Raising concerns of the creation of a ‘surveillance state’ with the planned installation of up to 1.4 lakh CCTV cameras in Delhi, privacy advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) sent a legal notice to Chief Minister Kejriwal on Thursday, calling upon him to halt the project.
The letter alleged that the policy was pushed through in an “opaque manner” without public consultation or feasibility studies. It highlighted the “lack of legal standing” for the ‘Standard Operating Procedure’, which acts as the governing framework for the policy.
The SOP does not specify the intended use of the installations, “which make the personal information of the residents of Delhi open to indiscriminate use and profiling,” it stated.
It also raised concerns on the lack of safeguards regarding whom the footage may be shared with, duration for which the footage will be stored, and the rights of residents to access or seek deletion of the footage.
Absence of safeguards
“The absence of these safeguards will lead to the creation of a powerful surveillance architecture that will inevitably be prone to misuse,” it argued.
It claimed that “there is emerging global acknowledgement that CCTVs have little to no impact in acting as a deterrent or reducing the incidence of crime”.
The group argues that such a formulation even if limited in scope, is better than the present state of regulation. It has warned of legal action if the project is not halted.