Delhi Police’s use of facial recognition technology

GS Paper 3

Syllabus: Internal Security

Source: The Hindu

Direction: Those preparing for mains this time, plz have note ready on FRT, its working, its implications on individual rights and security of the nation. You may note down the points from it.

Context: Delhi Police using facial recognition technology

Facial recognition Technology is an automated process of comparing two images of faces to determine whether they represent the same individual. Also, recently DigiYatra (facial recognition technology) has been operationalised at many Indian airports.

Potential benefits in various aspects of law enforcement

• Helps in Finding missing people and identifying perpetrators.
  • Identification of Missing Children: In April 2018, the Delhi Police trial of a facial recognition system commissioned by the Delhi High Court helped correctly identify approximately 3000 missing children.
• Improving outcomes in the area of Criminal identification and verification.
  • Pehchaan citizen app in Uttar Pradesh: The app provides users with a confidence score of the likelihood that two faces belong to the same person by running the face against the All India Criminal Database.
• Better security measures in banks and airports.
  • The government‘s Digi-Yatra policy is to give a ―seamless, hassle-free, and paperless journey experience to every air traveller in India.
• Helps civilian verification when needed and helps in the reduction of fake IDs.
• Drastically reduces human touchpoints: Facial recognition requires fewer human resources than other types of security measures, such as fingerprinting.
• International usage: Several countries are already using FRT on a large scale for ease of internal security and in their criminal justice system e.g. China.

Issues associated with the use of FRT

• Accuracy rates fall starkly based on race and gender: This can result in a false positive, where a person is misidentified as someone else, or a false negative where a person is not verified as themselves.
  • Delhi Police treats matches of above 80% similarity generated by its facial recognition technology (FRT) system as positive results (as per RTI response).
• A greater threat to individual and societal privacy.
  • The FRT system violates the right to privacy: As per the Puttaswamy judgment, Privacy is a fundamental right, even in public spaces, Large-scale recordings, storing and analysis of images undermine this right because it means it won’t be possible to do anything in public without the state knowing about it.
• Issues of ‘Function Creep’: Delhi police widening of the purpose for FRT (from finding missing children to surveillance) demonstrates an instance of ‘function creep’ wherein a technology or system gradually widens its scope from its original purpose to encompass and fulfil wider functions.
• Violates personal rights: Can infringe on personal freedoms.
  • Informed consent: Facial recognition technology is typically deployed without consent, by both the private and public sectors.
• State surveillance: The technology makes it possible for Government and the law enforcement agencies to identify people who attend or participate in rallies or in any other form of political or social dissent and thereafter potentially put them under surveillance to track their movement.
  • g. Allegations of the Delhi Police were using FRT to surveil the anti-CAA protests in the 2019, 2020 northeast Delhi riots, the 2021 Red Fort violence, and the 2022 Jahangirpuri riots.
• Creates data vulnerabilities: There is also concern about the storage of facial recognition data, as these databases have the potential to be breached.
  • Provides opportunities for fraud and other crimes.
• Factors that could influence the efficacy, accuracy, and potential biases of FRT in India include skin colour, geography, religion, and caste.

Conclusion

With the right regulation and protections, facial recognition technology can make the world safer, more convenient and smarter.

Insta Links

FRT

Mains Links

This is an important having linkages to national security, fundamental rights, Governance as well ethics of surveillance. Do link it to various aspects of the syllabus. Attempt this Question.

Q. Do you think the recently proposed automated facial recognition system for improving outcomes in the area of Criminal identification and verification is opaque, vague and prone to misuse? Critically analyse. (250 words)

Prelims Link