The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has admitted to using facial recognition technology for online verification of beneficiaries at Covid-19 vaccination centres, reported The Hindu on Monday.
However, the government failed to provide an order from legal or legislative authorities for the use of such technology. The Union health ministry said that no privacy impact assessment of the use of facial recognition technology was done before it was used, according to the newspaper.
“Facial recognition authentication is used as one of the methods for Aadhaar Authentication for online verification of beneficiary prior to Covid-19 vaccination wherein facial template is captured and send to UIDAI [Unique Identification Authority of India] for verification of image of beneficiary,” the health ministry said in response to a Right to Information request filed by the not-for-profit organisation Internet Freedom Foundation.
No additional procurement has been made for the implementation of the technology, the ministry said, adding that a pilot project for such an authentication was still ongoing, reported The Hindu.
“However, MoHFW [health ministry] failed to specify any legislative or legal order that authorised the use of FRT [facial recognition technology] nor could they provide copies of any relevant privacy impact assessment,” the Internet Freedom Foundation told The Hindu. The RTI reply from the government said that use of the technology would be according to terms provided in the “Verifier and Vaccinator Module User Manual” and the CoWin portal.
However, the Internet Freedom Foundation said that the manual, cited by the central government, was not available on the CoWin platform or any open source webpage. The organisation said the Centre did not provide any data related to accuracy of the facial recognition technology, any assessment by a third party, or a list of databases with which the technology was linked to identify the vaccine beneficiaries.
Vaccines to protect against Covid-19 were crucial commodities amid the pandemic and ensuring equal and indiscriminate access to the shots “is of paramount importance”, the Internet Freedom Foundation said. “However, deploying Aadhaar-based FRT [facial recognition technology] for the verification process, deprives the citizens who do not possess or have not linked their Aadhaar cards to the CoWin portal or the on-site register, of the vital vaccines,” it added, according to The Hindu.
The Internet Freedom Foundation also said that evidence was available on facial recognition being highly prone to errors, the newspaper reported. The organisation highlighted several instances in the past where facial recognition technology was used for reasons beyond its earlier intended use.
The not-for-profit organisation said that the Union health ministry had not been able to provide accurate information and had been evasive in their reply, reported The Hindu. “This is highly disconcerting since it violates the tenet of transparency under the RTI Act, creates further ambiguity regarding the registration process and offsets the promise of a universal and inclusive vaccination policy which indeed is the crying need of the hour,” the Internet Freedom Foundation said.
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