The Indian Railways is said to be considering using face recognition technology to identify and nab criminals.
According to reports, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) aims to link the facial recognition system (FRS) with existing databases like the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) to identify criminals at the railway stations.
“CCTNS is the criminal database of Indian security agencies and we are planning to connect {it} with our FRS database through a bridge software..” an RPF official was quoted in a HT report.
“With this we will have access to a huge database of criminals and our FRS software can easily be used to fetch the photos [of potential criminals] and match the faces. If we are able to install this across all our major stations, it will be a huge security breakthrough. This is something called preventive policing.”
The proposal is a part of a security plan drafted by the RPF in the wake of the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai.
“We, as a proof of concept, began working with facial recognition technology at the Bangalore station and plan to implement it slowly across our entire network,” RPF’s director-general Arun Kumar was quoted in the report.
