Relevance: GS-3: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life

Key phrases: Facial recognition, machine learning, artificial learning, security, privacy, surveillance.

Why in News?

• The design and deployment of facial recognition technology, or FRT, by law enforcement agencies in India has been a subject of some deliberation. There have been concerns raised about individual privacy, informational autonomy, state sanctioned mass surveillance, and in-built technological flaws that can further disadvantage vulnerable sections of the population.

What is Facial Recognition Technology?

• Facial recognition as a technology used to analyse human faces for the purposes of ‘verification’ and ‘identification’ of individuals.
• It is based on the application of Machine Learning (ML), which is the most common technique of A.I.
• Facial recognition involves a biometric mapping of an individual’s face; it is deeply dependant on iris scans and fingerprints.
• They are two types of facial recognition: one-on-one verification and one to many identification.
• The first, one-on-one recognition is when a dataset already has an individual’s face stored and the individual provides a photo of themselves to corroborate the data, like facial recognition features on a smartphone.
• Second, one to many identification is when an individual’s photo is taken and matched against an existing, often arbitrary, database in order to identify the person.

Benefits of Facial Recognition:

• Benefits of facial recognition, ranging from its ability to help in finding missing children, in identifying criminals, ensuring safety in a public spaces, preventing human trafficking, and general maintenance of law and order.
• Specifically in the case of finding missing children and preventing human trafficking, facial recognition provides an unparalleled opportunity to tackle this issue.
• For India specifically, examples from Chennai and Nepal to show how facial recognition has played a critical role in finding missing children, preventing human trafficking, and curbing crime.

Concern over Facial Recognition:

• Concerns over privacy: To enhance safety and security, various authorities have installed CCTV cameras in public places. However, once a database of images is consolidated, procurement of facial recognition technology fed with this data shifts the goalpost for citizens in terms of privacy.
• There are also concerns around whether the private sector should have unbridled access to vital biometric data (including facial scans) of individuals to design such technology purportedly for state security purposes, in complete opacity.
• Delegation of surveillance functions to private sector: Surveillance as an activity is exceptional even for the state to pursue, and is certainly not a function that can be delegated to a non-government, private entity. The manner in which private corporations are designing and developing FRT for law enforcement agencies, it is unclear whether their role ends once these tools have been procured, or if they continue backend assistance in the actual implementation and use of these tools by law enforcement.
• Across the world, facial recognition technology has played a role in wrongful arrests, intrusive surveillance and crackdown on protests. It is now outlawed in 13 American cities, including San Francisco and Boston. Regulators in Europe are also rethinking the indiscriminate use of facial recognition systems in public spaces.
• Opaque processes and decision making: overall lack of transparency and documentation through which procurement is materialising. However, with respect to procurement of FRT, the conspicuous lack of any information in the public domain is not only disconcerting, but a critical red flag in the whole process.
• Private incentives drive public policy: Ideally, any surveillance function of the state should be driven by public priorities and wishes; the involvement of the private sector, particularly under opaque conditions, means that the profit motive can drive surveillance policy.

Applications of Facial Recognition Technology:

• Face Identification: Face recognition systems identify people by their face images. Ex. To eliminate duplicates in a nationwide voter registration system because there are cases where the same person was assigned more than one identification number.
• Access Control: In many of the access control applications, such as office access or computer logon, the size of the group of people that need to be recognized is relatively small. The face recognition system of this application can achieve high accuracy without much co-operation from user
• Security: Today more than ever, security is a primary concern at airports and for airline staff office and passengers. Airport protection systems that use face recognition technology have been implemented at many airports around the world. The system is designed to alert airport public safety officers whenever an individual matching the appearance of a known terrorist suspect enters the airport's security checkpoint. Ex. FRT systems are in the process of being deployed at airports in Kolkata, Varanasi, Pune, Vijayawada, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad as part of a trial under the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s Digi Yatra initiative.
• Image database investigations: Searching image databases of licensed drivers, benefit recipients, missing children, immigrants and police bookings. Ex. Minister of State for Personnel launched a "unique" face recognition technology that would act as a proof of life certificate' for pensioners and ensure ease of living for the retired and elderly citizens.
• General identity verification: Electoral registration, banking, electronic commerce, identifying new-borns, national IDs, passports, employee IDs.
• Surveillance: Like security applications in public places, surveillance by face recognition systems has an another application. Ex. As part of a broader Indian Railways plan to install facial recognition tech at railway stations to “identify criminals”.
• Healthcare: Hospitals use facial recognition to help with patient care. Healthcare providers are testing the use of facial recognition to access patient records, streamline patient registration, detect emotion and pain in patients, and even help to identify specific genetic diseases.

Way Forward:

• In comparing the merits and demerits of the technology, the current application of facial recognition for public services does raise reasonable questions and concerns about privacy and rights. However, given this technology’s potential to solve problems, if applied properly in specific cases and contexts and with proper regulatory mechanisms, it could be leveraged in a beneficial manner.

Source: The print  

Mains Question:

Q. The design and deployment of facial recognition technology, or FRT, by law enforcement agencies in India has been a subject of some deliberation. In this regard discuss facial recognition technology. What are the concern related to utilization of facial recognition technology in India? Illustrate.