By Satyaki Paul
Recently, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has approved implementation of the National Automated Facial Recognition System (NAFRS). This is a programme which would seek to “facilitate investigation of crime and detection of criminals” in a speedy and judicious manner.
This brings us to the first question: What is NAFRS?
NAFRS will function as a national-level search platform that will use facial recognition technology to facilitate investigation of crime or for identifying a person of interest (e.g., a criminal) regardless of face mask, makeup, plastic surgery, beard or hair extension. Furthermore, NAFRS will use police records and will be accessible only to Law Enforcement Agencies (of the Centre and State). This will facilitate better identification of criminals, unidentified dead bodies and missing/found children and persons.
Secondly, how will NAFRS work?
The NAFRS will be based on computer Algorithm’s map which will contain unique facial-landmarks (biometric data) such as shape of the cheekbones, contours of the lips, distance from forehead to chin, and convert these into a numerical code termed a face-print. Thus, for the purposes of ‘verification’ or ‘identification’, the system compares the face-print generated with a large existing database of face-prints. The NAFRS will recognize, record and match faces against various government databases from photos and videos taken from public and private sources.
Thirdly, what are the different databases which NAFRS will have access to?
According to NCRB, NAFRS will have access to numerous government databases such as Passports, Aadhar, Immigration, Visa and Foreigners’ Registration Tracking database, Ministry of women and child development’s Khoya-Paya and the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS). In this context, the computer program can match a photo against many and compare one photo with another. The more the data, the better is the output. A centralized web application will be hosted in the National Crime Record Bureau’s data centre in New Delhi which will be made available to all police stations across India.
Nonetheless, of all these positive sides there are numerous negative aspects as well such as:
- violation of fundamental right to privacy by retaining sensitive personal information on citizens through surveillance – so far there is no law to regulate privacy in India.
- An invasion of life or personal liberty must meet the three-fold requirement of: Legality, which postulates the existence of law; Need, defined in terms of a legitimate state aim; and Proportionality which ensures a rational nexus between the objects and the means adopted to achieve them.
Furthermore, an issue of FALSE POSITIVE (Inaccurate result can lead to falsely implicating someone else) or FALSE POSITIVE (Inaccurate result wherein the system does not recognise the person) may arise in the due course of application of such program. So, the FALSE NEGATIVE case can lead to exclusion of people from government schemes or policies.
In this vein, several domain experts have observed that positioning of facial recognition system by the government without any regulatory check in place poses a huge threat to privacy rights and freedom of speech and expression.
