By Elton Gomes
As a part of a trial for a facial recognition software, the Delhi police has successfully been able to track 3,000 missing children in the capital within four days.
A total of 2,50,000 children have been registered as missing on the Indian government’s Track Child portal, between 2012 to 2017, translating to five children missing every hour.
A report in the New York Times states that obtaining reliable figures on how many Indian children go missing is “remarkably difficult.” The newly developed software assisted the police in identifying facial features of the children, and efforts are already underway to reunite them with their families.
Here’s what happened
On February 3, the Delhi High Court asked the city police to test a facial recognition software on a trial basis to trace missing children.
The software was developed by Vision-Box. The bench comprising Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice I.S. Mehta told the Delhi Police the trial should start from February 20.
The direction to use the software came after a submission by the organisation, the Bachpan Bachao Andolan. The NGO told the court that Vision Box is prepared to provide the software free of cost – on the condition that it will be used only to trace missing children.
In an affidavit to the Delhi High Court, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) stated that the police used the software on a trial basis on 45,000 children residing in various children’s homes. Out of these 45,000, a total of 2,930 children were recognised between April 6 and 10.
Bhuwan Ribhu, from the Bachpan Bachao Andolan spoke to the Better India, India currently has almost 2 lakh missing children and about 90,000 lodged in various child care institutions.”
Ribhu detailed how the software helps in looking for children, “It is almost impossible for anyone manually go through photographs to match the children”. She added, “Therefore the FRS, which aids in making the match, is being promoted by Bachpan Bachao Andolan.
Facial recognition software stores the facial features of a child and then matches these features with photographs from the available database of the Track Child portal.
Although the FRS has raised privacy concerns, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) supports its use under certain circumstances. If such a type of software helps trace missing children and reunite them with their families, nothing can be better than this, an NCPCR spokesperson told the Independent.
Why you should care
Technology certainly has left a huge impact in the field of criminology. Beijing police are now using smart glasses to detect suspects. Police in New York came under fire for employing facial recognition. Although facial recognition does include privacy risks, authorities around the world are not afraid to use it.
Facial recognition can help officials find people and/or suspects. To prevent any misuse of the software, governments will have to establish certain regulations, however, the software will undoubtedly prove to a great resource for the community.