The story so far: The Supreme Court on Tuesday (August 18, 2026) said it will examine the “proportionality” of the use of facial recognition system (FRS) deployed during the students’ protest in the national capital last month after the Delhi Police in an affidavit admitted to its use.
The police said that “FRS does not automatically capture, create, generate, or maintain profiles of every individual present at the protest site, nor is it deployed for indiscriminate surveillance or collection of personal information of peaceful protesters unless he has a previous criminal record,” and assured that the use of the technology was “legitimate, bona fide, and proportionate policing measure”.
However, the very nature of the system and its possibilities that, if left unchecked, could have extreme implications for public behaviour in the country is concerning.
How does facial recognition work?
While the use of the AI-powered product of machine learning to monitor a mass gathering is something new for many, facial recognition has been part of the everyday life of human beings around the world for some time. From screen locks in mobile phones to contactless air travel with DIGI Yatra initative, Indian are getting increasingly exposed to various degrees of FRS. The use of the technology can be broadly classified into two avenues, verification and identification.
The most common use that has been incorporated into daily lives is verification where the system confirms the identity of a person from previously provided datasets, like in the case of mobile phone security systems. In case of identification processes, the system scans the distinguishable features of people and runs it against a database to determine their identity without them having to reveal it. Verification using FRS is voluntary while identification may or may not be done with the consent of those under the lens.
Once a digital image is entered into an FRS for identification, the programme will break down the faces into numbers and other specific information like distance between the eyes, length and shape of nose, patterns of wrinkles or other distinguishable characteristics and compare these with the database of faces available to it in search of a match. But since the system has to work with a pre-existing database which can be subject to manipulation, combined with the hallucinations that come with AI systems, FRS identifications cannot always be accurate. This lack of accuracy is one of the main technical concerns regarding the ethics of FRS since it can be trained for bias and can lead to false detentions over misidentification.
How is FRS being used in India?
In its recent affidavit in the Supreme Court, the Delhi Police said that “FRS does not automatically capture, create, generate, or maintain profiles of every individual present at the protest site, nor is it deployed for indiscriminate surveillance or collection of personal information of peaceful protesters unless they have a previous criminal record.”
In March 2020, the Union Home Ministry accorded approval for the implementation of the Automatic Facial Recognition System (AFRS) by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB). The system intended to use police records and will be accessible only to law enforcement agencies, then Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, G. Kishan Reddy, said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha. Law enforcement agencies also have access to first investigation reports, chargesheets, and investigation reports from all police stations in the country through the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), which also has access to past and current crime records of individuals, including personal details of an accused, charge-sheeted persons, convicts, habitual offender, proclaimed offender, and others.
The CCTNS is also linked to the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), a secure platform for the police and investigating agencies to access government and private databases in real-time, which in turn has been linked to the National Population Register, which has family-wise details of around 120 crore residents in India. Also in June this year, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) Director General Praveer Ranjan said that facial recognition cameras installed at all major airports in the country will be linked to a data fusion centre proposed to come up in Delhi. Cameras from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Kolkata, are reportedly proposed to be linked to the NATGRID as well.
While authorities claim to use FRS systems to identify people with criminal antecedents, all these interconnected systems have enough data for the expansion of the programme to track a majority of citizens in the country.
Why is FRS concerning in the present form?
While the Supreme Court is going to examine the proportionality of FRS used in last month’s protests, there is a lack of legal framework to govern its use. Privacy is a fundamental right in India and the ability of cameras in public spaces to track an individual and gather information is a threat to that right.
While the Delhi Police in the latest case said 2,873 persons with criminal antecedents were identified from the protest site thousands of others who took part in the protests were also monitored and there is no clarity on what will happen to the footages collected for the FRS. Authorities have been ordered to preserve digital evidence from the protest site to examine the allegations of police excesses, but the footages used for FRS could become a tool for profiling in the future.
The European Union has prohibited the use of ‘real-time’ remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces for the purposes of law enforcement, unless for limited issues like human trafficking cases, and terror attack threats. A similar move is needed in India to protect the right to privacy and prevent the slippery slope from FRS to a surveillance state.
While the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, lays down rules to protect privacy in online spaces, central agencies have been given broad exemptions from its obligations. In December 2023, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi moved a private member’s Bill in the Rajya Sabha seeking regulation of FTS. The Facial Recognition Technology (Regulation of Police Powers) Bill, however is pending.
Published – August 19, 2026 10:24 am IST
