Hyderabad is one of the most surveilled cities in the world – Amnesty

‘Hyderabad is on the brink of becoming a total surveillance city,’ said Amnesty International in a surprising new report. The findings are a part of its ‘Ban the Scan’ campaign aimed at protecting individual privacy.

Amnesty International worked with ‘Internet Freedom Foundation’ and ‘Article 19’ to focus on the state of Telangana, which it says is the host for the highest number of facial recognition technology projects in India.

CCTV – Friendly neighbor or Nosy neighbor ?

Surveillance-by-CCTV
© EFF-Graphics, CC BY 3.0 US

With the help of local volunteers, Amnesty mapped two neighborhoods in Hyderabad – Kala Pathar and Kishan Bagh.

Based on geospatial analysis, they estimated that areas of at least 530,864 and 513,683 square meters were covered by CCTV cameras in those neighborhoods, equalling a total of 53.7% and 62.7%.

The ever-increasing CCTV coverage of the city is generally hailed by the police as an important safety measure.

But Amnesty says that they have also found several incidents on social media between November 2019 and July 2021, where the police randomly picked commuters and took their photographs without explaining why.

“Under India’s Identification of Prisoners Act of 1920, it is not permitted to take photographs of persons by police unless arrested or convicted of a crime,” said Amnesty International.

Amnesty terms the Command Control Centre ‘Ominous’

© CityOrdinary, CC BY-SA 4.0

The mega-headquarters of the Telangana police being built with an expenditure of around half a billion rupees is touted as a state-of-the-art data centre to prevent and reduce crime.

But terming the CCC ominous, Amnesty said that the police data HQ will be able to process the feed from 600,000 cameras at once. The cameras, in conjunction with the existing records and facial recognition technology, can be used to track individuals, it said.

The construction of the CCC has chilling consequences for the right to freedom of expression and assembly, said Quinn McKew, Executive Director at ARTICLE 19. He says that facial recognition technology threatens human rights, including the right to Privacy.

Amnesty finds fault with the Vendors

Naming five vendors who provide services in the field of facial recognition technology in India, Amnesty International said they did not have human rights policies in place, in violation of the ‘UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.’

Telangana has been a ‘test site’ for using Facial Recognition Technology, claimed Amnesty International, calling for “a total ban on the state and private sector use, development, production, sales, and export of facial recognition technology for mass surveillance purposes.”