Kerala police target buyers in leaked cinema CCTV footage probe
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a move to address the alarming situation of CCTV footage from cinemas being leaked and sold online, the Kerala cyber police are now targeting the buyers of these visuals. Visuals from the state government-owned Kairali, Nila, and Sree cinema complex of the capital city were leaked into porn channels on Telegram and X, raising widespread privacy concerns. Speaking about the issue, Cyber operations SP Ankit Asokan said that a proactive search was ongoing in the incident. These videos have mostly been leaked through private Telegram chats. We are trying to trace the people who purchased this, he said. He also added that strict instructions had been given to Kerala State Film Development corporation (KSFDC) officials to secure their CCTV data using passwords. The official said nothing more can be revealed as the investigation is under way. Mentioning that an internal enquiry is going on from the side of the KSFDC, its managing director, Priyadarshan P S, said that visuals from private cinemas had also been leaked as part of this. Currently, we only store the visuals which are a maximum of two-months-old, but the visuals which got leaked are from the year 2023 t0 2024. This could mean that the visuals were leaked much before, he said. Priyadarhsan added that they first noticed this when police officials reached out to them, stating that the videos from cinemas were leaked. He said that a complaint was filed to higher police officials on Thursday itself. Possibilities of net video recording and the CCTV data getting hacked also need to be looked into, he said. In light of the recent incident, KSFDC has issued an internal circular to the theatre operators to prevent similar incidents in future. Inside sources said that instructions included strengthening of passwords and other technical and personnel instructions.
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