Airport operator GMR has selected the French company IDEMIA to implement DigiYatra's facial recognition technology-powered boarding system at the Delhi, Hyderabad, and Goa airports, Times of India reported. IDEMIA's Passenger Flow Facilitation technology will be used to improve the number of passengers cleared, while its anti-spoofing features will enhance security, said GMR's CEO Videh Kumar Jaipuriar in a statement. All this will be done with "the least manual intervention" possible. The technology is already being used for DigiYatra passengers at Delhi International Airport. Notably, the Times of India reports that IDEMIA is also a technology partner in two other government schemes reliant on identity verification—Jan Dhan Yojna and Aadhaar. The French company has also deployed biometric systems and other technologies at over 250 airports globally. Why it matters: DigiYatra is an example of how seemingly public infrastructure projects backed by private entities raise serious accountability concerns, especially in terms of how the privacy of facial recognition data is protected. On the face of it, Digi Yatra is the government's attempt to streamline airline crowds through "biometric boarding systems"—facial recognition systems are used to verify the identity of the passengers. However, past MediaNama exclusives have revealed that the project is actually managed by a non-profit, the Digi Yatra Foundation. This means that all this facial recognition data could be stored by private entities, who have few obligations to protect privacy (in a data protection law-free India), or to be accountable to the public. Even though the government has since rebutted that Digi Yatra data isn't stored in any central…
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