New Delhi, February 22: Faces of criminals are retained from data collected through facial recognition software to screen crowds at protests, the Delhi Police have said in response to an RTI application. The Delhi Police also confirmed that they do not match face data with photos on social media platforms. These responses came in a reply to a right to information or RTI request filed by Mint. Facebook’s Massive Settlement Over Facial Recognition Puts Spotlight on ‘Biometric Privacy’.

Recently, it was learnt that the Delhi Police using its facial recognition software, acquired in 2017 to track missing children and persons, to screen crowds during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. In an earlier interaction, Tarun Wig, whose company developed the software, had said that the facial recognition programme is capable of screening faces from social media as well. BJP Used 'Deepfake' in Delhi Assembly Elections 2020? Report Shows Videos of Manoj Tiwari Made Using Face/Voice-Swapping Technology.

This raised concerns amongst people on whether their faces were being entered into databases and whether it meant that the police and other authorities could track their movements as and when they wanted. Below are the questions posed to the Delhi Police through the RTI:

Question: What databases does Delhi Police match face data against?

Answer: Identification of missing children/persons and UIDB.

Question: When police takes face data of citizens, is that data simply matched against databases or is it kept for future use?

Answer: Criminals as per Identification of Criminals Act

Question: How does police acquire face data about citizens?

Answer: As per the request received from kith and kinnes of victims and Identification of Prisoners Act.

Question: Are social media websites used for matching face data as well?

Answer: No.

Responding to the first question, the police said that its face data is matched against the missing children/persons databases and the unidentified dead bodies (UIDB) database. In answering the second question, the public information officer wrote “Criminals as per Identification of Criminals Act".

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 22, 2020 07:14 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).