Safe Hyderabad... Shandaar Hyderabad... https://t.co/pHStUFDXVy — I&PR DD Ramana (@IPR_DD_Ramana) 1581685218000

On February 14, an official of the Telangana government’s information and public relations team tweeted a graphic with a picture of the state’s upcoming “command and control centre”, along with a closed-circuit television ( CCTV ) camera. A translation of the Telugu text said thus: “In six months, the command and control building will be ready. One lakh cameras will be processed in under a minute. If you got out for work, by the time you are back 50 cameras can spot you. Every inch of the state will be under police radar. If a crime happens anywhere, there will be information immediately.”It wasn’t quite a threat.The ongoing construction of the “command and control centre” building or the “twin towers” as it is locally called, at the heart of Hyderabad 's Banjara Hills area, is an unmissable sight. A layman could mistake the building for a swanky corporate campus of a large tech company like Facebook or Google — a familiar sight in the city given its rapid, two-decade-long rise as an information technology hub in India.One of the large towers in this building (somewhere around 60% of the construction), Telangana police officials say, would house the Telangana Police’s state technology centre and data centres. One entire wing, with a centralised hub of sorts, where the police could access an initial six lakh CCTV cameras, which could potentially rise to ten lakh by the end of 2020.A recent report by the Bureau of Police Research and Development stated that Telangana had installed nearly 64% (or 2,75,528) of all CCTV cameras in India as of January 2019. However, the state’s police officials insist that that number has more than doubled to a statewide figure of six lakh, with nearly 50% of those operating in the tri-commissionerates of Hyderabad — Hyderabad city, Rachakonda and Cyberabad.A simple back of the envelope calculation would suggest that Hyderabad (which has 40% of the population of Telangana — 3.52 million people) would have one camera for every 46-47 citizens. But this is not where it ends. Hyderabad, as part of its safe and smart city project, has also deployed an “integrated traffic management system”, which uses surveillance cameras and Internet of Things-enabled sensors to detect traffic violations and streamline everyday traffic in key junctions of the city.There’s also facial recognition, which the police has been using for various use cases, including identifying and reuniting missing children, and deploying facial recognition cameras in key transit junctions (railway stations and bus stations) to identify known criminals. The government on its part, is also using facial recognition to issue pension certificates and recently, the state election commission used the technology to verify voters in a municipal election in a Hyderabad suburb.While a lot of these use cases do not yet match up to global numbers or even standards, especially in countries like China, the development comes in the backdrop of a renewed focus around surveillance, data security and privacy around India’s technology policy discourse.Telangana’s tryst with mass surveillance goes back to its pre-bifurcation days. In 2013, the then united Andhra Pradesh amended its public safety act, making it mandatory for all “establishments” (where a gathering of 100 or more people is expected at a time) to provide access controls and install CCTV surveillance cameras, with “a provision for storage of video footage for 30 days.” Once Telangana was born in 2014, the government doubled down on the same, initially following the New York and Chicago prototype.“As a new state, it was normal to expect some disturbance. And we had to instil the safety factor in the minds of the people. We had to resort to confidence-building measures,” says L Jeevan Reddy, a former IT veteran who is now a consultant with the Telangana Police. Given Andhra Pradesh’s legacy of e-governance, it saw technology as the enabler of these measures.And CCTVs, with a law mandating it, became the starting point. “CCTVs, we felt could be the first one. It was a low hanging fruit, in the sense that with relatively less effort, we could get much faster results,” Reddy adds. Notwithstanding the infrastructure challenges of network connectivity and power, it went ahead with the plan. Today, Telangana police officials claim a 40% reduction in crime rate across the state, with heinous crimes like chain-snatching reducing 98% from 2014. From an investigation point of view, these officials add, that 99% of suspects are nabbed “within 24 hours of the crime,” including the four perpetrators of the Disha rape case, who were later shot dead in an encounter.It adopted a three-pronged approach to scale up its deployment. First, through state government projects and executed by a Chennai-headquartered strategic business unit of Larsen and Toubro — L&T Smart World and Communications. This included 10,000 cameras, storage and backend networking across the three commissionerates of Hyderabad under the “safe and smart city project”, which officials describe as an “integrated safe city platform.”“This is not just about surveillance, but also process automation. Triggering certain standard operating policing procedures which are typically siloed,” says a person aware of the Telangana Police’s technology initiatives. He adds, “This would include patrolling, incident management and investigation. So in this case, it would involve enabling field officers with real-time information.” At the back-end, the technology it uses includes artificial intelligence, deep tech and machine learning, computer vision, geospatial analysis and IT process automation. “Collectively, it is referred to as augmented intelligence. This is basically AI with human at the centre,” the person adds.The second layer is what the Telangana police is a community project, with no or indirect investment from the government, and purely based on investments in CCTVs from a community via corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. This includes public sector units or private corporations, besides development funds allotted to members of parliaments and legislative assemblies.These cameras, which are required to cover the interiors of the roads, and entry and exit points of neighbourhoods, are also connected to the central system, besides the local police station, which also acts as a command centre. A proprietary AI algorithm, which uses machine learning (image recognition), the person quoted earlier says, “helps you solve things faster.” In Hyderabad city alone, there are 12,000 such cameras, police officials add.The community project has thus far covered more than 1500 kilometres. “Their footprint is very large. It helps us explode into the entire city,” says Reddy, before adding, “We have also received good support from internet service providers like ACT Broadband and telecom companies like Jio.” In the case of funds involving members of legislative bodies, tendering is used, while for private and corporates, based on the urgency, the Telangana police has empanelled vendors it could procure CCTVs from. In Hyderabad’s adjoining commissionerate of Cyberabad, which covers the IT corridor, the corporations and police have come together to set up a “Cyberabad Security Council.”The third layer is what the Telangana police calls “Nenu Saitham” or “Me Too” in Telugu, for individual coverage, which it launched in 2017. These involve houses or gated communities and commercial businesses (shops etc) putting up one or two cameras focusing on entry and exit points, parking lots and roads. In the case of liquor shops, a 2017 government order mandated the deployment of two CCTV cameras per store. “This is our force multiplier,” says Reddy, while insisting that the police do not have control over these cameras. “These are not integrated into our central system.”Today, all of the state’s 31 districts follow the same models. “We have standardised the processes and policies to spread it across the state. We have also standardised technology and attributes,” insists Reddy, before adding, “No state, or nowhere in the world, has anyone gone to this scale and standardisation.”Last Thursday, at the facial recognition unit at command and control centre of the Hyderabad police in Basheer Bagh, an operator zooms into a “hit” (a successful match) he just received — an accused walking out of the Secunderabad railway station, was matched with a database of mugshots of known criminals the police already had, with an accuracy of near 95%. It is all in real-time.As the footage comes in, the facial recognition algorithm, powered by a leading Japanese provider of FRS technology, would separate the images on the video, which is then matched to the database. The database also includes “lists” maintained by the Hyderabad Police, categorised on the type of crimes committed by the accused to lists or profiles like “Naxals”.Upon receiving this hit, the command and control centre would then alert the nearest police station to apprehend the person for further questioning, and arrest, if necessary. This was done via the eighteen high-end facial recognition cameras the Hyderabad Police has deployed in key transit locations.The brass tacks of facial recognition technology say that there are 80 nodal points on a face. For a successful match, usually, 14-22 points are needed. Since the deployment of facial recognition cameras in 2018, the Hyderabad police claims to have apprehended 200 people via its facial recognition system (FRS), of which 36 apprehensions have happened this year alone. “FRS is good in a controlled environment,” says Reddy. By controlled environment, he means spaces where crowds are regulated. Like railway stations or bus stations, or even airports.Besides, the Telangana police also uses FRS as a feature in an app — TSCOP (Telangana State COP), which allows field constables or officers to click an image of a suspect and run it against a database of known and accused criminals already stored in the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS). “We mostly use this against repeat offenders, especially those involved in property crimes — robbery, snatching, burglary and so on. It is not used against a random citizen,” says a senior state Telangana police officer.However, previously, the Telangana Police had tweeted and later deleted images of police officers using the TSCOP app against random citizens. ET has reviewed these images provided by a source. This was confirmed by other Telangana Police sources who said that these tablets can be used to take pictures of any “random person” to check with the database. The source indicated that city police in Hyderabad and some other districts were using it “for random checking.”“In their push to become a crime-free city, the cops have made everyone a suspect. In the name of contactless policing, they are pushing facial recognition and CCTVs, but they continue to randomly stop people on the streets and take biometrics to check if they are a criminal. All of these practices without any code of practice or law are dangerous to civil rights and fundamental right to privacy,” says Srinivas Kodali, a Hyderabad-based independent researcher and digital rights activist.But beyond apprehending criminals, the women’s safety wing of the Telangana Police has resorted to using FRS to track missing children in the state through two annual operations in January and July — Operation Smile and Operation Muskaan respectively. The Telangana police has indigenously built an app — Darpan, which uses facial recognition at the front-end, with AI and deep integration with CCTNS.Darpan, according to an internal instruction manual reviewed by ET, allows field officers to click photographs of children found or “link from photo gallery in the detection tab” to “compare it with those available in the database.” In the event of a missing case, registered in any police station across the country, the CCTNS integration “instantly detects and furnishes details, which facilitates in tracking the child.” But in the event of no successful match, the app allows a field officer to “enrol the photograph and details of the person”, with mandatory data fields such as “Name, Description, Language, Place Found etc.”At the backend, Darpan uses batch processing (matching multiple images at a time) to retrieve details of the child, and runs it against a missing and found database. “We already have a database of missing children at the state level through the CCTNS,” says Swati Lakra, the inspector general of police for women safety, Telangana. Besides, “the missing data of child care institutions and shelter homes are uploaded on the Darpan app as a database,” she adds. Thus far, the Telangana Police has successfully matched 59 missing children, with 29 of them reunited with their families within the state or elsewhere in the country.But this is where things get a little hazy — the enrolment process. Lakra says, “Even if they (police officers who have been given the app) see a child, and are suspicious that the child may be lost or doesn’t not have adult supervision on the street, for the sake of ascertaining who the child is, they have to click a picture.” This some activists allege could be a violation of the child’s right to privacy. However, Lakra insists that data is “well-protected” and is “not for everyone”, with “various levels of admin control to restrict access and ensure accountability.”It is not just law and order where the Telangana government has seen use cases in facial recognition. There’s also service delivery, where it has now started using emerging technology. For services such as the issuance of a pension life certificate, the Telangana government, through its MeeSeva department’s app — T Folio — uses “selfies”, as part of its “real-time digital authentication of identity” technology. This is part of its eventual vision of what officials call “contactless governance.”The RTDAI technology enables pensioners to click a selfie along with one other identity proof (voter ID, driving license or even RC number) and upload it via the T Folip app, where the Pension Department is also integrated. Upon upload, the backend does a “real-time check” to verify if the image is live (using an AI-based “Liveness” verification), along with demographic matching (between the pension database and the card database using big data and machine learning) and photo matching (deep learning-based “photo comparison”). For this project, the government has acquired three different APIs, which have been integrated at the backend.According to GT Venkateswara Rao, the commissioner of electronic service delivery and special commissioner e-governance in the Government of Telangana, the accuracy of this real-time authentication technology is close to 93%. “It’s like a three-factor authentication (liveness + demographic + photo) . It is useful because fingerprints get partially erased in elders,” he says. “Twin objectives. For the citizens, it’s convenient, and for the government, it’s transparency,” Rao adds.The government is now likely to extend this technology to other use cases such as elections, marriage certificates, and renewals of driving licences. “We believe that no one should come to the office for any service unless there is an absolute need. This is what contactless and presenceless governance truly is,” Rao says, while adding that it is an alternate delivery stream. “It is not mandatory. If people want to visit our offices, they’re most welcome to do so.”Recently, Telangana’s state election commission also experimented with facial recognition for voter identification in ten booths during municipal elections in the Hyderabad suburb of Kompally. Rao insists this was entirely consent-based, as in a voter could opt out of the same if he chose not to. The exercise saw an accuracy of 65-85%, with other states like Haryana interested in replicating this experiment. However, this did not go well with the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM), who registered a complaint with the state election commission.Asaduddin Owaisi, the AIMIM chief and member of parliament from Hyderabad, told ET in a phone conversation, “The facial recognition done by the state election commission is a direct violation of the Puttaswamy judgment on privacy. At a time when there are no safeguards, and the personal data protection bill is yet to be passed, and the DNA bill is yet to be discussed and debated, how could they use FR for elections? These initiatives violate the Supreme Court judgement.”While Telangana has been pioneering the use of surveillance and facial recognition in the country, questions remain about the human cost of deploying such technologies. Especially at a time when concepts such as data security and privacy have entered the mainstream policy discourse. Researchers and activists feel that while the law enables the use of such technologies, there are not enough safeguards against it to ensure accountability of the institutions involved.The Telangana police insist that the surveillance data follows a global best practice standard, where it is stored for 30 days before it is automatically written over. “We are not databasing or maintaining that database. In our standardised policies, we believe that 30 days is reasonable retention. Besides, globally, only 5% of all the videos are seen,” says Jeevan Reddy, the technology consultant quoted earlier.The person aware of Telangana Police’s technology says that there is a need for greater clarity on surveillance data. “It’s a global concern. For now, the platform is available only to authorised police users and they ensure three levels of data security — application level, role-based and watermarking,” he says. Likewise, while Rao of the Electronic Service Delivery department admits to privacy concerns, he says that “photographs are sensitive (biometric) as compared to fingerprints and iris, and in any case anonymisation is also used.”Kodali, the Hyderabad-based independent researcher says, “The push to place more CCTVs across the city without any surveillance law is turning Hyderabad into a digital dystopia. The idea that CCTVs guarantee safety is flawed. The recent rape and murder of a veterinary doctor tell us that it is not possible to prevent crimes. All the CCTVs are doing is giving more power to the police without any checks and balances.”Facial recognition too has become a cause of concern, in keeping with global trends. “I have always been opposing facial recognition, and will continue to oppose it,” says Owaisi, whose AIMIM is an ally of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti-led government. “I am of the opinion that it will affect common people. The liberty of an individual cannot be compromised in the pretext of convenience. You cannot ignore the entire chapter 3 of the constitution of India,” he adds.Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF). “The basis of mass CCTV deployment in Telangana is under the AP Public Safety (Measures) Enforcement, 2013 which predates the 2017 Puttaswamy right to privacy judgment. Under this judgment, the Supreme Court has laid down clear standards of proportionality and necessity which are not present under this law. Hence, the mass CCTV deployment being undertaken in Telangana is unconstitutional.”Activists say that the building in Banjara Hills has become a symbol of sorts — of the dystopia that could be coming to Hyderabad, and later the state. “The upcoming command and control centre to store data from the city show us the cops want to increasingly collect more personal information of the citizens,” says Kodali. “These ambitions of the police could become dangerous for a society which can’t hold them accountable for illegal encounters. With real-time information about the population, the police can crackdown on any form of assembly and they’re already doing that with the protests against CAA,” he adds.