While maintenance of law and order is paramount, right to privacy and informed consent cannot be compromised
There are signboards in many public places in Hyderabad which read: ‘Bigg Boss is watching you’. It is not clear what this means: whether it is a warning from the state that people must obey the law or an assurance that citizens are safe under state surveillance, or an ominous message that citizens’ activities are constantly monitored. is going
While 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 “Hyderabad’s widespread surveillance is endangering human rights” that surveillance was brought to the fore.
Surveillance in Hyderabad largely follows a three-pronged approach: there is an elaborate web of CCTV cameras, facial recognition technology, and cordon and search functions. Amnesty, Internet Freedom Foundation and Article 19 mapped out CCTV coverage in old city neighborhoods Kala Pathar and Kishan Bagh, and found that 53.7% of Kala Pathar and 62.7% of Kishan Bagh were covered by private and government-owned CCTV cameras. Maintained. It is pertinent to mention that Telangana’s Nenu Saitham project aims to transform Hyderabad City Police into Global City Police. To help achieve this objective, 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’.
In addition, the building of a command and control center, Amnesty International says, has the capacity to support the processing of 6 lakh CCTV cameras from Tri-Commissioners. Amnesty says facial recognition technology can bring the right to peaceful assembly under one cloud because they can act as a tool of mass surveillance and pose risks to disadvantaged communities.
Two cases of alleged breach of privacy by the police had come to the fore recently. SQ Masood, an activist, said that the police stopped him during the lockdown, instructed him to remove his mask and clicked his pictures. Similarly, during the crackdown on Ganja, Telangana Prohibition and Excise Department teams checked people’s phones to see if the word ‘Ganja’ was used in their chats. Following these incidents, another city activist, Srinivas Kodali, sent a legal notice to the Hyderabad city police commissioner demanding an immediate end to the surveillance activities. These incidents underscore important issues: the need for data protection legislation and the concept of informed consent.
Siege and search operation is gaining momentum in Telangana. A fact-finding team from Hyderabad that investigated cordon and search operations in some areas recently highlighted the vulnerability of residents. The team said siege and search operations project such areas as “criminal zones”, “target the lower rungs of society, and are a breach of privacy”.
Another lesser known aspect of policing and surveillance is Operation Chabutra. A platform is a raised surface outside homes where people gather for social interactions. Police say they stopped and “consulted” youths who had been wandering for hours. They have done so even when no prohibitory orders were in force. Police say they are within the provisions of the law to launch such an operation. In some cases, he says, they act on specific inputs and complaints of nuisance from local people.
While the maintenance 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 limits on the use of citizen data by the state. The unequal power between the security agencies and the common man who has no option but to obey cannot be ignored.
syed.mohammed@thehindu.co.in
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