While the Gen Z protests have changed mores, their aftermath continues. FIRs are being filed, protestors are being arrested and social media memes are being taken down. And a lot of data about the protestors has been captured. Drones, surveillance vans, and videographers have collected a lot of information which has been fed through AI systems. In a recent episode of The Wire Talks, Apar Gupta, advocate and founder director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, spoke on the lack of a legal authority on the basis of which such action is undertaken. The full text of the conversation is as follows. It was transcribed by Saras Anand, an editorial intern at The Wire.§Sidharth Bhatia: Hello and welcome to The Wire Talks. I am Sidharth Bhatia. The Gen-Z protests at Jantar Mantar and other parts of India are now over. The resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, has fulfilled the key demand of the protesters. The government tried tear gas, lathi charge and even pellet guns in many places, including Mumbai. FIRs were filed against them, but they stuck it out and remained peaceful. But what was less known was that they were being profiled secretly with sophisticated digital surveillance technology, which has severe long-term implications. The state has collected a lot of information about the protesters, and that was done illegally, or at least we do not know what law was applied. Now comes information that hundreds of FIRs have been filed and many protesters are allegedly in jail. Apar Gupta has been warning against this throughout the protest and even earlier. Gupta, an advocate and the founder director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, has made short videos about surveillance to explain how the state machinery operates, and they sound very worrying. He joined me today to explain what some of the techniques were and what the implications of this data collection are. Apar Gupta, welcome to The Wire.Apar Gupta: Thank you so much for having me here. I am really looking forward to our conversation today.Sidharth Bhatia: You must have read the reports that are coming in of arrests and FIRs. To begin with, this is really worrying. We will link this up, but do you have any initial thoughts on these actions by various state police machinery?Apar Gupta: So, in addition to the arrests which are also occurring, what we have also noticed is that today there have been news reports that the online content which was posted, and this was a kind of content movement as much as it is a cause movement because a lot of reels, videos, digital content were published by the protesters, so even that is being scrubbed off the internet. According to me, we have a high degree of opacity about what’s being done. First, the promises that were extended by the Union government functionaries towards the two members of the Cockroach Janta Party when it was announced that existing FIRs will be taken back and fresh ones won’t be filed. Since that falls to state governments, not only the Union government in Delhi, that assurance is not being carried through. Second, the law is not being completely respected because this takedown is happening with a high degree of opacity. Even if it is an online reel which has expletives or abusive language towards the Prime Minister, that by itself does not make it illegal, inasmuch as much as it may offend people.Sidharth Bhatia: Ya, we will develop on that a little later. But going back to what you had begun to warn to begin with. What did you find out? How and when did you find out about the surveillance during the protest?Apar Gupta: So, the surveillance at the protest was, from the very beginning, being indicated to us on the basis of the different people who were visiting there. A lot of young people have worked with me. A lot of people who are part of the civil society, or even young people, reach out to us quite often, given that IFF, as an organisation, has a really public profile. It’s a service-oriented organisation. We listen to people; we encourage feedback which comes through social media. So, what they were telling us was that, in addition to the cameras that were already in place in the Connaught Place area and Connaught Place is a market area, there is a very high density, a nested network of cameras all across Jantar Mantar. As a protest site, it has pre-existing cameras which are placed all over Central Delhi. In addition to that, there were mobile surveillance vehicles there. They were also doing this kind of surveillance, which was not only through these cameras, but there were people inside these mobile police units. There were also drones which were being used, and all of this videography which was being done as per our prior knowledge correlates to the Delhi Police’s implementation of what is called the Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS). It was initially introduced a long time back in 2019, I think, or 2020, to reunite missing children in a case in the Delhi High Court which is called the Sadhan Haldar. So, what we know is that a large amount of surveillance footage was taken by the Delhi Police. It was taken through fixed cameras, it was taken through drones, it was taken through mobile police units, and it was also taken through videography by police officers, as well as by people who held smartphones in their hands, sometimes not even wearing a police uniform. What I also saw independent of this, and some people did flag it to us, was that there was a Delhi police officer, but we have not been able to verify this report, who was wearing the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.Sidharth Bhatia: And those glasses you can use for this kind of surveillance, right?Apar Gupta: I really don’t know. Was it turned on or was it turned off? Was it just keeping the live feed? Was it recording? I don’t know what functionality was enabled. I don’t know if it integrates with the Delhi Police’s facial recognition system. I doubt it does, but again, this is an unconfirmed report. We are a small organisation of six people, so we went with at least a much more credible and visible manifestation of facial recognition, which was there at the protest site to tell people what are the steps they can take because there is no legal authorisation for any of this.There is no legal authority cited by the police for any of this. This is confirmed by a July 24 news report in The Indian Express, where the police officials themselves are saying there is no legal basis for what we are doing . There is no clear legal authority, which is contrary to the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy judgment, in which it held that there needs to be a legal authority whenever any act is taken to restrict the privacy of an individual, even if it’s in a public place. All of this has been made clear by the Supreme Court of India.Sidharth Bhatia: So it was done both openly and surreptitiously, both. Apar Gupta: Yes, completely. Sidharth Bhatia: Because both vans and the drones, it’s a really serious point that you have raised. There is a name for the vans you had mentioned, what is the name?Apar Gupta: It’s Ikshana, I think it means eye in Sanskrit. At least that’s what I’ve been told by my staff. Sidharth Bhatia: So these vans, these video cameras and the drones, as I said, openly and surreptitiously. So therefore, there seems to be no concern that the Supreme Court’s law, the law laid down by the Supreme Court, is being broken. I mean there’s just no thought given to it as I see it. Apar Gupta: Yes, yeah and it’s worse because it’s not a live feed which is being stored. It is a live feed which is then being run through a computer system which is then on the basis of algorithmic matching, pulling a database and we do not know how that database has been created. Has it been created from a driver’s license, passport, Aadhaar, or all of them together? And then it’s matching the live feed of a photograph it’s taken from the live feed of your face in a crowd against that. So it’s basically a it is somewhat similar to how suspects are identified. But what are you suspected of? Is the question which should be asked before that. And this has a chilling effect. If a person is being positively identified as to the identity in a government database, even if it is done accurately, because these things are faulty, as a potential criminal for doing something which is constitutionally protected.Sidharth Bhatia: And this feed is being, you know, accumulated. This data is being accumulated. But what happens to that data? What happens to that massive accumulation? What do you think happens at the back end? Apar Gupta: This is all speculation. So in 2022 I filed an RTI. We had asked the police what your SOP is, how are you gathering this data, how long are you retaining it, and with whom are you sharing this? And none of this information was provided back to us. We did get some information in which the police said that an 80% probabilistic match between image capture with the pre-existing picture in the database results in a positive identification. And by the way, this is the percentage under which the ACLU ran a study in which it then was able to match sitting members of Congress with convicted criminals. So, one really does not know what is happening. It is a black box exercise. Sidharth Bhatia: Where is all this technology from? Apar Gupta: So, as per the research we were able to do, at least these vans were created by an Indian vendor called CP Plus, which is an Indian surveillance company that provides these kinds of cameras, these CCTV cameras, but also what they call AI-powered intelligent cameras. And given the continuing lack of clarity, there’s a lack of transparency, and public authority is supposed to be proactively in giving information when they take any kind of action. What is the authority of law?What are we doing? That’s completely absent here. We filed four RTIs last week with the Delhi Police.So, this includes a query about who the private vendors are, where it has been procured, what the purpose is, how much money is put towards it, what the service costs associated with it are, and how many people work on it. Are they employed? Are they full-time employed by the Delhi Police? Are they police officers? Are they third-party contractors? etc. So, we have asked for this information, but I would expect that we will not get prompt responses. Sidharth Bhatia: And you hope that you’ll get some responses?Apar Gupta: Even if it is a denial, we intend to contest it, as we contested it in 2022. Sidharth Bhatia: You said earlier, there’s opacity, but Is it also opaque about the law under which all this has been done? Apar Gupta: The law is completely silent on this. There’s no clear legal authority for facial recognition of any of this kind. The closest thing which comes to it is the Criminal Procedure Identification Act, but the Criminal Procedure Identification Act will apply to active criminal investigations. And the police did not have cause to actively surveil the protesters, given that prior to at least the 20th, there was no act of violence. There was no cause for any kind of criminal investigation to be there. So, even if the Criminal Procedure Identification Act is cited, which is pending constitutional challenge, again something in which IFF is providing pro bono legal assistance to two petitioners who are from Jamia. They are students who are protesting. They were profiled.Their biometrics were taken. Even if they cite that law, that law would not be applicable to the Jantar Mantar protest at the very least. Sidharth Bhatia: Under whose auspices does all this come? The Home Ministry or some other authority?Apar Gupta: Home Ministry. The Delhi police comes under the Home Ministry. Sidharth Bhatia: That’s all one can say at this stage, right? But you have no idea about who gave the orders, how this was executed. I mean, how, why this was executed, etc As you said, what is going to be done to this data? Now, coming to what is to be done or what seems to have been done is that FIRs have been filed in Bihar, Bengal, and I’m sure Delhi. I know that in Mumbai, even during the protest, some FIRs were filed. A lot of students, a lot of protesters apparently, have been jailed. Do you think all this is a direct result of the data that was collected? Because otherwise, how do you keep a record of who was there? Apar Gupta: Why does a record need to be there of who was there? Is the first question to ask. Sidharth Bhatia: I understand, but I’m saying that where have the names, the faces, the persons been recorded to say, “Oh, you were at the protest.” Because that person could otherwise deny.Do you think there is a link between these things? Apar Gupta: So one does not really know how these digital policing systems are working.The first thing is that. The second is that state police procurements may differ in terms of what the technology stack is that is adopted. Okay, there will be individual tenders. And the third is that policing practices will also be dependent on a state background. One does not know what they’re doing. One does not know how they’re using the technology. All we know is that people are getting notices.They went to the protest, and there were cameras there. And this is also inspiring a level of fear and censorship; people we know who went to the protest were wearing masks. Why should people be fearful of their government for protesting for accountability on the issue of examination paper leaks, which have resulted in student suicides, right? That’s the topic which should be centred in this conversation.However, it’s taken into a very different direction in which protesters are then, because they’re wearing masks to cover their face, are shown to be potentially under the gaze of suspicion for wearing that mask when they are already being surveilled. There’s proactive mass surveillance which is being done. Sidharth Bhatia: But you said 80% match, so it could be on the basis of eyes…Apar Gupta: So, there was one video which was also published by a journalist, which was republished by Maktoob. It’s actually a reel. So that journalist who goes up to the mobile surveillance unit, puts a smartphone there and can see the screen, which is in real time matching the video feed which is coming in from the protest site against the database. And in the last column, and I have pointed this out in my video also, there is an accuracy score given, and there’s a percentage displayed beside that. So, there’s a name, and there are certain particulars below that. There are two more fields we couldn’t make out, but ultimately, below that, the fourth or the fifth last column, which is against each person’s face, and there are three faces there. So, there is one face from the live feed, which is gathered, and one from the database from wherever it is pulling it.The first is the name, then two other fields, and the last field is the accuracy score, which is a percentage. So, one does not know what the percentage the Delhi police may be using today or whether the technology may have become more accurate as well. One does not know anything about how this is happening. Sidharth Bhatia: You know, it strikes me, of course, facial recognition has become rampant everywhere. You know, in fact, CCTVs are now everywhere. Even private housing societies like the idea of a lot of CCTVs. I don’t know why they seem to think that CCTVs will somehow protect or inform them about some, you know, someone doing something bad in the lift or something like that. I really don’t know because there are societies with scores of CCTVs installed, and that’s in the name of security. So, when you say CCTVs, these trucks, these drones, I think you would say that they are at this moment trying out every technology possible to say how best we can completely surveil this not this protest alone, but this society. Do you think there is a kind of a larger word? Panopticon emerging? Apar Gupta: There’s no doubt in my mind that surveillance has become normalised, and to a large extent, there is a very high tolerance by people to deploy surveillance in their daily lives, not only on themselves, but on others. And those are two very different things. But the third thing, which I think is still objected to by many people in Indian society, is when the state uses it.There’s a complete difference in that because it depends on the power that also accompanies the ability of the technology to gain information about another person. And what AI-based technology quite often does is that they reduce the cost, the time, and the pattern recognition which is necessary.So, each wave of technology will be different from CCTV, which is a dump feed, which will require somebody to sit and scrub for a long period of time, versus an intelligent AI system in which a person’s movements can be catalogued over a period of time or may even be catalogued against certain behavioural patterns which can be displayed. This is where this person goes to work. This is this person’s family. These are this person’s friends. This is how long they stay, and over a period of time, a profile can be built around them. And at the very root of a lot of this, Siddharth, is the Safe Cities project, which emerged from the Nirbhaya incident in Delhi, in which there was a horrific gang rape, in which the principal response of the state was an amendment to the criminal law and the creation of a Nirbhaya fund in addition to that for modernising the police services. Now, quite unfortunately, today the modernisation of the police services quite often means the uncritical adoption of digital technologies, and the uncritical adoption of digital technologies quite often means surveillance. So, if you go to the parliamentary reports with respect to the modernisation of police services in which each state government police department home department gives a reply, they’re boasting one after the other that we have a better surveillance technique than our neighbours. They talk about data lakes, and data lakes are essentially all kinds of information, which include passenger information across metros and buses, where all of that is pulled together because, according to them, a smart city, a safe city includes perpetual surveillance of all services. Your electricity, your water, your daily movements. This is at the very root of what the government is thinking around safety as well as development, modernity, modernisation, all of that is coming together, and the unifying factor is surveillance. And all of this is recognised, unfortunately, only when there is a very tangible abuse of this towards a large section of society which does have the power to speak up against it. Sidharth Bhatia: So, what is the future? I mean, if you want to, one way to kind of conjecture, or you know, what would be the future of the kids who have been the young protesters, who have protested or made memes and their names have come. Perhaps FIRs have been filed against them.But even if they haven’t, what do you think is going to be the future of such protesters? Will it, as you said, have a chilling effect, but more than that, will it have an impact on their lives? Apar Gupta: I fear it may have an impact on their lives. I have friends, very young friends in their 20s, had gone for protest in Mumbai, and some of them have been sent notices, their social media posts, have been taken down, and I do fear that the ultimate loss will be the loss of their civic participation and disenchantment not only from political advocacy, and this is political advocacy which they were doing towards accountability from a completely apathetic system. They want something which works for them, which is their right as a citizen of India. It is not only this disenchantment, but it’ll also be a complete fracture of trust which will prompt many of them, and I’ve talked to many, many young people who want to leave India and go abroad the minute they are able to do that. That is the problem. It is going to be a social loss, and for a lot of people who are a little older than me, they used to talk about a brain drain. I think there’s going to be a heart drain from India. There are going to be people who think that I’ve been taught something about India which does not exist any longer, and they will question that. That is the problem.It’ll be a systemic erosion of talent, of people who believe in civic action, and usually happen to be the best of our society in terms of even the skills and how they applied towards improvement of the human condition. Sidharth Bhatia: And ironically, this protest and its success and this civic action should have energised them to think, yes, this is a place where we can say something, get action done, and therefore it should have given them optimism to stay on. Wouldn’t you say? Apar Gupta: Yes, I can’t comment on the strategy of the organisers. I didn’t spend as much time as I should have, or I feel I didn’t support enough in terms of the organisation. That was not my role; I cannot question the choices which were made at that point in time. I don’t have complete information, but rather than asking them questions, I would put it to the government. A government which says that it has the it has immense popularity amongst young people. It keeps on centring the youth in conversations, for instance even around technology digitisation.It showed its complete reluctance to engage from the very first day. It feared that this would be similar to the Anna protest, where engagement itself would mean a reduction of their power, but I believe it would have resulted in a better form of governance. It would not have led to the fear which is now slowly starting to emerge that, just like within half an hour of Jantar Mantar being vacated, where the walls were being whitewashed, the entire digital archive of social media seems to be suffering the same fate. Or people who are reading these reports which are coming in from Bihar, they are very, very concerned about what’s happening. Police officers going into hostels and dragging out students for the protest. Sidharth Bhatia: Do you think at this stage their parents would enter the picture and say no more of this kind of behaviour?Apar Gupta: Certainly. I know a friend whose parents are panicking already. I think I know many people who have felt scared. They were confiding in me through the protest. They were feeling scared.Even for people who are older, they were saying “What will happen to my job if I’m identified?” These are people who have worked for 15-20 years. So, there is a cost which comes with protest, and unfortunately that cost should not be there, but in our world it does exist. Sidharth Bhatia: I know this is a conjecture again. Why do you think the government is now going after these protesters with a vengeance? Apar Gupta: My personal views about this government are that, and I’ve said it many times, that I don’t believe that it believes in the democratic tradition. The democratic tradition is absent not only in this government, it’s been absent in other governments, state governments, public officials we’ve dealt with and the democratic element is absent, which means that if a youth protest has happened, you engage with them not only out of a measure of concession, you not only announce a high-powered committee or task force, but you continue that engagement, that proactive engagement. You learn, and you make the system better because ultimately you have been given a 5-year term of governance rather than a political capture of power. I think that is absent. So, it speaks to the culture in public offices today. Sidharth Bhatia: You said something about the social media posts also being taken down? Apar Gupta: I came across some reports today in the newspaper. So there’s one report in the Times of India. I read another report online; the tab is open right now also.It’s News 18. Delhi police issues notices to social media platforms over offensive posts against PM Modi during Jantar Mantar protest. And I think it relates to some of the use of language which uses cuss words against the Prime Minister in jingles, political slogans, things like that, which were also causing some amount of questioning of how they can use abusive, vulgar, filthy language kind of remarks. But here’s the thing: it’s a public protest by young people, and the way they will verbalise their political slogans may have elements of cuss words. It by itself does not make it illegal, especially against the public official who, according to the government, is having immense popularity, power, a term which is now eclipsing Jawaharlal Nehru, things like that they keep saying. So what’s the problem of people who are doing this in a way, right? So according to me, the digital record is being scrubbed clean just like the walls at Jantar Mantar. Sidharth Bhatia: And the social media companies have to have, or willingly are participating in, this. Apar Gupta: I don’t know, I don’t think so that they exist outside a corporation; they are an artificial entity.They are corporate entities. So I don’t think so. They just have to comply, assess risk, where they can push back, where they can’t push back. Their incentives are towards maintaining the platform and it’s users. Users want the ability to speak freely on the platform, and for censorship to be as little as possible. Yet, at the same point in time, the platform needs to ensure that it has market access in India. India happens to be the largest market for many social media companies. So, I think they will be largely complying with these police notices. Also, given that over the past 2 years, as IFF has documented, I have been warning people that the best digital public infrastructure the government has made, and which works, is the digital censorship infrastructure it has created. And it’s very, very efficient today. Today, not only the Union Government, through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, can issue notices for blocking content, but also police officials in states can do it through a platform which is called Sahyog, where there are drop-down bars which can be used very, very efficiently, and lists of URLs which can be pasted beside it. After that is done, and if the platform does not comply, the platform can also potentially be prosecuted for a criminal offence by that police officer. Sidharth Bhatia: So, what is the IFF doing about all this? Apar Gupta: We have been supporting Digipub as a digital news publishing organisation in the Karnataka High Court, where there’s a constitutional challenge. And we also provide pro bono legal help in individual cases. For instance, the Facebook page of Molitics was blocked by a Sahyog notice. We also offer support to digital creators. We are a small team. We try to help out as much as we can. So, it’s both strategic litigation to challenge the constitutional basis of the platform, but also to provide clinical help to people who are at risk in categories which include media houses, publications, especially independent news media, and digital creators who create on political themes and subjects. Sidharth Bhatia: So, the future looks really grim on this front. Apar Gupta: I don’t think so actually Sidharth. I think what’s happening right now is that young people know all of this exists. It’s not like they don’t know. Yet, they are still speaking up. The amount of civic advocacy I’ve seen organically without IFF, without digital rights experts, without the usual commentators who get outraged by issues such as drones and facial recognition, it’s become really tangible. And it’s become tangible to a very urban middle class and upper class audience. A lot of content is being made to advance these points in the English language by people who usually don’t protest. It also includes people who are coming from other diverse backgrounds which include Sangathans, which includes people from other states.But, I think technology and its use for coercion by the state is finally being seen in a manner and light in which there is a form of popular advocacy attached to it which goes beyond the experts, which goes beyond the small confines of public policy processes. So, I’m hopeful. They know the risks and the conversation around these issues has the opportunity of reform because there is a real impact people are saying that it has on their lives. Sidharth Bhatia: So to sum up, the state will try its very best including getting more and more sophisticated technology, but the civic-minded young person, young Indian will do their very best to counter it and to go about their protest. Apar Gupta: And to add one more thing, for people who may be feeling dismal today, I would like us to step beyond the news cycle of 24 hours and remind all of us that over the past few months I met two very talented young people. One is Nisarga Adhikary and the other is Sarthak. Both of them exposed the CBSE on-screen marking system for its technical deficiencies and its tender processes. They are people who sparked wider conversation and they are people who are still speaking up online, right?So, if the young people in India are speaking up, they retain this hope and faith that things can be better. I think others need to also support them when they’re speaking up. Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah, you’re right. I mean, there is some kind of link because they did this and now it has sparked a conversation and it is a wonderful conversation.I think the government should also take note that young people, you can do whatever you want, but they expect governance more than anything else and accountability.Thank you, Apar. You’ve been doing great work on your social media platforms and elsewhere, and we’ll continue to watch it. That’s Apar Gupta, founder-director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, which you should look up and see how best you can be of help.We’ll be back once again soon with another guest. Till then, from me, Sidharth Bhatia, and the rest of The Wire team, goodbye.