SC to Examine Delhi Police's Use of Facial Recognition Tech During Protests

The Supreme Court will examine a plea against Delhi Police’s use of biometric data and facial recognition technology —a unit called Ikshana and AI-enabled smart glasses — to identify and monitor protesters, reported Business Standard. There are claims that this information was shared with two private companies, and may be used to target and harass the protestors.

A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant tagged a petition filed by CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP A A Rahim and a similar one by Aishe Ghosh. Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy, appearing for Rahim, said such practices raised questions under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, as well as the criminal procedure framework.

Rahim has argued that neither the Delhi Police’s standing orders regarding protests nor the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022, provides legal sanction for biometric surveillance of people participating in civilian assemblies. According to Live Law India has no statute that authorises, regulates, or limits the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) by police at public assemblies. The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022, often invoked by law enforcement to justify biometric collection, is confined to persons arrested, convicted, or otherwise brought within the criminal process it says nothing about capturing the faces of citizens exercising the fundamental right to assemble peaceably under Article 19(1)(b). “This is not incidental opacity. It is what a legal vacuum looks like in practice technology deployed at scale, answerable to no statute, and therefore, in constitutional terms, answerable to no one,” the outlet said. 

Protests in Visakhapatnam, Thane Against Amazon and Google’s Mega Data Centres

Like Europe and North America, resistance has cropped up in parts of India as well. Amazon’s 58-acre data centre in Thane, Maharashtra, and Google-Adani 1 GW hyper scale data centre in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, are in the crosshairs, reported The Hindustan Times. Locals rose up in protest over worries that such large projects could put additional pressure on land, electricity and water. 

“Half of Thane is living on tanker water. Why have the data centre in a residential area and put all the citizens in trouble?” said Sadhana Pradhan, one of the residents leading the ‘Wake Up Thanekar’ campaign, to the news daily.

In Visakhapatnam, Deeksha Vanguru, co-founder of the Coalition for AI Regulation, said, “We are concerned about the lack of public consultation and the unchecked, rapid expansion of infrastructure that is more extractive and has fewer socio-economic returns. We also want to know why a  ₹22,000-crore tax holiday is being given for these projects.”

A recent white paper by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and Systemiq said decisions on where data centres are built would shape land, water and electricity use for decades. The report noted that India still lacked a binding national policy for data centre development and recommended that projects be planned around the availability of land, water and power rather than investment incentives alone. It also called for better disclosure of sustainability data and careful site selection before projects are approved.

Trump’s Tech Ties Come Under Fire After OpenAI Agents Go Rogue

Democrats and Donald Trump's conservative supporters both blamed the president's ties to the tech industry ​for his administration's limited response to recent hacks carried out by OpenAI and Anthropic's AI agents, Reuters reported. 

OpenAI shocked the tech community with the disclosure that one of ‌its AI agents went rogue and broke into the AI company Hugging Face’s systems. The White House said it was monitoring the situation, and Trump said he was looking at controls on AI. Anthropic said it too had discovered some of its AI models had hacked into three companies' systems. Steve Bannon, a conservative media star and longtime Trump ally and former adviser, said the White House's regulation of AI has been inadequate given the national security threat it poses, placing the blame squarely on Silicon Valley.

Data Center Foes Win Big in Tuesday’s Primaries

The anti-data centre movement voted in progressive candidates in the US primaries in the states of Michigan and Kansas calling for “tough crackdowns” on data centres. The Politico reported that this could intensify “the split within the Democratic Party over the right approach to regulate the industry”. The article quoted Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement campaign group, who said the salience of data-centre opposition could drive broader activism on climate change in the US. 

The Guardian reports that one of the candidates, William Lawrence – who won the Democratic primary in Michigan’s seventh congressional district – is also a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement. 

The New York Times describes Lawrence’s win as a “victory for the party’s progressive wing in a district pivotal for the fight to control Congress. 

China's New Energy Vehicles Penetration Hits New High of 65% in July, Iran War Spikes Exports of Electric Trucks 

China's penetration rate of electric vehicles , a major gauge of popularity, has reached a new high of 65.1% of total passenger car retail sales in July, that’s  a year-on-year increase of 11.6%  points and month-on-month growth of 2.1 percentage points, according to data released by the China Passenger Car Association, reported Xinhua.

In July, the new energy vehicles’ retail penetration rate among domestic brands reached 83.8%, while the rate stood at 30.9% for luxury vehicles, the data showed.

China's exports of electric trucks to other Asian countries have spiked, adding to a surge ​in domestic sales as higher fuel costs as a result of the Iran war accelerate regional electrification, reported Reuters.

China’s rapid adoption of e-trucks — from lighter vehicles to tractor-trailers — ‌has partially shielded the world's biggest auto market from the impact of the conflict. Now other countries are scrambling to follow.

Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28, China's exports of heavy e-trucks more than doubled from the same period last year to 16,823 vehicles. Half went to South and Southeast Asia, with shipments to South Asia up more than ​fivefold and to Southeast Asia nearly tripling.