Context: 

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has developed an artificial intelligence based facial recognition tool that it claims has the capability of running checks on subscriber databases of telecom operators to deduce whether it contains multiple connections associated with the same person.

How does ASTR work?

• Working method: 
  • Human faces in subscribers’ images are encoded using convolutional neural network (CNN) models in order to account for the tilt and angle of the face, opaqueness and dark colour of the images.
  • After that, a face comparison is carried out for each face against all faces in the database, and similar faces are grouped under one directory. 

• Extent of matching: Two faces are concluded to be identical by ASTR if they match to the extent of at least 97.5 per cent.
• Speed of ASTR: It is capable of detecting all SIMs against a suspected face in less than 10 seconds from a database of 1 crore images.
• Fuzzy logic: Once the faces are matched, ASTR’s algorithm uses what it describes as fuzzy logic to find similarity or approximate matches for the subscriber names.
• Two Stepped Process: The DoT allows an individual to take nine legitimate mobile phone connections using a single identity proof. In essence, what the ASTR does is 
  1. It looks up if there are more than nine connections against a single individual’s photograph;
  2. It runs a search through the database to see if the same person has taken SIMs under different names.

• Blocking of connections: Once the DoT has determined that a set of numbers have been obtained by people through fraudulent means, it shares a list of those connections with telecom operators to block.                                                                                                                                     

News Source: Indian Express