Telangana state police was conferred with an award for the first place under excellent capacity building of police agencies category in a virtual Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and NASSCOM annual Information Security Summit. The State police trained selected police personnel as cyber warriors to tackle the hazard of cybercrimes and appointed them in all police stations.
The state police also won third place in executing interoperable criminal justice system measures following Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. Union Secretary for electronics Ajay Prakash Sawhney presented the awards to states under various categories. Telangana state DGP M Mahendar Reddy received the award.
This comes at a time when International human rights organisation Amnesty International and the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) had raised concerns over the extensive surveillance in Hyderabad, stating that it is putting human rights at risk.
Currently, Hyderabad is one of the most surveilled cities in the world and as such has begun construction of an ominous ‘Command and Control Centre’ (CCC), intended to connect the state’s vast facial recognition-capable CCTV infrastructure in real-time. In addition, a study by the Internet Freedom Foundation found that Telangana state has the highest number of facial recognition technology (FRT) projects in India.
