Facial recognition enabled cameras, automatic vehicle number plate identification, and an entire city inundated with surveillance cameras — these are just a few ways in which Noida is planning to surveil its traffic, and commuters. The city administration — the Noida Authority — earlier this month, floated a tender to upgrade its traffic management system, which proposes to install close to 1,000 cameras across the city, which includes CCTV cameras, and separate number plate recognition cameras. The tender document — more than 400 pages long — mentions the word privacy just once. Alarmingly, the system will also communicate with large scale databases like driver license and vehicle registration databases maintained by the Road Transport Ministry, and the centrally maintained criminal database Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems (CCTNS). The surveillance infrastructure will come in at a huge cost — the advertised cost of setting it up is in the upwards of ₹88 crore. It will be implemented across 84 busy intersections in the city, including Rajnigandha Chowk, Electronic City, Botanical Garden Metro area, and Kalindi Kunj bridge, among others. The city administration’s argument is that this will help in making the city’s traffic situation better. The implementation of the online system will ensure “efficient traffic management”, the Noida Authority said. Continuous surveillance will result in a reduction in the number of criminal and unlawful activities, number of traffic rule violations, illegal parking, and encroachments, among other things, it claimed. This development is in line with an increasing trend among…
