Automated Facial Recognition System

• 10 Jul 2019

National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has released a request proposal for an Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS) to be used by police officers across the country.

• Automated Facial Recognition System can play a very vital role in crime prevention and criminal identification and verification (identifying criminals, missing people, and unidentified dead bodies) by facilitating easy recording, analysis, retrieval and sharing of information between different organizations.

Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS)

• AFRS will be a mobile and web application hosted in NCRB’s (which manages data for police) data centre in Delhi but used by all police stations in the country.
• AFRS works by comparing the new image of an unidentified person often taken from CCTV footage with the existing database ( AFRS maintains a database with photos and videos of peoples faces) to find a match and identify the person.
  
  • The artificial intelligence technology used for pattern-finding and matching is called “neural networks”.

Integrating AFRS with Existing Database

• NCRB has proposed integrating automated facial recognition system with multiple existing databases like:
  
  • Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS): managed by NCRB
  • Integrated Criminal Justice System (ICJS)
  • State-specific database systems
  • Khoya paya portal

Criminal Tracking Network & Systems

• CCTNS is countrywide integrated database on crime incidents and suspects, connecting FIR registrations, investigations, and chargesheets of all police stations and higher offices.
• CCTNS also plans to offer citizen services, such as passport verification, crime reporting, online tracking of case progress, grievance reporting against police officers.

Integrated Criminal Justice System (ICJS): It is any computer network, system or architecture that allows justice practitioners and agencies to electronically access and share information between systems and/or across jurisdictional lines.

Khoya Paya Portal: Khoya Paya portal is a citizen based website to exchange information on missing and found children developed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY).

Concerns

• Cyber experts have cautioned against government abuse of facial recognition technology, as it can be used as a tool of control and risks citizens privacy and data.
• In the absence of data protection law, Indian citizens are more vulnerable to privacy abuses.