Privacy advocates slam CBSE for facial matching process
India's Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) was criticised for using 'facial matching' to identify students accessing and downloading academic documents stored on DigiLocker without using ADHAAR and their telephone numbers. To access the documents, students had to verify their identities via 'Facial Recognition System, a so-called 'state of the art' facial recognition system provided by India's National e-Governance Division, that matches a human face from a facial dataset stored on a CBSE database. The CBSE said it expected the system would 'immensely' help foreign students and those who are unable to use or open DigiLocker - an Aadhaar-based cloud-based locker - should they not have an Adhaar Card or use the wrong mobile number. However, as noted by MediaNama , the system did not have a privacy policy at launch. The CBSE later said its facial recognition system did not have a privacy policy because it is a 'simple face matching process', something confirmed in its response to a d igital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation Right to Information (RTI) request. This was seen to have failed to explain why the technology, which the CBSE refused to provide information about, was described as a facial recognition system. The Internet Freedom Foundation described the CBSE's 'face matching technology is just facial recognition in disguise.' System 🤖 Facial Recognition System Operator: Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Developer: National e-Governance Division Country: India Sector: Education Purpose: Access documents Technology: Facial recognition Issue: Consent; Privacy/surveillance; Transparency Resource s 📃 Central Board of Secondary Education. Availability of Digital Academic Documents using “Face Matching Technology” Freedom of information requests 🔦 Central Board of Secondary Education. Response to Anushka Jain
- Date it happened
- 2020-10-01
- Organisation involved
- Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)
- Product, system or model
- Facial Recognition System
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