Security agencies to get social media data mining, face recognition tools: Rajnath

New Delhi: Security agencies are in the process of getting new software and improved face-recognition technology to enable themselves to dig deeper into social media about a criminal whose record is unavailable in the police database, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said Thursday.

Singh said cybercrimes were posing a "big challenge" to the security establishment.

He said security agencies have detected that terrorists were using the "dark internet" to recruit operatives and to "sell and purchase confidential information by big criminals."

He said hence, for the first time, they have created a cyber-security division in the home ministry.

Inaugurating a three-day Defence and Homeland Security Expo and Conference 2018, organised by the PHD Chamber, Singh said the utility of drones in ensuring security had been found to be necessary and the central government will soon bring out a policy on their widespread usage in the country.

"I am fully confident that drones will be very useful for our security forces. I have seen their capabilities and utility in the conduct of anti-Naxal operations," he said.

The home minister then talked about the "new tech-edge" that the country's security agencies are looking to procure.

"We can track criminals through the CCTV cameras. But at times, it is tough to identify and recognise them. We are trying that face recognition technology is better improved so that if CCTV cameras do not identify a criminal, there should be a technology to get his face recognised. This is what we are trying.

"We are also trying that if there is no information about them (criminals) in the CCTNS (crime and criminal tracking network system), we should have such software that can dig into the social media network and collate information about such elements," the home minister said.

Singh said apart from these challenges faced by security agencies and forces under his ministry's command, ensuring adequate security of India's over 15,000-km land border and more than 7,000-km sea border was also very essential.