HYDERABAD: The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) on Friday said that Telangana has been using the highest number of facial recognition technologies in the country.
As per the IFF’s ‘Project Panoptic’, a system for tracking facial recognition technology (FRT) in the country, the Telangana State Election Commission, Hyderabad Police, Telangana Police, Hyderabad airport and the state higher education department are using the FRT systems. Of 32 FRT systems in India, Telangana has implemented five.
The aim of Project Panoptic is to bring in transparency and accountability in the implementation of facial recognition technology projects in India. The Centre has implemented six FRT projects out of which one is in active use. The Central Board of Secondary Education, National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Railways, South Western Railways, Ministry of Civil Aviation and Digiyatra Foundation have implemented FRT.
According to Anushka Jain, associate counsel (transparency and RTI), who has filed several RTIs regarding FRT projects, the SEC on January 18 conceived a pilot project for FRT in urban body polls at 10 polling stations in Kompally. The technology was developed by Telangana State Technology Services (TSTS) . In the RTI reply, the SEC said that FRT is being used for voter verification. TSTS ensured that all data is deleted once the statistics are collected for the pooling process and will not be used for any other purpose. The average accuracy rate was 78%.