India used facial recognition to identify those involved in violence

In India, law enforcement agencies deployed a facial recognition system to identify individuals who were allegedly involved in communal violence that occurredin its national capital last month.

India’s home minister, Amit Shah, has confirmed the deployment of such facial recognition tech along with the purpose for which it’s being used. He said the system is fed with images from government-issued identity cards, including 12-digit Aadhaar, among other databases, to identify and nab alleged individuals involved in the communal violence that was witnessed in northeast Delhi last month.

Adding further, Shah said: “This is a software. It does not see faith. It does not see clothes. It only sees the face and through the face, the person is caught.”

And this is not the first time that the country’s national capital witnessed the use of a technology-driven system to address social problems. Earlier, the facial recognition system was first used by the Delhi Police to identify missing children. However, back in 2019, the system had highlighted a few loopholes like failure to distinguish between boys and girls due to which it recorded an accuracy rate of just 1%.

About the system, executive director at IFF, Apar Gupta, said: “All of this is being done without any clear underlying legal authority and is in clear violation of the Right to Privacy judgment. Facial recognition technology is still evolving and the risks of such evolutionary tech being used in policing are significant.”