Fighting Human Trafficking (#5) – India’s Technology Landscape

UIDAI’s Aadhar

Aadhar is the national database of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The UIDAI website describes Aadhar as a strategic policy tool for social and financial inclusion, public sector delivery reforms, and managing fiscal budgets. It is one of the key pillars of ‘digital India’ wherein every resident of the country is provided with a unique identity. It is intended to increase convenience and promote hassle-free people-centric governance.

The UIDAI database holds a unique 12-digit identification number for every enrolled citizen of India. It also holds information given at the time of enrolment or update. This includes name, address, gender, date of birth, fingerprints, iris scans, facial photograph, mobile phone number (optional) and email address (optional). The majority of the 1.4 billion population of India have already been enrolled; it is “by far the largest biometrics-based identification system in the world”.

It is intended to be used for identification purposes; it is not intended to be used for profiling and, as such, it does not hold information related to bank accounts, other financial details, health records, family, caste, religion or education.

It has become increasingly necessary for common services like carrying out bank transactions and acquiring a SIM card for a mobile phone. Aadhar is already being used to cut benefit fraud, increase tax revenue, register voters properly, weed out drivers using false licences, and much more.

There have been some challenges though. Several petitioners went to court in 2018 to argue that the scheme infringed privacy. India’s Supreme Court, however, ruled that the scheme is constitutional and does not violate the right to privacy. The judges said, “Aadhar gives dignity to the marginalized. Dignity to the marginalized outweighs privacy”.

There have been reports of breaches too, such as a claim by the Tribune newspaper in January 2018 that it was possible to buy a citizen’s personal data through unauthorized access. The UIDAI launched a probe and concluded that the breach was a misuse of a grievance redressal scheme, and that no unauthorized access to biometric data had been granted.

Overall, Aadhar is bringing clear benefits, and it highlights that the Government of India is taking bold and decisive steps in tackling the problems associated to such a huge and diverse population.

Integration between the Aadhar platform and an open system for anti-human trafficking would bring no benefit to either system in achieving their objectives. Therefore, the open system platform for anti-human trafficking, as recommended by the Kalinga Fellowship, will not be integrated in any way with Aadhar. They will be kept separate from each other. This helps avoid personal data and privacy issues which would compromise the implementation.

The key challenge is in maintaining the confidence of all anti-human trafficking stakeholders in the independence of the open system anti-human trafficking platform, free from personally identifiable information on any citizen of India; whilst also ensuring relevant stakeholders of ‘digital India’ are consulted and engaged throughout the development and implementation of the platform.

Potentially, a closed system for anti-human trafficking could be made available to legally authorised organisations in conjunction with Aadhar; the personally identifiable information in such a system is already under the control of the UIDAI and would remain so. For example, there may be an argument that such a closed system could help with the identification of victims and perpetrators.

Facial recognition

The report, by Delhi police in April 2018, that they traced almost 3,000 missing children in just 4 days using facial recognition technology, was widely circulated around the globe. It was apparently used on around 45,000 children throughout the city of Delhi; 2,930 of whom were recognized as missing. That specific use of the technology was commissioned by the High Court, according to an affidavit released by the Ministry of Women and Children. The total number of missing children in India is estimated by some sources as being around 200,000.

Since then, in June 2019, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) invited bids from companies to help build a nationwide facial recognition system to allow police to match people of interest against a database of facial images. The proposed system would allow “fast and accurate face recognition”, the tender document said. The original deadline for the bid has passed and was extended to January 2020.

The plans, however, have received significant objections from many privacy advocates. For example, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) is one such pro-privacy NGO. Anar Gupta, an executive director at the IFF, has voiced his criticism, citing concerns that the NCRB could use the system to surveil political opponents, civil rights activists, government critics, and journalists; and enforce social controls like in China. The IFF have served a legal notice on the NCRB and called for a “withdrawal of this tender and a moratorium on all privacy invading projects until a data protection law and authority is in existence”.

Access Now, the open internet advocacy group, has also voiced concerns, citing that the NCRB did not consult with relevant stakeholders and is not responding well to requests for information about the project from NGOs. Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Policy Director at Access Now, said that the NCRB has not released a policy document clarifying what problems they are trying to solve, who will operate the system, and who will be responsible if something goes wrong.

The NCRB has sought to alleviate concerns and, in a written response to the IFF’s legal notice, dated 5th November 2019, clarified that the primary function of the system is to identify missing people and dead bodies. The NCRB has also said that the system would not be integrated with India’s biometric national identity database, Aadhar, which includes facial images.

In theory, a facial recognition system could eventually automate the creation of a subset of incident report data for human trafficking; but this should be considered a long way off. There are many significant obstacles and concerns that a facial recognition system must first overcome. It’s not so much the technology that is in question, but rather the regulation to provide assurances against potential abuse of the system.

Such are the concerns over the possible abuses of a nationwide facial recognition system, that the members of the Fellowship, including John McGrath from the TA Hub team, agree that the proposed anti-human trafficking platform must deliberately be kept separate from a nationwide facial recognition system. Progress in one area should not be impeded by unrelated obstacles in the other. A challenge, highlighted by the Fellowship, is that any association with facial recognition system initiatives, or any suggestion that facial recognition data would be used by the Fellowship’s proposed anti-human trafficking platform, would detract from the progress that could otherwise be made. As such, any open system solution put forward by the Fellowship will not include facial recognition data, nor be associated in any way to the Government of India’s project for a nationwide facial recognition system.

INTERPOL

In his keynote address, Dr Goswami referenced INTERPOL’s database as a technological aspect of the fight against human trafficking.

INTERPOL provides various services, including operational action in the field, training on investigation and victim interview techniques, and various tools and systems for interacting with human trafficking intelligence. An anti-human trafficking platform as described in this paper could be complimentary to the tools provided by INTERPOL and used by the India Police Service (IPS).

The open system approach to an anti-human trafficking platform is unlikely to be the most effective solution for INTERPOL’s specific use cases though. Those use cases will inevitably be based on personally identifiable information; and INTERPOL are likely to be restricted in the data they can share with a collaborative open system.

A closed system, however, aimed specifically at INTERPOL and their specific use cases, in conjunction with their own data sets, could be extremely powerful. A specific closed system solution should be designed and made available for INTERPOL. Such a solution should then form a blueprint, informing on best practice for using the platform to improve investigative analysis and anti-human trafficking techniques.