The National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), an intelligence platform that enables law enforcement agencies, including the state police, to access government and private databases in real time, has been linked to the National Population Register (NPR), The Hindu reported.
According to the report, the Ministry of Home Affairs told the Lok Sabha on December 9 that an Organised Crime Network Database is being developed on NATGRID’s IT platform to facilitate secure intelligence-sharing between the National Investigative Agency (NIA) and State Anti-Terror Squads.
Additionally, NATGRID’s advanced analytics tool “Gandiva” can reportedly be used for facial recognition of criminals and potential suspects. “If the image of a suspect is available, it can be fed into Gandiva. If any photo identity document, such as telecom KYC, vehicle registration or driving licence, matches with the photo, Gandiva can provide the details, thereby saving the time and resources of an investigator,” a police official was quoted as saying in the report.
Gandiva reportedly provides intelligence agencies with AI-assisted insights into data of a suspect. The information they can request has been classified as non-sensitive, sensitive and highly sensitive. Details such as bank statements, financial transactions, tax records and export-import data have been deemed highly sensitive.
What is NATGRID?
NATGRID is a state-backed surveillance database that gives security agencies access to all kinds of data about a citizen, including details of driving licence, vehicle registration, bank records, Aadhaar registration, FASTag, hospital data, airline data, tax records and telecom and internet usage metadata.
First envisaged in 2009 in the aftermath of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, the platform became operational last year. Before NATGRID, intelligence and investigative agencies had to formally request information from different departments.
Earlier, NATGRID was accessible to 10 central agencies, such as the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), the National Investigative Agency (NIA), the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the Narcotics Control Bureau, among others. Since then, the platform has also been made available to Superintendent of Police (SP) rank officers.
A separate, recent report by The Hindu said that NATGRID is receiving 45,000 requests per month. The platform gathered pace after investigating agencies and the state police were asked to scale up the use of NATGRID in all investigations at the November 28-30 annual Director General of Police conference, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
How NPR Data Helps NATGRID
The National Population Register has family-wise details of 119 crore residents of India. The demographic data for the creation of NPR was first collected in 2010 with the first phase of the 2011 Census and was last updated in 2015. While the data…
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