India
Delhi Police Ramp Up Social Media Surveillance Ahead of BRICS Summit 2026
Delhi Police have intensified their monitoring of social media platforms in the run-up to the BRICS Summit, deploying specialized units to track public posts that could pose security risks, spread misinformation, or affect law and order.
Additional Commissioner of Police for Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO), Sanjay Bhatia, told The Hindu that the force is "keeping a close watch on social media" and has established systems to prevent potential "cyber mishaps" during the summit.
The surveillance effort is coordinated through a dedicated Social Media Cell at police headquarters, along with specialized units like IFSO. According to officials familiar with the operations, software tools scan publicly available posts, captions, and comments across platforms such as X, Instagram, and Facebook, searching for specific keywords and hashtags.
These keywords act as an early-warning system, targeting content related to protests, communal tensions, threats, illegal activity, glorification of weapons, abusive or threatening statements against public figures or institutions, and the spread of misinformation or manipulated content.
The monitoring extends beyond isolated posts. Using digital tools and open-source intelligence techniques, police can detect patterns such as clusters of accounts repeatedly promoting illegal activity. When an account is flagged, officials review its publicly visible followers, following lists, likes, tagged locations, and other interactions to uncover potential links to other accounts involved in similar or related activities.
Flagged content is evaluated by monitoring teams for context and possible legal or security ramifications. In cases involving unlawful material, police issue takedown notices to social media platforms or request information about specific accounts. Content that constitutes offenses such as criminal intimidation, incitement, or hate speech can result in the filing of an FIR and subsequent investigation.
According to an official, attention to social media surveillance and what police term "cyber warfare" has grown significantly since the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) student protest at Jantar Mantar in July.
The police are also working to strengthen the reach of their own official communications, aiming to prevent hostile or misleading narratives from dominating online discussions during major incidents. This includes collaborating with technology platforms and leveraging existing mechanisms for verified accounts to boost the visibility of police advisories, clarifications, and public-safety updates.
An official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the goal is to ensure that verified information appears prominently when users search for or come across content related to a specific incident or issue.