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India is rapidly rolling out facial recognition technology at airports, streamlining security checks amid concern about the emergence of a surveillance state in the world’s largest democracy.
The use of digital biometric systems doubled last month to 28 airports, covering about 90 per cent of India’s sky-bound travel volumes, according to Suresh Khadakbhavi, chief executive of the Digi Yatra Foundation, an industry-led initiative co-ordinated by the country’s civil aviation ministry.
Since launching in December 2022, Digi Yatra has become a critical part of the government’s ambition to turn India into a global aviation hub. The voluntary system, which eliminates the need for airport boarding pass or ID checks for domestic passengers who submit a selfie photograph in advance, is marketed as a measure to ease bottlenecks as terminals cope with burgeoning passenger numbers.
“You need to have efficient processes in the airport,” Khadakbhavi told the Financial Times in an interview, adding that the technology had more than halved queueing times.
However, Digi Yatra’s growing reach has fed into wider concerns about the handling of passenger data amid fears that the world’s most populous country is transforming into a surveillance state.
India’s government imposes the most internet shutdowns globally and has issued more than 1.3bn biometric identity cards linked to bank accounts and phones. The IDs are used to access government services, including pensions and welfare payments.
About 3.8mn Indians have enrolled with Digi Yatra and Khadakbhavi expects that number to reach about 10mn this year. Its app may be expanded for foreigners in about a month, he added, with testing already conducted to process electronic passports.
Khadakbhavi’s organisation, jointly owned by five major domestic airports and the aviation authority, is in talks with India’s government and immigration agency to greenlight the technology for cross border travel.
But some groups have questioned the security of data processed by Digi Yatra in a country that has yet to implement the digital privacy law that was enacted last year.
In early July, government think-tank Niti Aayog urged Digi Yatra to provide a clear statement on its data protection policies and conduct regular independent audits.
Khadakbhavi conceded that Digi Yatra “did not focus” on public messaging in the rush to scale up. He said his organisation and the government could not access passenger data, which was “purged systematically” within 24 hours of departure.
“A lot of people do not know actually what we do and therefore all these questions about data privacy, surveillance are coming up,” Khadakbhavi said. “The fundamental point is that I do not have your data.”
But the Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights organisation that has called for the technology to be removed from airports, has argued that Digi Yatra’s policy published by the Ministry of Civil Aviation allows for data to be accessed by government agencies and purge settings to be changed for security requests.
Digi Yatra’s assurances are not “corroborated in policy . . . in fact, some of it contradicts it”, said Disha Verma, associate policy counsel at the IFF.
“What is needed is evidence and what is needed is transparency by design so that we don’t have to go run around like headless chickens trying to wonder where our data is going.”
To address concerns, Digi Yatra may make its audits and balance sheet information public by the end of the year, as well as issue notifications when users’ data has been erased, Khadakbhavi said.
“We are already thinking along those lines,” said Khadakbhavi. “We are getting our house in order from that perspective.”
Indian flyers have also claimed coercion to sign up. A survey published this year by polling organisation LocalCircles found 29 per cent of passengers enrolled at Delhi airport did so unknowingly.
Digi Yatra’s chief said some staff had wrongly pressed consent buttons instead of the passengers themselves. “This is something we have already taken up with airports and it’s something which is only a passing phase.”
Down the line, Digi Yatra could also be expanded to railways, hotels and national monuments. “Umpteen number of use cases in the future are possible,” said Khadakbhavi.
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