Why in News?
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released a Request for Proposal for an Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS) to be used by police officers across the country.
What is AFRS?
- AFRS works by maintaining a large database with photos and videos of peoples’ faces.
- Then, a new image of an unidentified person is compared to the existing database to find a match and identify the person.
- Neural networking is the artificial intelligence technology used for pattern-finding and matching.
What does the NCRB request call for?
- The National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) Request for Proposal calls for gathering CCTV footage, as well as photos from newspapers, raids, and sketches.
- The project is aimed at being compatible with other biometrics.
- It will be a mobile and web application hosted in NCRB’s Data Centre in Delhi, but used by all police stations in the country.
- AFRS will play a very vital role in improving outcomes in the area of Criminal identification and verification.
- It facilitates easy recording, analysis, retrieval and sharing of Information between different organisations.
Are there any AFRS in use in India?
- The current facial recognition in India is done manually.
- AFRS (automatic) is a new idea the country has started to experiment with.
- “DigiYatra” using facial recognition for airport entry was trialled in the Hyderabad airport recently.
- State governments have also taken their own steps towards facial recognition. E.g. Telangana police launched their own system in 2018
How will the new database fit in what already exists?
- As NCRB has proposed integrating AFRS with multiple existing databases, there will be an improvement in the outcome.
- The databases to be integrated with AFRS are -
- NCRB’s Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS),
- Integrated Criminal Justice System (ICJS),
- Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration & Tracking (IVFRT),
- Koya Paya portal on missing children,
- State-specific systems.
How far has CCTNS progressed?
- This project is accessible to the CBI, IB, NIA, ED and NCB.
- Following the Mumbai terror attacks, CCTNS was envisaged as a countrywide integrated database on crime incidents and suspects.
- It also plans to offer citizen services such as passport verification, crime reporting, online tracking of case progress, etc.
- There was a proposal for integrating CCTNS’s database with the database of the Central Finger Print Bureau (CFPB).
- NCRB is currently rolling out the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) and its integration with CCTNS.
What are the concerns?
- Cyber experts have cautioned against government’s abuse of this technology.
- There is an ongoing privacy debate in the US regarding the use of facial recognition technology.
- Indian citizens would be more vulnerable in the absence of a Data Protection Law in the country.
- Use of surveillance cameras and facial recognition constrict the rights of particular class of people.
Source: The Indian Express
