From Lahore to Lucknow, crimes against women spur more surveillance

A commuter stands on the doorway of a women-only compartment of a passenger train as it arrives at the Dadar railway station in Mumbai, India. Technology and privacy experts say the benefits of surveillance technologies are not clear and that they could breach people’s privacy, and that without data protection laws, there is little clarity on how the data is stored, who can access it and for what purpose. — Bloomberg

As cases of violence against women and girls have surged in South Asia in recent years, authorities have introduced harsher penalties and expanded surveillance networks, including facial recognition systems, to prevent such crimes.

Police in the north Indian city of Lucknow earlier this year said they would install cameras with emotion recognition technology to spot women being harassed, while in Pakistan, police have launched a mobile safety app after a gang rape.