For women's safety, UP police to track porn search on internet

To prevent incidents of eve-teasing, rapes and molestation, the Uttar Pradesh police have decided to monitor pornographic searches on the internet.

The police have hired a company to monitor the internet searches and keep data of the people who search porn content and analyse it.

Additional Director General Neera Rawat of UP Police’s Women Powerline wing 1090 — a helpline to prevent crimes against the women and report incidents of molestations and harassment of the women — said those searching the porn content on the internet would be 'warned' against doing so initially so that any possible crime could be prevented.

"The date of such people will be with the police...it will help the police in nabbing the offender if any incident of crime against the women takes place in the area," she said.

The analytics team would alert the Powerline about such people, she said adding that the arrangement had been started in six districts in the state on a pilot project basis and has got a good response.

The Women Powerline has prepared what it termed a 'digital chakravyuha' (a formation to surround someone), which would include psychometry profiling, predictive analysis, creating awareness among the people and encouraging participation of the community, to prevent crimes against the women.

"The traditional methods of outreach have many drawbacks...we need to modernise the methods," the ADG said.

Rawat said there were 11.16 crore internet users in the state. "We intend to reach all the users and increase our outreach," she added.

The new plan comes close on the heels of the decision of the Lucknow police to install artificial intelligence-enabled cameras at important public places in Lucknow to "read the facial expressions of the women in distress and alert the cops".

However, the decision invited sharp criticisms from experts and common people, who said it would amount to the violation of the privacy of the women.