Thread: Indian govt will soon launch world's biggest face recognition system. A tool that can source citizens' images from multiple govt databases, CCTV feeds. Can identify a person by facial features and tag them. And what will it do to safeguard citizens' privacy, consent? Read
2. The Home Ministry of India, in July this year, floated a tender to procure software and services for a National-level Automated Facial Recognition System. On November 7, it extended the deadline to accept bids from private firms up till January 3, 2020.
3. According to the tender document, the proposed system aims to access facial images of citizens from across govt databases like passport, courts, prisons, lost and found persons, criminal tracking systems, or “any other image database available with police/other entity.” 
4. The system will also “add photographs obtained from newspapers, raids, sent by people, sketches etc. to the criminal’s repository tagged for sex, age, scars, tattoos, etc. for future searches.”
5. It will have options to upload “bulk subject images” and “CCTV feeds” to “generate alerts if a blacklist match is found.” The video feeds will be sourced from “CCTVs deployed in various critical identified locations” or “from private or other public organization’s video feeds"
6. In July, @internetfreedom, a non-profit, sent a legal notice to the govt asking it to withdraw the tender. It said the project did not have a "legal basis" and "violated" the right to privacy of citizens.
7. Privacy has been upheld as a "fundamental right" by the Supreme Court. The court has said the invasion in privacy can only be justified if it has (a) a legal basis, (b) a legitimate purpose, and (c) it is proportionate to the need for the purpose. read barandbench.com/wp-content/upl…
8. The legal notice said the facial recognition system has "a complete lack of legality” and is “likely to result in the creation of powerful surveillance architecture that will inevitably be prone to misuse." Read the legal notice here. internetfreedom.in/maskon/
9. The home ministry has responded to the notice on Nov 5. It defended "legality" of the facial recognition system on the basis that it had the Union Cabinet’s approval. This even though India does not yet have a law that regulates use of facial recognition technology.
10. Even though the project aims to collect and tag citizens' images without their information, the home ministry said it “does not violate the principle of consent” because its “primary use would be to identify recovered children, unidentified persons and dead bodies.”
10. The Hyderabad police has recently come under criticism for rounding up citizens and clicking their pictures in mobile phones to test a state-level facial recognition system. @digitaldutta
For more on the potential threats of a national-level facial recognition system and the government's responses, read business-standard.com/article/curren…
11. Since July 2018, the Indian govt has been sitting on a draft data protection law that mandates consent for collecting and processing personal data of citizens. Meanwhile illegal surveillance of journalists, activists has been on in India, the Pegasus-WhatsApp row has shown.
12. I will be sharing more such stories at the intersection of governance, economy and social justice on Mastodon. Find me there @Kumar_Sambhav@masthead.social
