Facial recognition technology used to find missing children

Thanks to a new facial recognition software the police of New Delhi managed to identify 3,000 missing children in just four days.

In a sea of 1.3 billion people finding the missing ones can be a very difficult task. Especially with children, where about 240,000 missing ones have been registered between the years 2012 and 2017. Number gave by the Ministry of Development of Women and Children in India.

According to other organizations the number might be even higher at about half a million youngster missing every year. To help find them, the Ministry has created a national online database called TrackChild. Photos of these missing children can be posted and viewed here and the authorities' information shared with the citizens.

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Having so many photos in their data base the officials responsible for finding those children are facing rough times. In their help came Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA),a child welfare organization to help find the lost ones using the FRS technology called TrackChild.

“India currently has almost [200,000] missing children and about 90,000 lodged in various child care institutions. It is almost impossible for anyone [to] manually go through photographs to match the children.”
BBA activist Bhuwan Ribhu

For the moment the technology used to find missing children is still in the pilot project phase. There are hopes though that the project will successfully overcome future legal hurdles and become an official way of tracking the missing ones.

India is not the only country to test facial recognition technology for finding certain persons such as missing children. In a previous post I wrote about the Chinese police who managed to catch a felon at a pop concert using the FRS.

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