What is the Digi Yatra scheme under which FRT is being implemented? What are the concerns about biometric technology?
the story So Far: Last week, Minister of State for Civil Aviation VK Singh had said that four airports in the country would soon have a facial recognition technology (FRT) based boarding system for passengers. In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, Mr Singh said that the Airports Authority of India (AAI) is working on the biometric boarding system at Varanasi, Pune, Kolkata and Vijayawada airports.
“This biometric boarding system is part of the first phase of implementation of the Digi Yatra scheme,” Mr Singh said in response.
What is Digi Travel Plan?
The Digi Yatra initiative aims to make air travel paperless and hassle-free in the country, and proposes to simplify procedures relating to passengers at various check points at the airport using FRT-based biometric scanning.
Once implemented, air travelers who choose to use the service will no longer have to show their tickets, boarding passes or physical identification cards at multiple points at the airport. This in turn will reduce the queue wait time and speed up the processing time.
How is the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) planning to implement it?
MoCA is planning to create an identity management platform that will enable biometric-based scanning at all airports in India. The platform will include digital identification of passengers, such as Aadhaar, passport details or other identity proofs.
The ‘Common Digi Yatra ID’ platform will be used to enroll passengers, authenticate their data and share the profile of consenting passengers with other airport partners. The app-based interface will be built as a shared national infrastructure, providing APIs to airports. According to the 2018 MoCA policy paper on the scheme, it will allow other apps to be integrated with it as well.
What is the status of implementation?
The scheme was planned to be operational in early 2019 with a pilot rollout in Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports. Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport successfully tested a biometric-based self-boarding facility by mid-2019.
AAI had planned to launch this scheme in Kolkata, Varanasi, Pune and Vijayawada by April 2019. But the roll-out was delayed, possibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. MoCA is now rescheduling its roll-out plans, and has proposed that the Digi Yatra system will go live in March 2022, and then be scaled up in a phased manner for adoption at various airports in the country.
AAI NEC Corporation Pvt. Ltd. to implement FRT at four airports.
What about travellers’ data privacy?
“The data shared by the passenger is to be used for the defined purpose and will not be shared with any other external stakeholders,” Mr Singh said.
The biometric information of passengers will be collected through an app, and will be deleted 24 hours after flight departure. And according to the minister, the safety of the FRT system will be independently tested.
He also said that the deployed FRT will follow the country’s data privacy and security practices.
But India’s recently adopted Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB), 2019, falls short of the standards set by the Justice Srikrishna Committee. The bill failed to create a legal framework at the historic site Justice KS Puttaswamy v Union of India Judgment on the right to privacy. This is in contrast to the 2018 draft of the committee, which proposed judicial oversight in the selection of members of the Data Protection Authority.
Globally, the rapid adoption of FRT raises a number of concerns, primarily relating to the potential for the technology’s potential to undermine the right to privacy. Policies focused on mitigating the risks associated with the use of FRT should be developed to protect personal data.
Summary
- Under the Digi Yatra initiative, Varanasi, Pune, Kolkata and Vijayawada airports are going to implement facial recognition technology, which aims to make air travel paperless and hassle-free.
- According to the aviation ministry, the biometric information collected from passengers will be deleted 24 hours after flight departure and will also be in line with the country’s data privacy and security practices. However, India’s recently adopted Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB), 2019, fails to create a legal framework at the landmark Justice KS Puttaswamy v Union of India Decision on the right to digital privacy.
- A growing body of research suggests that there is an inherent bias in biometric scanning technologies with AI. A US NIST report states that facial recognition technology is 100 times more likely to misidentify black, brown and Asian individuals than white male faces.
What are the concerns with using biometric scans at the airport?
The use of iris scans, fingerprints and facial recognition for passenger identification has been in operation at some international airports over the past few years. They first use an algorithmic system to capture the face of the passengers at the security checkpoint.
A camera scans the passenger’s face, and takes measurements of their facial features to create their biometric profile. And then, when the same person boards the flight, another camera takes a picture of their face and runs an algorithm to check if the two pictures match the boarding pass. In 2019, a passenger’s tweet went viral – he posted his experience going through a biometric scanning system for airline JetBlue without his knowledge. Central to his concern was the choice to choose or leave a service.
Without a clear idea of where the biometric data will be stored, and who will have access to it, some travelers prefer to keep their personal data private. “It may sound ludicrous, but right now, the key to opting out of facial recognition is to be vigilant,” digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said in its blog. “There is no single box that you can check, and importantly, it may not be possible for non-US individuals to opt out of facial recognition entirely.”
Are there other problems with using the biometric scan?
A growing body of research suggests that there is an inherent bias in biometric scanning technologies with AI. A report by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology states that facial recognition technology is 100 times more likely to misidentify black, brown and Asian individuals than white male faces.
A 2018 research paper co-authored by Timnit Gebrew, former top AI scientist at Google and Joy Buolamwini of MIT Media Labs, found that machine learning algorithms discriminate based on classes such as race and gender.
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