Thread by @digitaldutta

Thread on #facialrecognition & police surveillance databases. #CAAProtests

Facial recognition is a new technology, cops have start adopting since 2015. National Crime Records Bureau recently issued a tender for national facial recognition system. economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/…

But what people are missing out is facial recognition system will be a part of Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System. Again this system became operational post the Mumbai 26/11 attacks to link all police stations starting with the one in coasts ncrb.gov.in/BureauDivision…

CCTNS will link all police databases, so that any police department can access criminal records of other departments. All of these criminal records are essentially with NCRB, which is why they are issuing this tender for facial recongition.

The way CCTNS is designed is all police departments have to share minimum details about crime and criminal records. The police departments start uploading all FIRs into this network of databases. Because supreme court said all FIRs should be public, some departments publish it

On top of this basic system, each police department can build their own technology to use facial recognition, fingerprint recognition etc. The initial plan for CCTNS specially ensured this to allow various police departments to do what they like as policing is a state subject

CCTNS system will not only have a facial recognition system, it will also have fingerprint recognition systems. When you are detained the first thing cops will do is identify. Hyderabad police has been randomly stopping people and checking if they are criminals using fingerprints

While it started with fingerprints, it soon expanded to facial recognition systems using mobile phones. The Hyderabad Police again for example uses an app TSCOP, linked to their CCTNS system to check if your photo is any crime database

CCTNS databases have much more these two things, it has sub registries like our National Population Register. CCTNS composes of economic offenders registry, sexual offenders registry, cyber crime reporting portal. read more in link ncrb.gov.in/NCRB_Journal/N…

Police started collecting more and more data to build CCTNS. They have digitised all old criminal records, FIRs, fingerprints. Since you build this idea & infrastructure. It didn't stop there, they wanted more & more data. In Hyderabad cops started going house to house for info.

Hyderabad Police used the census kinda surveys done in Hyderabad to build 360 profile database. These are the databases they use for comparing facial recognition with. Think, how will they have your photos and details? They ask all government departments to share data.

The cops also get all the data of people staying in hotels under the sarais act of 1867(I know right). These days companies like oyo give all of this data digitally, guess where all of it ends up. CCTNS. Don't trust private sector to protect your rights
trak.in/tags/business/…

The National Facial automated recognition system tender specifically says, the data should be able to be input using any method. The MHA already plans to ask data from other departments like passport data to be used for facial recognition system business-standard.com/article/curren…

Like the NPR was pushed under the welfare arguments, we have facial recognition being pushed under missing children. If you are against people using facial recognition, the useful idiots bring this up. CCTNS has one more database for this called track child database

track child project happened because of supreme court orders. Missing children is a serious issue, people go missing for organ trade, child labour, sex trafficking. But instead of solving the crimes seriously & creating task forces, we got a database trackthemissingchild.gov.in/trackchild/ind…

track child project used to be part of Delhi police zipnet before, now it is part of CCTNS. It is true they used facial recognition to find children. But do understand why are children even missing? We are trying to find ways to find them not stop crime as @gautambhatia88 says

Also CCTNS is a sub-part another larger database called Integrated Criminal Justice System. ICJS contains CCTNS, e-prisions, e-courts, e-foreign tribunals etc. e-foreign tribunals is where your citizenship issues with #NRC will be looked into. It is a shit show.

The neo-liberal ideas of building a new database for every scenario is creating more problems. It is bad for our country than we can ever image. These systems are giving the powerful more power. This will further inequality.

Nandan nilekani might say you are data rich, but its not you its the state. This idea of making you data rich before using it to make you actually rich is bullshit. All it did is make crony capitalists like @Product_Nation rich.