Public CompanySurveillance devices need to keep pace with terrorist ploys
Terrorist attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and consistently exploiting India’s gaping security loopholes — both on terra firma and in cyberspace. AK-47s and M-series weapons apart, the attack on India’s financial capital Mumbai revealed that militants not only use emails and exploit wireless technologies but also use satellite phones (satphones) and Global Positioning System (GPS) maps to chart their entry and escape routes.
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For instance, the fishing trawler Kuber that the Indian Coast Guard officials intercepted from Porbandar in Gujarat was found with a satphone and a GPS map of south Mumbai. A satphone was also recovered from two dead terrorists.
All of this makes tracking difficult by authorities, say security experts. Consider also that there are over 200,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in India, and many colleges, hotels, cafeterias, shopping malls have Wi-Fi connections that can be easily compromised.
Satellite imagery can be used for useful tasks like identifying new unlicensed constructions or to calculate the damage from natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes. Terrorists, though, have other things in mind. In Iraq, for example, detailed Google Earth images of British military bases were found in the homes of insurgents. And two years ago, insurgents there circulated an instructional video on how to aim rockets at US military sites using Google Earth. Of course, you can get the same information by simply walking around with a map and GPS device, security experts noted.
India lags behindthe terrorists in a lot of basic detection technology. Robot drones, mine detectors and sensing devices are already common on battlefields abroad. The US, UK and Israeli governments, on the other hand, use satellite images to track terrorist base camps and GPS to track criminals. Software programs are now available to help investigators identify and establish relationships in the stored information of criminals.
To its credit, Mumbai does have CCTVs and metal detectors. Security firms like Zicom, Honeywell, Siemens and Godrej have installed surveillance equipment to cover the city with virtual eyes and record images round the clock. The 30 km stretch from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) to Thane has CCTVs which enabled the authorities to obtain footage of the terrorists who struck at CST on November 26.
Railway stations from Churchgate to Virar (around 60 km), too, have 820 CCTVs. Zicom has installed around 100 CCTVs at all traffic signals in Mumbai (cost: around Rs 4 crore — Rs 40 million).
These figures, however, pale in comparison with just the city of London. Also known as the city of steel, London has over 15,000 cameras installed in all parts of the city. An average visitor gets caught on camera over 300 times a day.
The surveillance does not stop there, all this video is saved and analysed by software called Video Analytics to check whether the behaviour of any individual is suspicious or not.
So do cities like Surat (around 32 CCTVs) and the entire Kolkata metro (around 100 CCTVs which cost Rs 2.5 crore — Rs 25 million). Cochin Port Trust recently acquired two modern high-speed boats from the US to patrol the backwaters and the port-occupied areas during the Indian stopover of the Volvo Ocean Race.
All this equipment, however, falls way short of securing cities. “Securing a city, including sensitive places like archaeological monuments, temples, water reservoirs and power plants, needs technology but also tremendous political will and mindset,” says Pramoud Rao, Managing Director of Zicom.
There is also a wide range of technology and equipment from virtual security barriers, detection technologies (video motion detection algorithms, radars, motion sensors, vibration sensors and geophones), access control systems (biometric-card based) and personal and visitor screening (X-ray technologies, explosive trace detectors and metal detectors).
India has the big advantage of learning from other countries. But it needs to do so fast.