Amit Shah urges agencies to use AI for checking cybercrimes

Union Home Minister Amit Shah Tuesday urged cybersecurity agencies to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to identify the modus operandi of criminals duping people of their hard-earned money, spreading fake news and abusing women and children online. India hosts around 46 per cent or almost half of global digital transactions, making the job of these agencies “challenging”, he said while delivering a keynote speech during the first foundation day celebrations of the I4C or Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre here. The I4C, established in 2018, is a department under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

It is tasked with establishing a national-level coordination centre to address all cybercrime- related issues in the country. During the event, Shah launched four platforms of the I4C -- cyber fraud mitigation centre (CFMC), the ‘Samanvaya’ platform, a cyber commandos programme and a suspect registry. “I would urge you to use Artificial Intelligence to identify the MO (modus operandi) deployed (by criminals)...this will help (you) to find new ways to fight cybercrimes,” the home minister said. He urged the cyber security agencies to shun the age-old protocol of “need to know” and adopt the “duty to share” approach to take forward this fight.

He cited some figures to show how Internet and cyber penetration has increased in the country. “We have 95 crore Internet users in the country as of March 31 as compared to 25 crore during the same time period in 2014,” Shah said, adding that in 2014, as many as 600 panchayats were linked to the Internet but the has reached 2.13 lakh now. Seven-lakh km of optical fibre cable has been laid, data download speed has increased, the cost has decreased and the Internet consumption has risen 78 per cent over a period of time, he said.

The home minister said that in 2024, India saw UPI (Unified Payments Interface) transactions worth about Rs 20,64,000 crore which is 46 per cent of the global digital transactions. “This makes our work challenging and hence protection against cyber fraud is required,” Shah said and flagged issues such as the illegal sale of important personal data over the Internet, the spread of fake news, tool kits, online harassment and abuse of women and children.

The minister said the ‘1930’ national cyber helpline telephone number needs to be popularised during a special campaign being launched by I4C to spread awareness about cybercrimes.