharing a associated Forbes India article.

“The Delhi government is trying to do a cosmetic fix where they think that crimes against women are only happening in public areas and it can be fixed through CCTV,” Anushka Jain, coverage counsel at Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital rights advocacy group, advised Rest of World. “Political messaging is such that people believe that CCTVs will lead to an increase in security.” Rest of World reached out to the Delhi authorities however didn’t get a response.

For each 1,000 individuals, Indore — essentially the most surveilled metropolis in India — has  62.52 cameras. Indore stands second to Chinese cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing, which have 372.8 cameras per 1,000 individuals. Yet, through the first 5 months of 2022, crimes similar to rape and house-breaking rose by 14% in Indore. The metropolis’s crime index is at 48.37, simply over Kozhikode’s 45.3, however the latter has solely 0.05 CCTV cameras per 1,000 individuals.

“The cameras are also watching, that gaze is also on us,” Delhi-based theater artist, Mallika Taneja, advised Rest of World throughout a midnight stroll within the metropolis on January 22. As a part of an initiative known as “Women Walk at Midnight,” Taneja has been organizing all-women midnight strolls to reclaim the streets in numerous Indian cities for over 5 years.

In 2012, there was widespread outrage in Delhi following the gang rape and homicide of a 23-year-old lady, identified by the pseudonym Nirbhaya or “the fearless one.” The Indian authorities arrange the Nirbhaya Fund to spend money on measures to make sure the protection of girls within the nation. Many initiatives funded via this initiative concerned set up of CCTV cameras, in accordance with IndiaSpend.

Swati Maliwal, the chair of the Delhi Commission for Women, advised Rest of World that CCTV cameras assist in investigating crime. “We handle more than 500 complaints in a day and we have to issue summons to the police for each case,” Maliwal stated. “From our interactions with them, we have understood that CCTV cameras speed up the investigation. Once crime happens, CCTV footage helps in creating evidence and that creates a pressure.” The Delhi police has claimed they  solved more than 100 cases with the assistance of CCTV cameras in 2021.

Yashovardhan Azad, a retired police officer who had served as particular director of the intelligence bureau, advised Rest of World that monitoring numbers and utilizing FRT is an ordinary course of. “This is … for public order,” he stated. “If there is a crime in any public area, then the police can ask for the CCTV footage and that satisfies the requirement.”

In the absence of a knowledge safety legislation in India, “there are no procedural safeguards” in opposition to the way in which CCTV knowledge is saved, used or shared, Jain of IFF stated. “We cannot check what is happening with the data,” she advised Rest of World. “What we need basically is regulation regarding the deployment of CCTVs, standard operating procedures for the authority that is deploying it, and a data protection law to regulate how the personal data is collected.”

FRT can be weaponized in opposition to susceptible teams, together with Muslims like Khadeer, research by unbiased suppose tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy exhibits. “The use of FRT by the police is likely to disproportionately affect Muslims because of the over-policing of some areas with significant Muslim populations, combined with police biases,” the report reads.

In 2020, the Delhi police used FRT to research the North East Delhi riots, which had claimed the lives of 53 people — 40 of whom had been Muslim. In its annual report that 12 months, the police talked about using “extensive technology” whereas making arrests after the riots. Of the practically 1,750 individuals arrested, greater than half had been Muslim.