INDIA’S government wants to build one of the largest facial recognition systems in the world. But critics warn it could be a blow to citizens’ rights.
The country’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has invited bids to develop a nationwide facial recognition system that can automatically identify people from CCTV feeds and images uploaded through a mobile app. The NCRB says it will help police catch criminals, find missing people and identify dead bodies.
The technology works by scanning the structure of people’s faces and comparing the results with images in a database. But various trials have shown that it can be very inaccurate. A recent review of facial recognition use by police in London found that it made correct matches less than 20 per cent of the time, which the authors say hampered police effectiveness and led to unwarranted searches of people.
Advertisement
India has no explicit data protection laws that would restrict use of face recognition or prevent its expansion, says Apar Gupta, who leads the Internet Freedom Foundation in New Delhi. He is concerned the system could be misused. “We do not have the best rule of law framework and such systems can actually be used for purposes of social control as well as political targeting,” says Gupta.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) – the parent department of the NCRB – told Â鶹´«Ă˝ that the system would only be used in conjunction with the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems database, which holds images of wanted suspects, prisoners, missing people and unidentified bodies.
But the NCRB’s tender document states the system should be able to match against a database of photographs pulled from various agencies “or any other image database available with police/other entity”. The MHA didn’t respond to further questions from Â鶹´«Ă˝.
The government has already courted controversy over an expansive biometric identity scheme called Aadhaar, which links citizens’ photographs, fingerprints and iris scans to a unique number. The database has suffered leaks and a 2017 legal challenge against the scheme led to the Supreme Court limiting its use and establishing a constitutional right to privacy.
The MHA has previously said the facial recognition system won’t be integrated with Aadhaar, but the NCRB tender document calls for the system to be compatible with other biometric solutions, such as iris and fingerprint identification.
Maya Wang at Human Rights Watch says India’s pursuit of both biometrics and facial recognition mirrors aspects of China’s mass surveillance system, which combines facial recognition with mass collection of DNA, voice patterns and behavioural data to monitor citizens.
The proposed system won’t just affect privacy, she says, it will have a chilling effect on people’s willingness to exercise other rights, such as freedom of assembly or expression. “Privacy is a gateway right,” she adds. “Once you lose that, you basically lose all your rights.”
