Legal experts say biometric surveillance at protests raises privacy, assembly concerns
Broad police powers are no substitute for express biometric-surveillance authority: Advocate Grewal
FRT must meet privacy standards and include safeguards on authorisation and data retention
Chandigarh, July 25, 2026 (Bharat Khabarnama Bureau) : India has no express law authorising police to deploy live facial-recognition technology at protests, religious congregations or other public gatherings, lawyers said on Friday, warning that such use could invite a constitutional challenge.
The issue has gained urgency after a petition before the Delhi High Court challenged alleged continuous surveillance of students taking part in the ongoing protest at Jantar Mantar. The Centre has reportedly defended videography of protests as a law and order measure.
Mentionably, it is reported that high-resolution cameras have been positioned at key entry and exit points to scan faces in real time and match them against police databases. In addition to this, as surveillance vehicles with high-tech mobile units, such as the ‘Ikshana van’ equipped with 360-degree cameras and on-the-spot video analytics have also been deployed. Moreover, ground police personnel are also wearing AI-enabled smart glasses that instantly scan individuals, highlighting suspects in red and non-suspects in green.
Advocate Harjeet Singh Grewal, citing the K.S. Puttaswamy right-to-privacy case, said the existing legal framework is not designed to regulate live facial recognition in public spaces.
“Police may rely on general policing powers and criminal-investigation provisions, but none of them specifically contemplates the continuous biometric surveillance of people at public gatherings,” Grewal said.
He said facial-recognition technology may have legitimate uses in identifying wanted suspects, locating missing children and assisting serious criminal investigations, but any such deployment must comply with the Supreme Court’s privacy standards and include safeguards on authorisation, transparency, retention and deletion of data.
“Using FRT to identify a known terrorist, an absconding accused or a missing child in the course of a defined investigation stands on a different legal footing from indiscriminately scanning every person attending a public gathering,” he said.
Grewal said no specific provision in existing law authorises police to install live biometric-surveillance systems in public spaces. He said state police should obtain prior magisterial approval before using facial recognition or any other remote biometric-recognition tool in an investigation or inquiry.
He added that a broad policing power is not the same as an express biometric-surveillance power. India’s privacy jurisprudence, he said, treats privacy as a fundamental right, and this protection can extend even to public places and protests.
The use of FRT at protests, Grewal said, may also have a chilling effect on Article 19 freedoms, particularly speech and peaceful assembly. The systematic capture, matching, storage and profiling of protestors, he said, is a far deeper intrusion than ordinary observation.
He pointed out that police already have less intrusive tools available, including videography, physical policing and post-incident investigation.
Raising another concern, Grewal said there is no clear legal framework governing the collection, retention, sharing, correction and deletion of FRT data. Without such safeguards, he said, surveillance can become arbitrary, since people do not know who is being scanned, how long their data will be retained, or how false matches can be challenged.
He said FRT may also raise Article 14 concerns if deployed selectively against dissenters, minority gatherings or politically sensitive assemblies.
He said the authorities could contend that FRT is a crowd-management tool aimed at public safety. But Article 19 permits only reasonable restrictions imposed by law, and blanket biometric surveillance of peaceful demonstrators will be seen as excessive, as chilling dissent and as exceeding what public order genuinely requires.