Recently, an RTI filed by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) revealed that the Delhi Police is using Facial recognition technology (FRT) to nab rioters in the capital city. This has caused an uproar as many members of the civil society raised concerns and called the Delhi Police's use of FRT'unethical' in the absence of a Data Protection Act in the country. The argument being made by them is national security should not come at the cost of privacy. Technology such as FRT has been controversial, and authorities leveraging such tech is definitely a concern. The RTI filed by IFF revealed that the procurement of the FRT by the Delhi Police was authorised as per a 2018 direction of the Delhi High Court in Sadhan Haldar v NCT of Delhi.

Indian law enforcement is starting to place huge importance on facial recognition technology. Delhi police, looking into identifying people involved in civil unrest in northern India in the past few years, said that they would consider 80 percent accuracy and above as a "positive" match, according to documents obtained by the Internet Freedom Foundation through a public records request. Facial recognition's arrival in India's capital region marks the expansion of Indian law enforcement officials using facial recognition data as evidence for potential prosecution, ringing alarm bells among privacy and civil liberties experts. There are also concerns about the 80 percent accuracy threshold, which critics say is arbitrary and far too low, given the potential consequences for those marked as a match. India's lack of a comprehensive data protection law makes matters even more concerning.

India's Central Information Commission (CIC) has criticized the Delhi Police for giving "patently incorrect" replies to Right to Information (RTI) requests on its use of face detection technology during riots in northeast Delhi in 2020, reports Mint. The CIC, a body set up to help individuals acquire information when other routes fail, has insisted that the Delhi Police provide revised responses to information requests. According to the report, the CIC said the Delhi Police responses suffer from "legal infirmities" and demonstrate "no application of mind." There appear to be eight or nine findings against Delhi Police on the Decisions section of the CIC website concerning the issues of the riots and other cases, outlining the back and forth between appellant and the respondent, including scans of the handwritten correspondence. The CIC has asked for clarity on the use of its face detection technology, its accuracy, what database was used for comparison and whether biometrics were used in the North East Delhi Riots, where Hindu mobs attacked Muslims and their properties, leaving more than 50 dead, the majority Muslims, reported the Guardian.

The call comes amid attempts by the European Union to regulate the use of AI in its upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). Civil society organizations believe AI systems in law enforcement, especially in the use of predictive and profiling, discriminate against the most marginalized in society, infringe on liberty and fair trial rights, and reinforce structural discrimination. "Age-old discrimination is being hard-wired into new age technologies in the form of predictive and profiling AI systems used by law enforcement and criminal justice authorities. Seeking to predict people's future behaviour and punish them, for it is completely incompatible with the fundamental right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The only way to protect people from these harms and other fundamental rights infringements is to prohibit their use." said Griff Ferris, legal and policy officer, Fair Trials in a statement.

Facebook is almost fully abandoning facial recognition, but its parent company Meta isn't. On November 2, the world's largest social media network said it's going to stop using facial recognition technology (FRT) systems on its platform and delete facial recognition templates for billions of people. However, Meta spokesperson Jason Grosse told Recode that the move doesn't apply to its upcoming metaverse products. The social media firm rebranded to Meta on October 29 when chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is shifting its focus to building a future metaverse. "The next platform will be even more immersive -- an embodied internet where you're in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build," Zuckerberg said in a letter following the Facebook Connect event.

With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the Delhi police will counter deepfake videos circulating on the social media, said a Delhi police officer on Wednesday. A senior police officer said that during the investigation, it was found that deepfake videos were posted through social media accounts operating out of Delhi and such videos have fuelled the violence. Fake or morphed videos shared via social media have contributed to the violence in Jamia Nagar. "We are taking the help of cyber experts to detect deepfake videos with the help of Artificial Intelligence. We have come across more than 30 old videos of violence that happened in U.P., Bihar and other parts of the country that were posted as Jamia Millia Islamia incident. These videos are making rounds in the social media," the officer added.

The land of art, literature and culture will now see the government authorities keeping a close eye on the lawbreakers. In a move that will empower the law enforcement authorities, the Kolkata Police is now expanding the footprint of the CCTV cameras AI-powered devices in crime detection. According to a noted news wire, Kolkata Police has already installed 3,000 closed-circuit cameras all across the city. Police Commissioner Anuj Sharma said, "We are expanding it. Recently, you have seen instances of crime detection by analysing the CCTV footage… With the installation of such cameras, catching those indulging in anti-social acts will become simpler."

Delhi Lt. Governor Anil Baijal has launched a "QR Code Scheme" called Himmat Plus designed to enhance the safety and security of commuters, particularly of women, travelling in the yellow and black taxis and auto-rickshaws from airports, as well as Railway and Metro stations in the national capital. Delhi Commissioner of Police Amulya Patnaik, all Special Commissioners of Delhi Police, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) MD Mangu Singh, Northern Railway Divisional Railway Manager S.C. Jain and other senior officials of the Railway Protection Force attended the launch event. Several students from Swamy Sharadhanand College, Zakir Hussain College, Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, Mata Sundari College, as well as office bearer of auto rickshaw and taxi unions, and around 1,000 auto rickshaw and taxi drivers were also present at the programme. On the occasion, Baijal distributed the QR Codes to some of the auto rickshaw and taxi drivers. Around 3,000 auto-rickshaws and taxis are now associated with this initiative.

At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner's desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department's "achievements" in the previous year. A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police's technology prowess. The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS--Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System--under the "Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme" initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders--all with accompanying graphics.