India is Building Surveillance Infrastructure on Broken Data and Bad Policing | TechPolicy.PressPerspective<br>India is Building Surveillance Infrastructure on Broken Data and Bad Policing<br>Asvatha Babu / Jul 9, 2026Networks by Pauline Wee & DAIR. Better Images of AI / CC by 4.0

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On any given night in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India, it is common to see police officers on patrol stopping mostly pedestrians and two-wheeler riders to check their credentials. Since 2021, they have been able to point a mobile phone at the face of any of these people and within seconds pull up a number of potential matches in the state crime database. Since 2025, some of these officers have had access to a 360-degree view of a person’s life, including their bank accounts, their families and relationships, their social media history, their travel records, their Aadhaar authentications and more. This is the operational reality of one of the most expansive surveillance infrastructures in the world; one that is being built on a foundation of flawed data, fallible people, and decades of discriminatory policing. And most Indians have no idea it exists.<br>For my doctoral dissertation, I studied one sliver of this surveillance stack: the facial recognition software (FRS) used by police in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. My research revealed the extent to which the adoption and use of this technology relied on a complex network of existing infrastructures, databases, practices, and beliefs. The FRS app used by the Tamil Nadu police was built by C-DAC—the Research & Development Wing of the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology—as a stackable component on top of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) database. The CCTNS database, a crowning achievement of the modernization efforts of the Indian police, is connected to over 15,000 police stations across the country and houses whatever information has successfully been digitized by these stations regarding complaints, active and past investigations, and criminal cases currently in the courts. Most importantly for the FRS app, it also houses photos of suspects and convicts connected to these cases from across the country.<br>The CCTNS database, in turn, feeds into the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), a master database initially built as a mass surveillance and intelligence sharing platform accessible only to a select few agencies at the national level. The NATGRID contains highly sensitive, identifying information about people and enables the formation of a 360 degree profile of almost every adult in India. It incorporates information from databases like the CCTNS, national identity systems like the Aadhaar, driving licenses, and passports as well as the controversial National Population Register (NPR) that contains family-level demographic information on 119 crore Indians. It also tracks information from banking and financial institutions, digital payment platforms, telecom operators, transportation systems such as FASTag (a cashless toll collection system), airlines, and railway bookings. Your digital traces, internet habits, and social media posts all get fed into NATGRID.<br>In July 2025, Piyush Goyal, the Chief Executive Officer of NATGRID, wrote a letter appealing to state police units to “proactively” use the larger NATGRID solution to enhance their predictive policing efforts. Essentially, this means that certain police officers in your district can access a full profile of you, your family, your financial status, your social media rants, and your online habits if they believe you’re a person of interest in a crime. By December 2025, NATGRID was reportedly receiving 45,000 requests a month.<br>So why should the average, law-abiding Indian citizen be worried? Police officers exist to serve and protect people, right? Isn’t it good if they have more information to do their jobs? Unfortunately, the line that separates a good citizen from a bad one is often a politically drawn one that can be easily shifted to serve the prerogative of those in power. Maybe you spoke out against a corrupt former government that is now back in power and ready to use it. Maybe you participated in a minor political protest that is now considered a high-stakes national security issue. Maybe you’re like 25-year old Vignesh, a Dalit youth who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. A quick FRS search during a routine traffic stop revealed a minor pending case in CCTNS that somehow led to a police chase, and eventually to his brutal torture and death in police custody. Once you’re tagged as “accused” in a database, you’re caught in an intricate, ever-expanding infrastructural net from which it is nearly impossible to escape.<br>Our content delivered to your inbox.<br>Join our newsletter on issues and ideas at the intersection of tech & democracy

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