The Cyber Prevention Awareness and Detection (CyPAD) unit of the Delhi Police is facing challenges due to tech giants not sharing information on time and manpower crunch.
The CyPAD was inaugurated by former Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in February this year. Cyber crime unit was earlier under the Economic Offences Wing and the cases taken up by the unit mostly pertained to financial irregularities. “But now we have started taking up cases that affect the public at large like stalking and online cheating,” said a senior officer at CyPAD.
Sources claimed that tech giants like Twitter and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service providers don’t share information easily through Google and Facebook. But Yahoo has been cooperative with law enforcement agencies.
“WhatsApp has recently submitted an affidavit in a city court that its encryption software is such that it cannot share information. There are websites, applications and service providers that give VoIP numbers and they don’t share information with us as well,” the officer said.
VoIP is a software which enables people to use Internet as transmission medium wherein the caller can use an Indian number but it will show as an international number.
Time consuming
Sources said that the formal procedure to get the information is through Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) and various provisions under Information Technology Act, but they are time consuming. “By the time we get the required information, it becomes useless as substantial amount of time lapses by then,” the officer said.
So far, the police have been able to extract information from tech giants who “don’t cooperate” by mutual understanding and by getting in touch with their representatives.
“Appropriate legal action can be taken against the companies but we are trying to resolve it mutually,” the officer said.
Apar Gupta, lawyer and executive director of Internet Freedom Foundation, said tech giants are legally bound to share information with the law enforcement agencies in India under Section 91 of the Criminal Procedure Code. “If they don’t comply with this, the CrPC further defines that criminal penalties may be instituted against the online platforms,” Mr. Gupta said.
When asked about why the social media platforms fail to share information on time, Mr. Gupta said that there are three reasons for the same. “First, the department sometimes sends notice that is vague or not even available with the platform. Second, the platforms have based their compliance teams not in India but abroad so it takes time to process. Third, it takes time for the compliance team to turn the information to a law enforcement agency given the impact it may have on the privacy of its user,” he said.
Another problem that the unit is facing is manpower crunch. Sources said that the unit has about 150 officers in total, out of which only 10%-20% are technically sound.
Lack of manpower
“Under the IT Act, only an inspector-rank officer can investigate such cases and we have about 12-13 inspectors who have about 15 cases each,” the officer said.
However, 50 constables, fresh out of academy, are recently deployed in the unit and are being trained from scratch. The officer said that the unit has a strong technical team of about 10 officers headed by an inspector who conducts in-house training sessions.
When questioned about the technology to investigate cases, the officer said that the unit has access to some of the latest technology, including retrieving data from a damaged hard disk or mobile phone. They are in the process of acquiring more, including sophisticated software for social media analysis.
