FACIAL RECOGNITION: A DANGER TO ‘RIGHT TO PRIVACY’ IN INDIA

The people of India have successfully fought a long legal battle for the recognition of ‘right to Privacy’ as a fundamental right. The primordial objective of the ‘Right to Privacy’ is to establish a fearless and free society. Though this right has been given valuable recognition by the Apex Court in the landmark ruling of Retd. Justice. K. Puttswamy v. Union of India (2017) under the notion of ‘Right to life & personal liberty’ enshrined under Article-21 of the Indian Constitution; however this battle has yet to meet its final milestone due constant expansion of ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT), and ‘Information, Communication & Technology’ (ICT). The present generation enjoys the era of life-changing technology such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence irrespective of knowing its imminent danger. Recently, a new biometric technology of ‘facial recognition’ has been introduced by the various social networking platforms and Smartphone manufacturing corporations.

Facial recognition can be defined as the technology having characteristic to recognize, capture, assess & store the facial expressions and bodily responses of an individual. The devices having feature of facial recognition helps the third party specially the online commercial retailers to make predictions about the choice and behaviour of an individual. The security agencies also install sophisticated cameras linked to algorithm sensors at public places such as railway stations, airports etc. to identify the habitual or proclaimed criminals. Resultantly, such mass surveillance potentially harms the privacy of an individual. Ideally, Article-22 of the Indian Constitution preserves the right to self-incrimination of an offender as a fundamental right however, facial recognition technology corrodes the entire fabric of Indian Constitution. The term ‘procedure established by law’ determines that violation of an individual right to life or personal liberty is subject to the law passed by the legislature. However, the legislature hasn’t passed any special legislation giving permission to security agencies or third parties to violate the fundamental right to privacy. Since India has only two statutes namely Indian Penal Code, 1860 and Information and Technology Act, 2000 for penalizing the breach of personal and sensitive data.

Interestingly, not even a single cyber tribunal & Cyber tribunal appellate tribunal is functional across the nation. Resultantly, it also degrades the notion of ‘access to justice’ of a victim who deserves efficient remedy upon such violation. It is a high time that appropriate laws must be legislated & enforced to regulate this emerging biometric technology and to meet the perceptible goal of fearless and free society.