FACE OFF

Facial recognition has become a frontline policing tool in India amid fears that it is prone to errors and allows the government to expand surveillance without much oversight

- AKSHIT SANGOMLA

HAVE YOU ever wondered how you recognise a face? Intuitively, right! We often do not give much attention to this special, though not exclusive, ability of humans. But whether we think about it or not, each of us has a “facial vocabulary” that enables us to recognise at least 5,000 faces, their peculiarities and profiles. This vocabulary is organised in such a way that we instantly create memory associations and parallels with faces, for instance, with those of our relatives or friends, and rarely fail to recognise a person we have met at a social event, even if only for the second time.

This intuitive knowledge, which deploys millions of permutations through specialised cells and circuitry to instantly tell us who we are talking to, is an amazing biological feat. Even more awe-inspiring are the technological interventions that are trying to replicate this biological process. And as it usually happens with many other technologies, these are being deployed to create and sustain a surveillance system that has never been seen before.

Our facial features—scanned through every possible source—are being converted into a gigantic data pool. Using algorithms, millions of these faces can be compared and assessed to identify or verify a person if s/he is a culprit, a dreaded terrorist under disguise, a visitor in a protected area or a rioter.