FB pixel

Questions raised over facial recognition use in Indian prisons

Questions raised over facial recognition use in Indian prisons
 

Government agencies in India have been providing contradictory information on the introduction of facial recognition use in prisons amid rising scrutiny against the technology.

In March, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) listed the ePrison project, created to digitize the country’s prison system, as one of the use cases for facial recognition technology. The information was provided in response to a question from India’s parliament. This week, however, the local National Informatics Centre (NIC) denied the technology is currently used for the ePrison project, according to a report from Medianama.

The National Informatics Centre provides technology infrastructure for government projects.

Questions over India’s use of facial recognition are coming after a backlash against last year’s introduction of the new Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill. The legislation gives police officers the power to collect biometric information of convicts and even criminal suspects.

India has also been launching tenders for facial recognition CCTV cameras in its prisons, including a $4.2 million project in Delhi.

According to the information provided by the IT Ministry, the NIC uses the AI Satyapikaanan Application Programming Interface (API) for facial recognition. The face verification and liveness detection service has also been used in other eGovernance applications: Regional Transport Offices (RTO) use it to allow applying for a driving license from home while the Indian Ministry of Minority Affairs uses it to check attendance for skill development trainees.

AI Satyapikaan is accessed through the government’s Meghraj cloud service.

Biometrics introduced for prison payments, restricted movement

Prisons across India have been busy introducing new biometric applications as part of the ongoing push to modernize the country’s prison system.

In the Eastern Indian state of Odisha, seven prisons including the one in the capital of Bhubaneswar will introduce a new biometric fingerprint system, allowing prisoners to make purchases in canteens without paying cash. Family members will be able to transfer the money directly into their bank accounts, The New Indian Express reports.

As part of the project, prisons will also receive turnstile gates equipped with biometric identification capabilities so that inmates lodged in a particular ward would not be able to enter other cells. The prisons directorate is also planning to install a video call system in the jails with biometric fingerprinting that enable inmates to make calls to two pre-loaded telephone numbers. Jail managers will have access to a common dashboard providing instant links to the criminal case and medical history of inmates.

Odisha has been allocated 17 million Indian rupees (approximately US$207,800) for the prison modernization project from 2021 to 2026.

Aside from upgrades, India is also seeing an expansion of prison capacity. In the state of Punjab, a new high-security jail for suspected terrorists and gangsters will be built featuring a biometric locking system for staff movement, the latest CCTV equipment, and mobile jammers.

The project is worth 1 billion rupees ($12.2 million) while similar high-security jails are being proposed in six states across the country, according to unnamed sources quoted by East Coast Daily.

Article Topics

 |   |   |   |   |   |   | 

Latest Biometrics News

 

Biometrics and injection detection for deepfake defense a rising priority

Biometrics integrations with injection attack detection to defend the latest front in the global battle against fraud, deepfakes, is the…

 

Biometric Update Podcast looks at the road to a global standard for age assurance

Episode 2 of the Biometric Update Podcast is a dispatch from the 2025 Global Age Assurance Standards Summit, held from…

 

WEF launches new DPI initiative focused on emerging tech, including biometrics

Global Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiatives are lagging behind emerging technologies such as AI, which could lead to inefficiencies, bottlenecks…

 

Odds are good for biometrics firms in the global gambling sector

Gambling has always been a vice associated with certain kinds of criminal activity, but the development of the online gambling…

 

New Zealand issues tender for digital ID services accreditation infrastructure

New Zealand’s accredited digital identity services regulator, the Trust Framework Authority (TFA), has published a request for information (RFI) for…

 

Pindrop surpasses $100M in annual recurring revenue, kicks off BU podcast

A release from Atlanta-based voice biometrics firm Pindrop celebrates a milestone: the firm has surpassed US$100 million in Annual Recurring…

Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Market Analysis

Most Viewed This Week

Featured Company

Biometrics Insight, Opinion

Digital ID In-Depth

Biometrics White Papers

Biometrics Events