NEW DELHI : The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has made a big leap forward in tracking ‘illegal activities’, as now the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) has the largest facial data with more than 100 crore entries, officials said.The officials said that facial data of around 80 per cent of India’s population would help in tracking criminals. It would also help the enforcement agencies to clamp down habitual criminals during the election, they added.According to the officials, the facial entries include data captured during Covid-19 pandemic, even when individuals were wearing masks. It is to be noted that the system, which is being used in the NATGRID, is capable of “efficiently accessing and matching” data of masked faces within minutes.A senior official managing the NATGRID architecture said that the IT infrastructure has signed MoUs with various government departments, including the National Crime Records Bureau, Income Tax department, and police agencies.Noting that the data has been sourced from different departments operating at airports, the officials said that the Centre has long been spearheading the development of a comprehensive national database aimed at monitoring illicit activities such as terror financing, counterfeit currency circulation, bomb threats, and illegal arms smuggling.They added that by combining the new technology and intelligence gathering, and their empirical analysis, the government has made a leap forward in proactively deterring different types of security threats.Keeping in mind the sanctity of the privacy issue, the government has put in inbuilt features in the NATGRID to ensure that no unauthorised personal data could be accessed by anyone, the officials said.
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