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HomeIndiaHyderabad, Chennai, Delhi among world's top 50 most surveilled cities, says report

Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi among world’s top 50 most surveilled cities, says report

The report was released Wednesday by UK-based Comparitech, a firm that reviews technology services like VPN, antivirus and apps.

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New Delhi: Hyderabad has the most CCTV surveillance in India and is among the top 20 most surveilled cities in the world.

In its annual report released Wednesday, UK-based Comparitech, a firm that reviews technology services like VPN, antivirus and apps, found that the capital city of Telangana ranked 16 globally, and was one of two non-Chinese cities listed.

According to report’s rankings, China carried out the most surveillance, with 18 out of the top 20 most surveilled being Chinese. The city of Taiyuan ranked at the top with 4,65,255 CCTV cameras. The city is home to 3,891,127 people. This puts the security cameras to population ratio at 119.57 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people. The city has a crime index of 51.47.

Hyderabad came up 15 spots behind with 3 lakh CCTV cameras being used to keep tabs on a city that has a population of a little over 1 crore. This means there are 29.99 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people, the report said. The crime index in the southern Indian city is at 43.46.

The other Indian cities that were listed included Chennai at 21 and Delhi ranked at 33.


Also read: Free rental space, stopping layoffs — how Telangana’s helping IT sector come out of lockdown


Crime incidence to security cameras in India

A crime index typically indicates how much risk there is of a specific set of crimes in a particular location. Having a crime index score for each city helps compare how much risk each city may have for the same set of crimes. However, the report said it found little correlation between the number of public CCTV cameras and crime or safety.

Further, it found no correlation between the number of publicly installed CCTV surveillance cameras and the level of crime and safety in a city. This means in some cities there is an unjustified number of CCTV cameras set up in public spaces to monitor people with little reason.

The report noted that most of the heaviest surveilled cities aren’t in the top 20 most populated cities. In its analysis of cities with higher population with lesser cameras, it cited Delhi as an example. The city has 4,29,500 cameras for an overall population of 30,290,396.

This means the national capital has 14.18 cameras per 1,000 people, lesser than Hyderabad’s. Delhi’s crime index score was higher than Hyderabad’s at 58.69.

Mumbai, another city which has more people than Hyderabad, has 0.48 cameras per 1,000 people.  

While Hyderabad was the only Indian city in the top 20, Chennai and Delhi made it to the top 50 cities. Chennai has 2.8 lakh CCTV cameras for a population of 10.97 million. The report adds that in Chennai there are 25.52 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people and the city has a crime index of 40.68.

Delhi ranked the lowest among the three Indian cities on the top 50 list, and even has the lowest number of CCTV cameras per 1000 people.


Also read: Monopoly in the name of privacy: How Google is slowly closing its advertising ecosystem


 

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