What’s the news: A Noida-based businessman travelling to Switzerland was wrongly detained by the UAE authorities in Abu Dhabi on October 11, 2022, reported Hindustan Times. As per the report, the airport authorities claimed Praveen Kumar’s face matched with a ‘wanted criminal’ as per their face recognition software (FRS). Kumar and his wife Usha were on a week-long leisure trip to Switzerland with a connecting flight from Abu Dhabi, offered by the company. However, Usha said the immigration authorities at the connecting airport confiscated their passports and visas and took them to a separate room. The couple’s family members frantically tweeted about the situation to S Jaishankar, Union External Affairs Minister, and other senior officials of the ministry for help. But instead, the ordeal continued when the couple returned to India. As per the report, Kumar said that the CID at the airport detained him twice while he was on his way toward departure. Speaking to ANI, Kumar said the authorities kept him overnight and forced him to accept he was someone else. He went on to talk about how he was kept in a holding cell, taken to a different city and questioned again. Why it matters: Government departments, law enforcement agencies and even private companies appear to view FRS as an effective means to curb crime. However, studies have shown that facial recognition only gives an 80 percent accuracy when matching faces. The abovementioned incident is a prime example of how the technology has a long way to…
