Delhi and Kolkata's police departments refused to furnish details about their respective facial recognition systems, in responses to RTI queries filed by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), the digital rights advocacy body said on Tuesday. Additionally, the Telangana State Technology Services (TSTS), which was supposed to provide a facial recognition technology (FRT) solution to authenticate remote voters during the just-concluded Hyderabad municipal elections, told IFF that it had no intention to improve the present accuracy rate (80%) of the algorithm. IFF asked the Delhi police if it had ever used the technology for investigations; whether any arrests had been made on the basis of results obtained from FRT systems; accuracy rates of such systems; information on databases in the department's possession and on privacy impact assessments. However, the Delhi police told IFF that it could not share any of the required information, and referred to Section 8(d) of the RTI Act, 2005. IFF noted that Section (1)(d) of RTI Act contains provisions that allow the state to prohibit furnishing information on "commercial confidence, trade secrets, intellectual property". The organisation said that the absence of information about privacy protections put in place by the Delhi police, there are concerns that the data collected from citizens might be accessed by Innefu Labs, the company that supplies the FRT technology. To the Kolkata Police, IFF posed questions about the law that allows the use of FRT; whether it had sought legal opinion on usage; whether a privacy impact assessment was conducted; whether there…
