Join human rights and digital rights organisations and individuals across India, including those from the public health community in expressing their deep concern on the National Health Authority’s plans to use facial recognition for “contactless” COVID-19 vaccine delivery. Sign on here!

R.S. Sharma, the current head of the National Health Authority, and former chief of UIDAI said in a recent statement that the “Aadhaar-based facial recognition system could soon replace biometric fingerprint or iris scan machines at Covid-19 vaccination centres across the country in order to avoid infections.” This has given rise to considerable concern and anxiety for many who are yet to be vaccinated. FRT deployment would result in a drastic change in existing government policy for an inclusive rollout of the vaccination process. As per stated government policy, note that biometric authentication is not currently being used in the vaccination process. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare clarified in the Lok Sabha that Aadhaar is not mandatory to receive the vaccine, and the ICMR’s guidelines on the vaccination process are clear that multiple forms of ID will be accepted. However in fresh guidelines released in early April, Aadhaar was indicated as the "preferred" mode of identity verification. The introduction of FRTs will only exacerbate the privacy and exclusionary concerns of such a move.

Facial recognition technologies (FRT) pose a grave threat to human rights, including privacy, and are being rolled out in the absence of a valid legal basis. Their unchecked rollout increases the risk of unchecked government surveillance, and mission creep. Evidence has shown that FRTs are not accurate and linking this untested technology to the vaccination roll-out will only exclude persons from the vaccine delivery system.

As India careens into a “second wave” of COVID-19, it is crucial that the government’s focus stays on increasing the speed, range and efficacy of vaccine delivery, and not use it to test out privacy harming technologies. The pandemic offers the Centre and State governments an opportunity to expand peoples’ access to healthcare as a matter of right, ensure healthcare is accessible and affordable, and that accessibility is not limited by imposing conditionalities such as enrolment in digital identification projects, or being coerced to use privacy harming technologies.

The joint statement calls on the Government of India and public officials, specifically Shri R.S. Sharma to : 

• Issue a public statement clearly stating that compliance will be ensured with existing government policies for vaccination that focus on universal and inclusive delivery rather than making Aadhaar and FRT based authentication as a basis, or pre-condition for availing it.

• Transparently disclosing all technical and financial details of the FRT based system, whether any pilot studies are being conducted or being considered for the rollout of FRT based system. We urge that such necessary disclosure must be facilitated with open sourcing the algorithm for the proposed FRT based system.

• As part of any potential pilot programme, conduct an independent human rights and equity audit that includes a privacy impact assessment of the FRT based system.
  

  Read the Internet Freedom Foundation’s blogpost here, and the full statement here.