After Home Minister Amit Shaha revealed in Lok Sabha that the government was using a facial recognition software to identify perpetrators of the Delhi riots that happened last month, he clarified in Rajya Sabha, on March 12, that the government is not using Aadhaar data to identify people using the software. “It [using Aadhaar] was misreported in the media following my speech in the Lok Sabha. I had only said that we are using driving license and voter ID data for face identification”, he said. However, in Lok Sabha, Shah had said that “other government data” was also used for the software, and he offered no clarification on what that data was. We had, in our previous coverage, pointed out that Amit Shah did not explicitly mention using Aadhaar for face identification. More people have been identified using the facial recognition software, Shah said, revealing that as of noon of March 12, approximately 1,922 people were identified, who could be “clearly seen partaking in the riots, causing damage to property and killing others”. He further said that the government had asked for facial data of people from 4 districts in Uttar Pradesh (the 4 districts number wasn’t mentioned in his Lok Sabha speech), and 336 people from the state were identified for taking part in the riots. The government had sealed the borders of Uttar Pradesh adjoining Delhi on the night of February 24, and had scanned number plates of vehicles that were entering the national capital, Shah revealed. “Now…
