The Home Office told a parliamentary panel that security agencies use open source intelligence from public sources, including social media, to gather information, stressing that there is no breach of privacy as no personal data is collected.
The ministry’s submission was submitted to the Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology (2024-25), chaired by Lok Sabha member Nishikant Dubey, which submitted its report on Monday (March 30, 2026).
The committee sought to know from the ministry how it has dealt with the issue of privacy while scraping the internet and through social media.
“Publicly available information on the internet and social media platforms is used for intelligence gathering. No private or personal information is collected from social media. Therefore, privacy is never compromised,” the ministry said before the panel.
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Private vs Personal
Scraping generally refers to the use of computer programs, tools or software (so-called web scrapers) to automatically crawl public websites or social media posts; extract specific information (eg names, phone numbers, keywords, hashtags, trends, images); store or analyze that information for law enforcement or intelligence purposes, he said.
The ministry said the type of data that authorized security agencies can only obtain from publicly available sources using open source intelligence techniques may include social media posts such as public tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, deeply fake or morphed media, fake news or disinformation, including viral content inciting communal hatred.
Scraping can be used to collect hashtags and trends, for example from YouTube channels and Telegram groups, for radical content and posts that promote extremist ideologies or share propaganda videos or bomb-making tutorials.
It said the technique could be used to track fraudulent websites or links to track, for example, online gambling, fake job scams and fake investment scams.
It can be used on matrimonial and dating platforms for scams or scams, and from dark web marketplaces to extract cryptocurrency wallet addresses, he said, giving examples of the process.
“Public profiles on matrimonial/dating sites can be scraped in cybercrime investigations where people are blackmailed or caught sharing sensitive data,” he said, citing examples.
The role of AI
The ministry told the panel that AI is being used for intelligence gathering and counterintelligence, with key applications including facial recognition, social media and network analysis, natural language processing for analyzing structured and unstructured data, pattern and hidden connection analysis, etc.
“Additionally, artificial intelligence is used to differentiate entities, enabling accurate identification and correlation of individuals across multiple data sources,” he said.
Giving details on the use of artificial intelligence, the Home Ministry said it is helping security agencies in enhancing their intelligence-gathering capabilities and counter-terrorism efforts by rapidly analyzing large data sets, detecting anomalies, predicting patterns, cross-links, etc., thereby improving decision-making, speed and accuracy.
The ministry said that CRPF is using AI in identifying narratives/sentiment analysis on open source (social media platforms).
“The AI-driven intelligence fusion center is in the final phase of deployment. It will process massive amounts of structured and unstructured data and provide analytics, create a decision support system that can help in intelligent exploratory interpretations and address the CRPF’s operational requirements,” he said.
The ministry highlighted the potential of AI in intelligence gathering, saying AI can automate the processing of vast and diverse data sources, including communications records, open source information, financial transactions and surveillance sources.
“This enables faster threat identification, anomaly detection and analysis of linkages across different data points. Natural language processing tools can be used for multi-language monitoring, including regional dialects, helping decode sensitive content from open and dark web sources,” he said.
Published – 31 March 2026 22:13 IST
