Settled Habits, New Tricks: Casteist Policing Meets Big Tech in India by Ameya Bokil, Avaneendra Khare, Nikita Sonavane, Srujana Bej and Vaishali Janarthanan https://longreads.tni.org/stateofpower/settled-habits-new-tricks-casteist-policing-meets-big-tech-in-india may 2021
Extracts:
The digitisation of already biased police records, extensive surveillance systems, predictive policing through interlinked databases and the complete absence of a regulatory framework have led to the creation of a parallel digital caste system which denies the fundamental freedoms of specific marginalised communities.
he contemporary Indian police have continued with this legacy. First, Indian society continues to be ordered by the caste system; second, the idea of hereditary criminals still occupies the mind and structure of the Indian police, largely comprising members of oppressive castes; and third on the grounds of expediency that hold as true now as they did during British colonial times.
Individual Indian states have adopted legal provisions concerning ‘habitual offenders’ (HOs) and maintained the surveillance systems designed under the CTA. The hereditary criminal of the past is now placed in the more palatable administrative category of the HO, which remains ill-defined and therefore gives the police vast discretionary powers. These provisions, while apparently neutral, are still selectively used against the same communities that were targeted in colonial times.
The government and the tech industry maintain that [digital] systems will allow for ‘objective’, ‘smart’, algorithm-based detection of criminal hotspots and predictive policing. In reality since these databases are fed by the police’s centuries-long caste-based system of preventive surveillance and predictive policing there is no possibility of objectivity or lack of caste bias.
Since state governments are free to tweak CCTNS as they please, several states have been collecting biometric details (iris scans, facial prints, etc.) of HOs and even first-time offenders. A senior police officer in Bhopal claimed that the CCTNS is being used in Madhya Pradesh as a repository of all criminals.
The state’s inability to self-regulate its use of technology is amply demonstrated by the ham-fisted introduction of the Aadhaar, a ‘unique identification’ number linking biometric information and various databases necessary for accessing welfare programmes, setting up bank accounts, purchasing SIM cards, and paying income tax, among others until the Supreme Court directed the government to regulate and limit its mandatory use for specific public services.
The need to use technology has been furthered through the myth that tech is neutral in the prevention of crime and curbs the problem of human bias, when all that these systems do is essentially digitise the casteist targeting of communities through the nebulous category of HOs. There is scant reflection on what such a digitised caste system implies, who is responsible for designing it and how it reproduces and reifies hierarchies that are inimical to the criminal justice system.
the real aim of surveillance and the unchecked powers it gives to the police is to maintain political hegemony and a very strict, hierarchical social order. Thus, surveillance policing allows for the marriage of profit-making corporations and authoritarian regimes. The social control they seek to maintain is, in turn, in accordance with the casteist social control already enforced by police surveillance.
extract from a discussion on Framers.. not giving up on the value of AI but putting in value.. https://youtube.com/embed/9bZUZNDwdC8?start=1610&end=2071