Cops get tech to keep tabs on social media

Delhi Police are set to acquire an improved version of OSINT, a technology through which they can track activities of internet users. 

A customised version of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is already being used by the special branch of Delhi Police, mainly to track chat rooms and social media to ascertain the type and size of public gatherings in Delhi. 

“It does geographical analysis by finding out in which part of the city or state people are talking more about an incident. It also does sentiment analysis by finding out how many negative and positive comments or references an incident drew,” said Garima Bhatnagar, Joint Commissioner of Police, Special Branch.After using it for six months, police officials said that the current technology is not very evolved and doesn’t give specific inputs, thus creating the need to have an improved version.

“A much more sophisticated and advanced version of it is on the anvil and will be used by the Delhi Police soon,” Bhatnagar added.

Senior officials of Delhi Police’s cyber cell and economic offense wing told Deccan Herald that the improved version of OSINT will not only gather intelligence collected from publicly available sources, but also provide structured and specific inputs. 

“For example, it will provide aid to police in criminal profiling from the data available on web. Criminals, terrorists and anti social elements are using social media and other public platforms for conversations and to plan their activities,” said a senior officer from Delhi Police’s cyber crime department.

“It will analyse the data available on social media, blogs and other public forums to do sentiment analysis. It will help in proactive identification of any anti-social or criminal motives of a person or group of people,” he added.

Presently, police does not have any means to extract the content available on the web and convert it into meaningful data to identify criminals or trace their conversations.

“Police will be able to integrate raw data extracted from the internet with the existing databases for analysis. This will reduce the time needed to solve critical cases requiring a high level of technological expertise,” a senior police officer added.