Source: Lawbeat

A law student frames a constitutional dilemma about when state use of AI-driven surveillance becomes a threat to privacy, asking how courts should weigh claims of national security against the right to privacy. The summary references the Supreme Court’s 2017 Puttaswamy decision recognizing privacy as a fundamental right and endorsing proportionality as the test for intrusions. It cites concrete state initiatives: the Safe City Project linking CCTV, facial recognition and behavioural analytics; NATGRID’s addition of AI and facial-recognition analytics in December 2025; and reports that police used facial-recognition vans during recent student protests over examination leaks, highlighting the absence of a police-regulating facial-recognition law.

The piece notes allegations around Pegasus spyware, stating media and activists alleged targeting and that the technical committee’s findings remain classified for national-security reasons, with an earlier bench remark reportedly saying use of spyware was not improper. It criticizes the Digital Personal Data Protection Act’s November 2025 notification for creating broad national-security, public-order, and foreign-policy exceptions that could permit AI-driven profiling without consent. The student asks whether courts should demand ex-ante judicial authorization for surveillance, narrow “national security” exceptions, require proportionality reviews every time, and interpret legislative silence over facial recognition as a signal to act cautiously, urging independent judicial scrutiny rather than a call to disarm the state.