Workshop on ‘Role of Technology in Reuniting Missing Children & Trafficked Persons’

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : A day long Workshop on ‘Role of Technology in Reuniting Missing Children & Trafficked Persons’ was jointly organised by National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, in collaboration with Indian Police Foundation on August 5, 2019.

K V Eapen, Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, inaugurated the workshop. He highlighted the increased use of biometrics by police around the world and emphasised the need to use of advance technologies to aid investigation by police.  The keynote address was delivered by Prof  Nishchal Verma, IIT Kanpur, an eminent resource person in the area of Biometrics, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning.

The workshop deliberated on the use of biometrics by law enforcement agencies for the identification of persons.  Use of biometrics is not a new practice in law enforcement; however, it was not as technologically advanced as present day applications. Rise of computing and electronics have greatly assisted biometric applications to become faster, more secure and accurate, according to a PIB release.

Vivek Gogia Joint Director, NCRB, spelt out the vision and future projects of the Bureau. He highlighted the need for accurate identification and evidences that provide irrefutable evidence of criminal activities.  The efficiency of law enforcement agencies has become much more enhanced with the inception of biometrics. It was emphasised that with the use of biometrics, law enforcement agencies can also locate large number of persons, especially children who are reported missing.  Similarly, unidentified persons and unidentified dead bodies can also be matched using biometrics with the existing records of missing persons and unidentified found persons. First brainstorming session about Emerging Technologies in identification, was chaired by Prof. Vinay P Namboodiri, IIT Kanpur.

Delivering concluding remarks, Sanjay Mathur, Joint Director (CCTNS), NCRB, clarified the doubts related to security breach, reliability and privacy of individuals while implementing AFRS (Automated Facial Recognition System).   He informed that AFRS of NCRB will not work on public databases.  Its scope is to use CCTNS database which is secured and not available in public domain.