Govt promotes facial authentication to verify pensioners in month-long campaign

The Indian government has been actively encouraging the widespread adoption of facial authentication to facilitate the creation of Aadhaar-authenticated digital life certificates (DLC), a document that helps retirees get their pension payments.

For the past month, the Department of Pension & Pensioners' Welfare (under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions) has been running a campaign to increase the use of facial authentication, involving banks, ministries, and pensioners' associations.

The ongoing campaign coincides with the rule requiring pensioners to submit their life certificate (proof of life) during the month of November in order to continue receiving their pension.

Despite the government's claims that using this technology for pension disbursement benefits senior citizens, there is no law backing facial authentication. Moreover, no data protection law exists to protect against the potential misuse or breach of such data.

Unlike facial recognition, which uses a 1:n match against a database of known faces, facial authentication uses a 1:1 match. For example, in facial recognition, an image is compared to a database of other photos to identify the person in question without the person's consent. In facial authentication, two photos of a single person are compared with their consent.

What is DLC?

The Centre launched Jeevan Pramaan, a programme that generates Aadhaar-based DLCs, in 2018. In 2021, the Centre added facial authentication to Jeevan Pramaan as an additional method of generating DLCs.

Since then, this technology developed by the National Informatics Centre has been widely used, with over 1 lakh Aadhaar-based DLCs generated through facial authentication as of June.

“With a view to spread awareness amongst all the Central government pensioners as well as the pension disbursing authorities for use of DLC/face authentication technology to submit digital life certificates, DoPPW is launching a nationwide campaign for the whole month of November 2022 for their Ease of Living," according to an office circular obtained by Moneycontrol.

The campaign

In this campaign, ministries and departments were urged to appoint a nodal officer with the rank of director to oversee this initiative. Ministries and departments have also been urged to give the campaign "wide publicity" through banners, social media, WhatsApp groups, and staff unions.

"Photographs to be taken for posting tweets of such campaigns," the circular added.

"In case of request from bed-ridden pensioners, an officer shall be deputed for DLC submission," another recommendation in the circular stated.

Banks have also been asked to appoint a nodal officer with the rank of Assistant General Manager for the campaign, as well as publicise the facial authentication technique at bank branches and ATMs.

"When doorstep banking services are availed, the bank correspondent should use DLC/face authentication technique as far as possible," the circular added.

However, the circular clarified that physical life certificates can be submitted if the DLC did not work at any point.

The circular for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare recommended setting up camps in wellness centres, dispensaries and hospitals for submitting digital life certificates using face authentication.

"A dedicated person should be equipped with an android phone to issue DLC to pensioners visiting the camp," it added.

In addition, the pensioners' association has been urged to organise "special DLC camps" and to visit 37 centres "where a large number of pensioners can be facilitated in the issuance of their DLC using DLC/face authentication technology."

This isn't the first time that facial authentication has been used for pension disbursement. According to a New Indian Express report, the Telangana government developed a facial authentication-based process for pension disbursement in 2019.