Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS)

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 -
  1. NCRB’s Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS),
  2. Integrated Criminal Justice System (ICJS),
  3. Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration & Tracking (IVFRT), 
  4. Koya Paya portal on missing children,
  5. 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