On March 4, 2020, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has approved the automated facial recognition system (AFRS) by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for better identification of unrecognized bodies, missing children, persons and criminals without violating the privacy. To provide this information, AFRS will use police records and it can be accessed only by law enforcement agencies.
What is automated facial recognition system (AFRS)?
Launched in 2019, AFRS is world’s largest facial recognition system for automatic tracking, identification, and verification of person from digital images, photos, digital sketches, video frames and video sources by comparing selected facial features of the image from an already existing image database.
- Currently, the leading face recognition software are Amazon Rekognition; Face Recognition and Face Detection by Lambda Labs, Microsoft Face API (application program interface); Google Cloud Vision and IBM Watson Visual Recognition, among others. In China, startup Megvii and AI unicorns like SenseTime, CloudWalk and Yitu have made facial recognition commonplace in China.
About NCRB:
Establishment– 1986
Headquarter– New Delhi
Works Under– MHA
Director– Ramphal Pawar
About MHA:
Union Ministry– Amit Shah
Minister of State (MoS)- G Kishan Reddy, and Nityanand Rai
Departments– 6: Department Of Border Management, Department Of Internal Security, Department Of Jammu, Kashmir And Ladakh Affairs, Department Of Home, Department Of Official Language, and Department Of States
