Bengaluru City Police has taken a huge step in the direction of curbing fake news and practising effective measures to counter the spread of misinformation. The fake news problem has created nuisance in the society, igniting violence, religious clashes and communal imbalance, which then falls upon the city police to maintain order.
The commissioner of Bengaluru City Police, Bhaskar Rao, invited IBTimes India Editorial Director, Asia, Danish Manzoor to conduct investigative training and exercise to counter misinformation and maintain law and order. The training exercise took place at the commissioner office in Bengaluru on Saturday in the presence of nearly 80 ACPs and of the city police force, including DCP Crime Kuldeep Kumar Jain and jt. CP Crime, BCP, Sandeep Patil.
"I want you to be soldiers of anti-fake news," IPS Rao said, addressing the attending senior officers of the Bengaluru police force. The training, which went on for over 4 hours, touched upon various topics and practices to help the officers identify fake photographs, videos and doctored content on the internet. The training exercise is the largest of its nature and first to involve all the city's ACPs.
By identifying fake news at its inception, police officers will be able to control any outcome. Taking this training exercise as a first step towards countering misinformation, commissioner of police said there will be more such courses that will be conducted by the force in schools and colleges to raise awareness on fake news.
Rao noted that it is not the job of a one person, but a responsibility of each and every one. "Fake news is going to create a law and order problem. Issues like farmer's protests, students quarrels and such are going to go away. You will face new types of problems and prevention of law and order is countering fake news," Rao said.
Rao stressed the importance of being capable of fighting fake news. Not just police officers, but everyone must practice basic ethics before forwarding provocative content on social media and messaging apps. Manzoor explained various ways to identify disinformation using tools like reverse image search, InVid for video verification and geolocation tags.
